Light of Togo

Hi!  We are Jesse, Tiffany, and Joshua Shanks, missionaries in Togo, West Africa.  Thanks for visiting our website, and we hope that you’ll come back often to read our blog and stay updated on our great adventure.  You can make sure not to miss miss any updates by either signing up to receive them by email, or you can subscribe to our RSS feed.

Scroll down to read our latest blog entries, or use the navigation on the top & right to find other content on the site.

Making Progress
As I have mentioned in previous letters, I am currently devoting the majority of my time to studying Kabiye.  Just about two weeks ago, I finally felt like all this studying is starting to pay off as I began forming simple sentences.  What’s unfortunate is that the Kabiye people assume this means that I will understand anything they say.  That is definitely not the case!

Health Concerns
Over a week ago, we noticed a gland under Joshua’s right ear starting to swell and become painful for him.  After seven days, two doctor visits, a blood test, a throat culture, and speaking with an American doctor on the phone, we were still baffled and the swelling was getting worse.  Finally we talked to another doctor on the phone who gave us a good indication of what it might be and how to treat it.  That was two days ago, and since then he has been doing much better.

We are pretty sure that it was a bacterial infection of some sort.  It is definitely a test of faith at times living in a place where you can’t drive 15 minutes to the nearest fully-equipped hospital.  We are very thankful that God directed us to speak with the right people at the right time.  It’s good to have the energetic old Joshua back!

Today is Joshua’s 7th birthday!  On Monday, we had a party for him and all his friends.  They made tie-dye shirts, did an obstacle course, and of course ate plenty of cake and ice cream!  It’s hard to believe that “our little baby” is already seven years old!

Incidentally, February 3rd also marks the day we left America to come here.  We are amazed that it’s already been one full year since we moved to Togo.  The time seems to have flown by!

Click here to view or download this update on our letterhead.

New Year, New Opportunities
I imagine that you’ve probably heard several times already this year, “What happened to 2009?”  We feel the same way, as if the calendar jumped from 2008 to 2010!

As we are approaching our anniversary marking one year in Togo, we have never been so excited for a new year.  There are so many opportunities for ministry all around the Kara region that we are sometimes overwhelmed in trying to decide what to do next.

In fact, that is something we’d like to ask you to pray for specifically: clear direction from the Lord in taking the next step in our ministry.  Since our arrival in Togo, we have been involved in several ministries and have learned a lot from them.  We are eager, however, to take our next step, but we do not want to make these kinds of decisions based solely on what is most logical or pragmatic, but on what God wants us to do.  So please pray over the next couple months that it will be clear to us what that next step is.

A Great Visit
Over the holiday season, we were so glad to have my parents come stay with us for three weeks.  I think that Africa took them by surprise in many ways, and it was a bit rough on them at times.  Overall though, they really did enjoy their time here getting to know Africa and it’s wonderful people.

On several occasions they were overwhelmed by the generous hospitality of our friends and neighbors as they would thank my parents for coming to Togo and offer them a gift of food from the very little they have.

Safari
In order to get the full African experience, we also took them to a wildlife preserve in northern Benin.  It was our first time going as well, but it certainly won’t be our last!  We saw almost every kind of animal that lives in West Africa, including many elephants and a couple lions, all in their natural habitat with no cages or fences.  It was definitely an experience to remember!

Kabɩyɛ
Please continue to pray for my Kabiye studies.  Even though I started lessons a few months ago, I did not have much time until now to dedicate towards it.  So, from January to April I am committing a large amount of my time towards learning this difficult language.

As you can imagine, we’ve been having a great time with my parents.  A day after arriving from picking them up in Accra, we traveled to northern Benin to Pendjari Wildlife Park for a safari.  That was quite an amazing experience.  If you’d like to see the pictures, you can view them on my Facebook account (this works even if you don’t use Facebook).

Between the drive to Accra and back, and the safari trip, we estimated that we spent 50 to 60 hours in a vehicle in one week’s time!  Most of that was on bumpy unpaved roads by the way.  Needless to say, we were ready for a break.  We spent a very relaxing Christmas together, lounging around the house and spending time together.  That evening we had a special Christmas party for the people who work at our house.  We got each of them and their family members a gift, which was likely the only gift they received for Christmas.  They loved the spaghetti Tiffany made, and they especially liked the Coke floats for desert.  I asked them, and they said they had never tried putting ice cream in a soda before.

