A ministry of Sharing Sorrow

I was woken up by a phone call at 6:50am this morning. It was Francoise, calling to let me know that Moussa, one of the employees at the Centre for the Advancement of the Handicapped, had passed away last night. My foggy brain had to scramble to catch up with what was happening so I could know what action would be appropriate on my part. I spent about 30 minutes trying to get a hold of the rest of our missionary team to let them know. Dale and Ounteni are still at a conference in Nigeria. Matt Walsh left yesterday morning to take the video team back to Ouaga to catch their flight. Text messaging wasn't working, cell phone connections were fuzzy, not everyone was online, etc. Eventually we got the word out. Because Moussa's brother, Diamouadi, is an employee at the mission station where we live, and also because Dale is not here to represent the Centre, the mission, our family, I decided that if I could find a way, I should try and attend the burial. So I called Francoise back and asked to her to let me know when they were ready to start. A little more scrambling and I managed to figure out who should care for the kids while I was gone: Liz came over for a little bit, and was eventually replaced by Buama, my house helper. So, without a clue of what to do, I set off.

Moussa was not old enough to be a "patriarch". He was not the oldest son, and his 3 daughters are still young (probably 10 and under). So, rather than burying him outside the family compound like they often do, the burial took place in the field behind SIM's medical dispensary. I had a general idea where to go, but I knew I was running late and I felt incredibly conspicuous winding my way through the dispensary toward the back exit, people staring as I went by. A couple of times I had to be set straight, and my mind was obviously elsewhere as I kept bungling up my greetings, saying "good evening" instead of "good morning" and asking one young woman how her children were, realizing only too late that she had lost her baby soon after it was born. That's the second time I've made that mistake with her, saying what automatically came to mind before realizing exactly what I was saying. Anyway, eventually I found the back gate and the field, and I wound my way to the back of the crowd gathered around a hole in the ground.

It was a simple burial. The pastor gave a short message in Gourma, so I couldn't understand a lot of it, but I caught enough to know that he was giving a simple, straightforward explanation of the hope we have in Christ, that we need not fear death if we are His children. Afterwards, several other people gave short testimonies about Moussa, how he was a good friend, father, brother, church member and did not turn away from his faith, even at the end.

Truthfully, I did not know Moussa well. He was the orthopedic technician at the Centre, and one of the first employees hired there. He was in his early 40s when he died, leaving behind a wife and 3 daughters. That's the gist of what I knew about him when he first started getting sick, so, though I thought it tragic when I first heard he had been diagnosed with liver cancer, it was easy to maintain a sort of detached, clinical interest in the short months he battled the disease. It was only after we arrived for our 2nd term in August that he was actually diagnosed with the cancer, though he'd been complaining of abdominal pain for some time. Turns out that liver cancer is fairly common in Africa, often finding its cause of origin in Hepatits B, which is probably what happened in Moussa's case. As a child, he contracted Hepatitis B, and over the years cancer cells quietly did their work, though they were not detected until it was too late in the process. Even if it had been discovered sooner, there's not much that could have been done about it here. The shocking part was how quickly he went from a seemingly healthy, strong, relatively young man to dying. Every week at prayer meeting it seemed, Francoise had a new report. He was worse, he was better, he was worse, he was better... And if the swiftness wasn't shocking enough, realizing that he did not have access to the usual medical care: pain meds, etc. to help ease his passing was a new thing to process as we heard details of what he was actually going through...it was a bit like hearing real life tidbits of a scene from House, MD.

I can only imagine what his family must be going through, how they must feel. On the one hand, such tragic loss is not all that uncommon here. On the other hand, it's all the more difficult to bear because life here is hard, and losing your husband, father, head-of-household is a real blow. So on one hand, lots of people have experienced this, so your grief is no worse than theirs. Life goes on. On the other hand, you have absolutely no idea how you will carry on. And I'm just talking from a day-to-day living perspective. That's not even taking into account the emotional blow that such a loss brings.