I set up a camera on Christmas morning and did a time lapse video that condenses about 3 hours into one minute. Have a look:

Christmas 09 Timelapse from Jesse Shanks on Vimeo.

I just wanted to write a quick update letting you know that we arrived safely home in Kara from picking up my parents in Accra.  It was quite a two day journey back here, and it was tiring for my parents, but they did a great job toughing it out on the smooth Togo roads.

They are already having a great time experiencing all the sights, sounds, and smells of Africa.  Thanks for all your prayers for their safety and ours as we drove.

Exactly one month after leaving for Accra the first time (November 18th), we’ll be leaving Kara to go there again. This time, however, the trip will be very rewarding since we are going to pick up my parents from the Accra airport! We are excited beyond words that they are coming as you can imagine. They’ll be staying for exactly three weeks, during which we’ll take them on a safari, celebrate Christmas together, and explore Kara and its culture.

As always please pray for our safety, smooth border crossings, good health, etc.  Pray also, if you would, for my parents flight and health while they are here.  They both have had some health problems of late, so we’d hate to see that hinder their experience here.

We’ll try to update you as much as possible in the new few weeks, but if we don’t you can just assume that we’re too busy enjoying the time with my parents!

As I’ve mentioned a couple times before, Joshua has fit right in with the Togolese people and culture.  He seems to handle change and new experiences very well.  One of those new experiences is fufu.  He tried it for the first time just a couple months after our arrival here, and he loved it.  This shocked me, since I can’t stand the stuff!  It’s a nearly-tasteless, chalky, pasty, gooey substance that  you dip in some sort of sauce.

Well, Joshua likes it so much that he asked our house helper, Yvette, to make it for him.  She was very glad to do so, and Joshua was very glad to eat it!  Here’s a short video of her preparing it, Joshua trying to help, and Joshua eating it.  You’ll notice that they mash it up in a wooden bowl using a large wooden stick.  They slowly add more and more water until it becomes very pasty.  The best way to describe the texture is wet Playdoh!

Joshua’s fufu from Jesse Shanks on Vimeo.

Click here to download a printable copy of this update on our letterhead.

First of all, I must apologize for the lateness of this update. I had every intention of getting it out 10 days ago, but following our trip to Ghana I came down with a bad case of malaria. I was bed-ridden for four days, with several days of recovery after that. I don’t want to complain, but it was NOT at all a plesant experience! Many, many people were praying for me, and I surely do appreciate that!

Our trip to Ghana was very good. The primary reason for the trip was to drop off Jim, our friend and fellow missionary, at the airport. He has been here for three years and is taking his first furlough. We then stayed for a couple extra days to do some shopping and other errands in Accra, which is one of the most developed cities in West Africa.

Since our last update I have started taking lessons in the local dialect in the Kara region, which is Kabiye (KAH-bee-yay). It is a really difficult and chalenging language, but I am very determined to learn it so that I may communicate more effectively, since our focus will be on reaching the Kabiye people.

While our primary focus in Togo is to evangelise the lost, plant churches, and disciple believers, it is impossible (and unbiblical) to ignore all the physical and material needs around us. While there are thousands of stories to tell, I’d like to focus on one young man who goes to our church named Bienvenue, which you may know translates as “welcome.” His parents are so poor they cannot take care of their kids. His brothers and sisters have resorted to theivery to support themselves. Bienvenue trusted Christ and decided not to follow their example, but instead moved out of the house, rented a small room from a friend, and decided to work his way through school to get an education and hopefully a job someday. He literally lives off whatever food and money he can scrape together each week. Lately I have been employing him on the weekends to help support him a little. I also payed his way to an upcoming Christian camp that he would otherwise have no chance to attend. He is thrilled about the opportunity to go! To me, Bievenue is a perfect example of the many trials Christians go through here in Togo when they decide to follow and obey Christ, but he’s also a great example of the joy that comes with it!

Also, we’ve posted a new family picutre you can download.

Thank you for all your prayer and support!

It’s been a very busy few weeks for us, so we’re really looking forward to leaving tomorrow morning (at 4 am!) for Accra, which is the capital of Ghana and the most developed city in West Africa. The primary reason for the trip is to bring our friend and fellow missionary, Jim, to the airport. He has been in Togo for 3 years now, and is taking a furlough back to the States.

Since we’ll be driving 11 hours each way, we decided to make it worthwhile by spending a few days there. We’ll spend most of the time shopping for things we can’t find in Kara, and running other errands like getting our truck worked on. We do plan on doing something fun for Joshua too though, maybe the beach!