Yes, it's a tragic story as we would say back home, then shake our heads, say a prayer and move on. It's hard to know what to do in the face of such grief. It reminds me of a blog post a friend of ours recently wrote about the grieving process she experienced after losing a baby. Our culture does not teach us how to respond to such intense emotions, especially negative ones. We send a card and offer to pray. We might stop by or call to offer condolences, or say something in church once, all the while butterflies are flapping wildly in our stomach, our palms are sweaty, and we hope we haven't said anything stupid or hurtful or insensitive, or just plain...trite. Then, we sort of drift away from the problem...give the person "space" in their grief, and in the process, often leave them feeling abandoned. Maybe we have it ingrained in us to try and fix things when they are broken, and realizing that words could never fix such grief, we run away from a problem we can't fix. Maybe it's partly that as a culture we value privacy so highly, and are taught to try and deal with personal problems on our own, making grief a lonely and very heavy burden to bear.

I don't meant to imply that the Burkinabe way of processing grief is better. I can't even claim to know much about grief on a personal level, so who am I to judge what is appropriate? What I do know is that I'm often in a position where I need to figure out how to respond to the grief that is around me - not just in a culturally appropriate way, but on a private, personal level, I have to figure out how I'm going to process the grief and suffering I see in front of me every day. I am American; I instinctively find it easy to shut off my emotions and distance myself from the intensity of the grief, try to find a private place to air out my own feelings, but otherwise keep it to myself. I feel awkward going through the cultural "rituals", attending a burial where I have no idea how I should act, walking back from the burial amidst a crowd of grieving family, neighbors, friends, feeling completely helpless and alone, visiting a grieving family to offer condolences when I haven't the first clue what to say. No wonder my instincts are screaming for me to run and hide!

And yet, I just can't get the image of 3 little girls arriving on a motorbike just as the burial service is ending, silent, but with tears streaming down their little faces. The crowd goes absolutely quiet and parts to let them through to the edge of the grave site. Woodenly, unwillingly, each takes a handful of dirt and unceremoniously tosses it into the gaping hole in front of them. Then they turn around and leave just as quietly. Friends and neighbors finish the job they started and everyone quietly disperses.

I went to the burial because I felt it was the appropriate, the right thing to do so that Francoise would not be alone in her efforts to show the mission's support, to represent my husband since he is away, and to show support to Moussa's brother who works with me daily at the mission station. I did not expect to have such a strong emotional reaction. My heart breaks for those little girls. I know all the right answers about Moussa's hope in Christ, and I have no doubt that his family will have plenty of support from their extended family and the community at large. This is not about despair. It's just sorrow and grief. I imagine that when Jesus wept upon arriving at Lazarus' tomb, He may have had some of the same thoughts and feelings. Sure, He had the power to bring Lazarus back from the dead, in fact Him Himself was/is life eternal and the embodiment of our Hope. Jesus' weeping was not despair. But he still grieved at the sight of the ugliness caused by the wages of sin...the death, the sorrow and pain of those around Him. He offered hope, encouragement, and shared in their sufferings before He "fixed the problem". He is, after all, compassionate, tender-hearted, not immune to our sufferings. Maybe we should be a little more so as well.

Francoise was asked to give the last word of encouragement before Moussa was buried. She chose to read Psalm 23. It's such a well-known Psalm that it can sometimes lose it's power with too much familiarity. But as I heard it from a mourners' perspective, I found such words of comfort and hope...such a powerful Psalm, I hope one day at my own funeral they can read the Psalm with my name inserted where David uses the pronoun "I".

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
He restores my soul;
He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You have anointed my head with oil;
My cup overflows.
Surely goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Solitary Pursuits

Once again I've slacked off posting something here, so I'm just basically posting something to make sure I don't get too far behind. I've been slacking off taking pictures, so I haven't felt like I've had anything all that interesting to show here.
So, what's happened since my adventures wandering the millet fields of Mahadaga trying to find a circumcision party? Well, Dale left for a few days in Ouaga to pick up a 3-man team coming from Kenya and the US to help us make a new professional-level video of the Centre for the Advancement of the Handicapped in hopes of expanding the Centre's exposure amongst potential US donors. The guys have been great and obviously know their stuff. We appreciate how hard they are working to make sure they do as good a job as they can and we're excited to see the finished product in a couple of months (after all the translation and editing gets done). Their coming did mean a full schedule for Dale, though, as they hit the ground running. Dale spent 3 long days driving them around the fields of the Tapoa province in Burkina Faso, visiting various clients of the CAH for interviews.
This past Thursday Dale left with the CAH co-director, Ounteni, on a 10-day trip to Abuja, Nigeria and back. They are attending the Afri-CAN conference, a conference focusing on home-based therapy initiatives in disabilities work throughout West Africa. The conference is sponsored by CBM (formerly Christian Blind Mission), but the World Health Organization and UNESCO are also taking part, so it's become a great opportunity for our little Centre in this rural corner of the little-known country of Burkina Faso to network. It's the first time Dale's had to be away from our family for this long, especially taking into account his trip to Ouaga earlier this month and the extremely busy days he had the few days he was home in between trips. So our month is turning into quite a busy one. We're doing well, though we are looking forward to things settling down again in a few weeks.
The trip to Abuja is a 3-day ordeal. Fortunately, Dale and Ounteni only had to drive the first leg of the trip themselves to Niamey, Niger where they met up with a larger party that car pooled together the rest of the way. They've had adventures along the way, including sighting 4 giraffes along the road, waiting 2 hours at the border crossing into Nigeria, taking a wrong turn which added several hours to their trip and forced them to change the place they originally intended to stay the night, and a minor accident. Fortunately, they arrived at their final destination safely this evening, and will have the day tomorrow to rest up before the conference starts on Monday. Prayer requests for travelling mercies can sometimes seem trite, but I have been so grateful for the Lord's protection over Dale and the group he is travelling with as I've heard about their "adventures". May I never take his guiding and protecting hand for granted! The conference will last through Friday, and on Saturday they will begin the long 3-day journey back home.
Otherwise, the boys and I have been getting along pretty well - better than I expected, actually, if I'm honest. Besides tending to the boys and my usual "household chores", I've been busy trying to keep the video team fed (not necessarily cooking all their meals myself, but ensuring that they have food coming). The team leaves on Wednesday, after which I will begin preparing for semi-retired missionary Betty Eichhorst's arrival on Saturday.

October 2010 prayer letter

Please click on the link to view the prayer letter pdf file.

October 2010 prayer letter

It's hard to believe that we've been back in Mahadaga for over two months now. We're now full-swing into our roles and responsibilities here and keeping busy! Dale will be doing a lot of travelling over the next 4-6 weeks, so please pray for travelling mercies. We've also battled several illnesses over the last 4-6 weeks. We are thankful to all be healthy again, but please pray that it would stay that way! It's hard to juggle everything when your body doesn't want to cooperate!:)

Please keep checking back here on our blog for more news, pictures and reflections! And thanks for your prayers, encouragement and support!