Please pray for our safety, smooth border crossings, Jim’s flight, and a good time in Ghana.

WIth the recent arrival of Jon & Heidi Huff, the Bible institute is undergoing some small changes which will hopefully lead to its growth and greater effectiveness. One of the adjustments recently made was to allow any church member who wants to learn more about the Bible to attend. Because of this, there is now one pastor-in-training and three other men who are taking courses. Jon is currently teaching Old Testament Survey, and he asked me to teach New Testament Survey. We’ve completed a couple weeks already, and so far it has been a great experience and yet another opportunity to teach the truth of the Bible.

Please pray for these four guys that God would use these classes to increase their knowledge of His Word, and as a result increase their desire to know it’s author.

Have you ever heard one of those “strange sounding” African languages that has all kinds of “strange sounds” that seem impossible for you to pronounce?  Well, that pretty much describes Kabiye.  When I first heard it I thought, “Wow, that sounds like a really difficult language!”  The funny thing is that I’m just crazy enough to try to learn it!

I began lessons a few weeks ago, and so far I think it’s going pretty well.  That’s probably because I have no idea yet how the language works!  In the Kabiye culture, greetings are very important, so we’ve just been working on those so far.  Next week we’ll start getting into verb conjugations.

In case you’re wondering what it sounds like, here’s a few clips of me trying to speak a few simple phrases:

My name is Jesse

I am from America

I am learning Kabiye

I am a teacher of God’s Word

Here is a what a typical greeting dialog sounds like:

Person 1: Ŋliwa lɛ! (Good morning.)
Person 2: Yoo, alaafiya wɛɛ? (Thanks, how’s it going?)
1: Alaafiya! (It’s going well.)
2: Ña halʋ yɔ? (And how’s your wife?)
1: Alaafiya! (She’s well.)
2: Tɔnʋʋ tayɔ? (And how’s your health?)
1: Kɩwɛ mbʋ lɛ. (I’m feeling well.)
2:Tʋmɩyɛ ñɩŋanzɩ yɔ? (And how about the fatigue from your work?)
1:Alaafiya! (It’s fine.)

It’s after this part that I get lost. When I greet somebody for the first time in Kabiye, they are shocked and excited that I’m speaking to them in their own language instead of in French. The only problem is that they assume that since I know the greetings that I am fluent, so they start talking about…well, I’m not really sure what they talk about. That’s when I have to stop them and explain in French that I’ve only started to learn Kabiye.

Kabiye is definitely a challenge, but I’m trying to take a patient approach, realizing that it will be incredibly frustrating at times. Please pray for my progress, that I will be able to communicate well in the Kabiye people’s “heart language.”

It’s been a while since we last updated our website with a new family picture.  Well, since June of last year to be exact. Several people have asked for a new one, so here it is.

To download it, right-click (NOT left-click) on one of the following links and select “Save Link As…” or something similar, depending on what browser you’re using.  If you need a larger size, please let me know and I’ll send it to you.

| 4×6 landscape | 4×6 portrait | 5×7 landscape | 5×7 portrait |

Don’t we look so Africany?  This was taken from our rooftop in front of our neighbors’ beautiful palm trees.

A couple weeks ago as I was returning from a walk in the neighborhood, I met a 10-12 year old boy named Calbert who is from Burkina Faso.  We talked for a little while, then he came to church with us the following day.  He said that he’s a Christian and that he goes to church with his parents in Burkina, but that he’s staying here in Kara for a while with his aunt.

After that day, I did not see him again and assumed that maybe he had returned to Burkina.  Then suddenly yesterday as I was driving down our road I saw him again but he looked very distressed.  He explained that he did not have the necessary supplies for school and therefore was not allowed to come back until he had them.  As always, I was looking to help if there was a true need, but something just didn’t seem to add up in his story as I dug a little deeper.  I decided to make him wait for a day as I thought more about it and tried to verify the story.  In the mean time, our gardener went to his school and talked to somebody who said he didn’t think there was any problem with Calbert.  Looks like we might have a liar on our hands!

Then this morning as we were leaving for church, he was again on our road waiting for me.  This time he said that his aunt kicked him out of the house, he had slept on the street, and that he needed money to take a taxi back to Burkina.  This time there was no doubt he was lying.  He had spit into his hands and wiped it under his eyes to make it look like he had been crying.  This was very obvious due to the little white “spit bubbles” that were all over his cheeks.