Love,

Dale, Florence, Caleb and Joel

Of Circumcision Parties and Agriculture

I'm totally not in the mood to write anything tonight, so I'll let the pictures/captions do the talking. I had a bunch of thoughts I wanted to share, but maybe some other time! Until then, enjoy the pics.
Friday I went to my friend Anna's house to take pictures of the party she was throwing to celebrate her son's circumcision (don't worry, the circumcision took place 3 or 4 weeks prior to the party, not while I was there; this was just to celebrate that he had left boyhood behind him and is now a man). I had been to Anna's house one other time a couple of years ago (incidentally, it was for another son's circumcision party as well), so I thought I could remember how to get there. Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on how the tall corn and millet would block my view of the landscape and get me turned around. So I wandered the fields a bit before some very amused ladies headed out to work in their fields set me on the right path. So, I title this blog "Of circumcision parties and agriculture" because I had fun taking pictures during my longer-than-anticipated-but-still-picturesque walk through the fields of Mahadaga.
[caption id="attachment_773" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="No road signs and only fields and trees for miles around can make it kinda easy to get lost once you\'re a few feet off the main road."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_772" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Millet and sorghum (which they also call millet here) are the main crops grown in Burkina Faso. With harvest close at hand, there are fields upon fields of these tall stalks all around Mahadaga. Taking a walk through the fields is like having our own version of a corn maze!"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_766" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Sorghum millet that will soon be ready to harvest. The darker colored stalk is ripe, while the lighter-colored stalk still has a bit of maturing to do."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_762" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Navy beans or black-eyed peas (I\'m not sure which they are, but they\'re a variety of white bean) are another common crop here in Burkina."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_763" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Picture of a field of cotton that is just about ready for harvest."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_764" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A closed pod of cotton in the foreground and an open pod of cotton in the background."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_777" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A closer picture of ready-to-pick cotton while still on the plant."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_780" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Mahadaga is too remote to have the privilege of access to imported goods, so the people here do their best growing what variety of food they can. This is a variety of squash that is popular for use in sauce and stews. I use it as a substitute pumpkin."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_771" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Harvest is almost upon us and all kinds of produce is starting to show up at market and around town, such as sugar cane, a variety of eggplant, and hot peppers."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_775" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="A lot of the produce and grains grown here are laid out to dry so that it can be stored away for use later on once the rains have stopped and the crops are no longer yielding fruit."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_778" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Anna\'s 6th child, Etienne, poses with his older brother, Tajua. He\'s dressed in traditional circumcision ceremonial costume. Don\'t worry...this is weeks after the actual circumcision took place!"][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_770" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Like any mother on a child\'s special day, Anna was kept busy running around the compound serving all the guests who\'d come to congratulate her son."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_769" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Lunch: rice toh (a pasty mush made out of rice) steeped in a meat sauce with a piece or two of chicken on the side."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_761" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="This is Anna\'s kitchen."][/caption]
A few other random pictures from this past week.
[caption id="attachment_776" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="(Left to Right) Buama, Anna and Alice are three of my closest friends in Mahadaga."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_774" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="A Sunday afternoon visit with the Ouoba family and a chance to meet their newest son. Yentema (father) is the chaplain at the SIM medical dispensary in Mahadaga and Louise is in charge of the artisan program at the Centre for the Advancement of the Handicapped."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_767" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Captain Caleb poses on his pirate ship."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_768" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="First Mate Joel is new to the pirate scene."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_779" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Caleb walking to the French preschool located next to the SIM mission station where we live."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_765" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="As promised, a picture of our kitchen addition with the tin roof on it. If all goes well, we\'ll get the glass for our windows next weekend and work on the addition can re-commence."][/caption]
Until next time, may you always find something beautiful and learn something new in the detours life may throw your way!

Catching Up

It's been over two weeks since my last post and a lot has happened! Not the least of which includes a week-long trip to Ouagadougou (the capital) and Dale getting sick, which, aside from making him miserable, made things pretty insane at home. So, things are settling down and I figured I better catch you all up!
The week before our trip to Ouaga, construction finally started on our kitchen addition. I'm so excited to finally see some progress on it, even though I realize it'll still be a while before I can use the new space. I realize that in my previous post I mentioned the kitchen project, but did not actually show you any pictures of the current kitchen, so here's a few pictures of the current kitchen as well as pictures of the progress made on the addition.
[caption id="attachment_740" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Peering in through the doorway of my current kitchen."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_739" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="View of the current kitchen from the opposite corner."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_734" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Here\'s what the kitchen-side of the house looked like before construction on the kitchen addition began."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_724" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="This is how you get cement bricks out here. The brick maker shows up one morning and you tell him how many bricks you want. Two days later, there are 650 bricks laying under your mango trees."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_736" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The foundation is poured and the fill is ready to be spread before the floor gets poured."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_733" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The fill has been tamped down and the floor is raised and ready for concrete."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_726" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The concrete floor was poured just before we left for Ouaga."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_747" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="When we got back from our week-long stay in Ouaga, we found they had finished putting the walls up to our kitchen addition."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_745" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="The carpenter arrived late last week to put the roof beams on. There are actually metal roof panels on there now, too, but I forgot to take a picture of that. Next time!"][/caption]
Our garden project is also coming along...slowly. We haven't had a chance to plant much in it yet, but it's starting to look nice anyway. And we have a couple of banana trees and a papaya tree in our backyard now in addition to the mango trees. And we plan to add a lime tree and a guava tree soon. We also had another tree cut down. This one was a humongous eucalyptus tree that was no longer healthy and stood a bit too close to the side of our house. It was quite the job to cut it down and it's massive root/trunk is still sitting in our side yard 'til it can get chopped up into smaller bits.
[caption id="attachment_732" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The rock wall marks the outline of our garden."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_731" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="I can\'t believe how far down these guys dug to get at the roots of this monster."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_730" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Triumphant! Not even help from the Rhino this time!"][/caption]
Life in Mahadaga is, I'm convinced, an MK haven. Our boys love it here. And so I thought I'd share a few pictures of MK fun!
Our trip to Ouaga was a bit more busy than we'd anticipated. Dale participated in an agricultural development conference hosted by ECHO, while the boys and I "hung out" at the SIM guest house in Ouaga most of that week. For the boys, this meant lots of bonding time with some of their MK pals they don't usually get to see much of. For me, it simply meant that I tried to navigate the paper work we always seem to have to take care of by myself. There just wasn't enough time to meet with everyone we wanted to or run all the errands we wanted to. It doesn't help, either, that up until this trip, I had never driven in Ouaga before. There is a reason for that. If you haven't seen our post on Driving in Ouaga, check it out and you should understand a little better. Anyway, this makes it harder for me to simply go out and get the shopping done while Dale is at conference, or to take the boys out to entertain them elsewhere when they are going stir crazy in the much-smaller-than-they-are-used-to play area at the guest house. We still did manage to go swimming a couple of times and to take the boys to Faso Park, a small amusement park that is open on weekends.
[caption id="attachment_744" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="That does not look like the most comfortable seat on the bus!"][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_743" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="I don\'t think this could be comfortable for very long. The guy was texting on his cell phone."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_741" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="In addition to climbing this mango tree, Caleb discovered that climbing the swing set (in the background) allowed him to peer over the wall and drop leaves on people walking by..."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_738" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Caleb had a blast playing with his pals Thomas Walsh and Samuel Gibson."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_735" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Joel had fun playing on the slides at the amusement park."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_725" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Caleb rides Thomas the train on the carousel."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_729" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="While the boys amused themselves with the rides, we amused ourselves with some of the interesting designs they chose for the park. Next time I\'ll try and get a picture of one of the boys actually sliding out of the elephant\'s rear end!"][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_728" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Not sure if it\'s safe to ride on that dwarf\'s back..."][/caption]
I feel the need, at this point, to clarify once and for all a certain automotive incident that is becoming widely publicized due to a certain "friend" posting it on her blog. If you've been following our blog long enough, you've probably come across a mention or two of the WAWA phenomenon. WAWA = West Africa Wins Again. It's a phrase some missionaries use to describe the fact that, no matter how you try to "outsmart" the way things work here in Africa, you're generally doomed to have to do things the "African" way. Or, at the very least, that things will happen to you here that would never happen back home!
So, for example, it is a definite WAWA experience that no matter how careful he is to get his rest, eat good food, drink good water, Dale ALWAYS gets sick when we go to Ouaga. And this particular time, just when we thought he was going to get away with it, Dale got VERY sick the last night we were in Ouaga. The following morning Dale was in no shape to drive, and it fell to me to get us out of the city and on to our mid-way stop, Fada. I plucked up my courage, figuring I wasn't going to have to drive downtown, after all. Just two little turns and then I'm on the road to Fada. It's all paved road, so it shouldn't be too bad. I hadn't counted on how narrow the road that leads into (or out of) Ouaga is. I hadn't counted on how many motorcyclists and bicyclists there are on the road, or rather, on the fact that they don't seem to have any healthy sense of fear despite the big SUVs and trucks that are also on the roads. And I hadn't counted on having to face down a "perfect storm" in traffic terms: a taxi hugging the center of the road coming the opposite direction, a bush taxi (mini-bus) "pulled off" to my right (but still mostly on the paved road) and a bicyclists who chose that moment to go around the bush taxi. I really had no room to maneuver, and I thought that if I slammed on my breaks, the first taxi might hit me, and if I swerved, I'd hit either of the two taxis, so the bicyclists got it. It was a VERY scary moment. But I am most humbly grateful that, despite the fact that I actually did hit the guy, the Lord protected him (and, as a result, us), and he was not injured. He was probably a little sore, but after a few minutes of discussing the incident with a policeman and a crowd of onlookers (all gaping at the white woman who hit a bicyclists!), the guy got back on his bike and left. Needless to say, the rest of my drive was fairly tense (I will NEVER complain about driving in PA again!), but we did make it to Fada without any more incident. The next morning Dale decided he was feeling well enough to drive.:) He did let me drive the last leg of the trip, though - the one with the worst potholes and ditches so that I could barely get out of 2nd gear the whole time. Maybe he thought I couldn't get into trouble there, but I did manage to get the car stuck in the mud once!:) Thank goodness for four-wheel-drive!
A trip to Ouaga always means some pretty intense days right after we get back. There's all the unpacking to be done, not just our suitcases, but the two months worth of groceries we managed to purchase. And usually we have a couple of coolers full of produce to process as well. Some of it we eat in the first two weeks here, but some of it gets cut up and frozen (or canned). Thankfully, I have Buama. When we first came to Burkina, I was embarrassed at the thought of having someone else do all my work for me, but now I don't know how I could ever survive without her. She's better than a wash machine, a dishwasher, or a food processor, (which is how the average housewife makes housework manageable in the US) and she's a good friend, too!:) I was particularly grateful for her help this time as Dale got worse again and was not able to help around the house much for a few days. It was also the end of the month and with the Walsh family on vacation, it fell to me to distribute salaries and close up the station accounts. Needless to say, it was a tiring, busy, and somewhat stressful week, but it's over now, and I have lived to write a blog post about it!
[caption id="attachment_742" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Minced celery, shredded carrots, chopped green peppers, chopped onions and watermelon chunks!"][/caption]
One last adventure worth mentioning was a trip out to see our pastor's rice field this past Saturday morning. I had never seen rice before it had been harvested and I got lots of questions about it when I was on home assignment a few months ago, so I thought I'd get a few pictures and post them up!
[caption id="attachment_750" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="It may look like tall grass, but there\'s rice on there! When it\'s ripe it turns a light brown color and looks a bit like wheat."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_749" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Pastor Dialenli (Etienne) in his rice field."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_748" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Rice grows in swampy, wet land. Burkina isn\'t exactly known for being wet, but during rainy season, the farmers will build dykes to help trap the water in their rice fields. If the rainy season is good enough, they can still get a decent yield."][/caption]	[caption id="attachment_753" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Tramping around a rice field is muddy business. I figured, \'When in Rome, do as the Romans...\' so I followed Pastor\'s example and left my flip flops back at the Rhino."][/caption]
Until next time, may you trust His love enough to persevere through the rough spots of life!
PS, stay tuned for pictures of my "friend" *cough* Liz Barr *cough* learning to ride a motor bike. Not that I'm vengeful or anything.