I told him we had to leave right away for church, but that he could come with us and that we’d talk afterwards.  So, after church I sat him down and confronted him about his lies.  At first he denied it, but when I presented him with the proof he admitted to having lied to me to try to get money.

I had already decided that I wasn’t going to get mad, yell at him, and tell him never to come back, which I’m sure is what he was expecting.  Instead, God showed me that this was a perfect opportunity to explain the gospel to him.  I showed him from the Bible that lying is a sin, that God hates sin, that every sin must be punished, and that the fair punishment for our sin against a perfect God is eternity in hell.  Then I told him of Jesus’ perfect life, His voluntary death on the cross as our sin-bearing substitute, and His offer of total forgiveness to those who come to him repenting of their sin and putting their faith only in what He has done.  I believe he completely understood what I explained, and expressed some interest in it.  I gave him a new testament and some material to read about the gospel and told him that he is welcome to come back any time to talk.  Please pray for Calbert that the Holy Spirit will use this sin in his life to show him his need of Jesus Christ.

As I look back on these events, it’s clear to me that it was one of those times when we must be ready at any moment to take a bad circumstance and use it for God’s glory.  I pray that God will continue to move me (my feelings, desires, comfort zone, etc.) out of the way so that He will be glorified more and more through my life.

What do you get when you combine a broken bridge, 200 semi trucks, angry taxi drivers, and four tired missionaries?  A big adventure!

After a few days in Lomé, Jim and I started heading back for Kara around 11 am, which normally means arriving home around 5 pm.  Around the half way point, however, things started to get interesting.  We came up on a 4 mile-long line of semi trucks that had been building up since at least Monday.  It was at this point that we just “happened” to run into a couple other missionary friends from Kara who were only two cars ahead of us.  They had a map, and we had no clue, so we decided to follow them.

We got turned around, drove back to the last village, and asked about a road on the map that could have brought us out north of the bridge.  The locals, however, told us that the road is impassable.  So at this point we had two options: sit in traffic, going nowhere; or sit on the side of the road drinking Coke, going nowhere.  The decision was unanimous.

Click on a thumbnail to view a larger image. Use the left/right arrow keys to navigate to next/previous photos.

Once we started seeing vehicles coming from towards the bridge, we figured it was time to move out.  Our progress was stopped short, though, by all the traffic trying to go north. After two hours of stop and go, we were diverted off the main road and onto a narrow dirt road.  This road wasn’t at all a problem for our 4×4 vehicles, but there were all kinds of small cars, overloaded taxi vans, and huge semi trucks trying to make one lane into two.  As night fell we slowly crept along, hopping out of the vehicles from time to time in order to direct traffic, push vehicles out of the mud, or just to find out why we weren’t moving.

A couple hours later, we were past all the traffic and on our way to wherever that road would take us.  Five and a half hours after starting into the traffic jam, we came out a whopping 7 miles north of where we started!

Now it’s late, we’re tired, we’re hungry, but at least we’re past all that mess…right?  Let me interrupt my own story here and explain something.  I have learned two things about frustrating circumstances in Africa: first, that you don’t get too excited about a bad situation getting better because it’s usually not over; and second, that you don’t get too worked up about it because it just makes everything worse.  Just take a deep breath, say “WAWA” (West Africa Wins Again), and go with the flow.

So, not even an hour of driving on the main road brought us to the toll booth where we would normally pay 300 francs and pass right through.  But not tonight!  A line of taxi vans was blocking up both lanes of the road, making it impossible to pass.  Walking up to the booths, we saw a group of about 150 people standing around, some talking, some arguing, and some shouting loudly at nobody in particular, and some just watching the whole scene like a movie that you don’t want to be in.

We eventually found out that several taxi van drivers wanted to protest the bridge situation by blocking the road and refusing to pay their toll.  We soon realized that there was nothing we were going to do or say to fix the problem.  They wanted to voice their complaint to the local authorities, so until they showed up nothing was going to change.  We had the idea of just jumping the curb with our vehicles, and going around everyone, but we seriously felt like it wouldn’t have been the smartest move at that point.

We felt like the best place to be at this time was back at our vehicles, which is where we stayed until everything settled down.  Once the local “préfet” arrived, they came to an agreement that those who wanted to pay their toll and leave could do so, and those who didn’t could stay as long as they wanted.  The only problem is that the people blocking the road were the ones staying and they had no desire to move so that everyone else could leave.

With the situation having settled down a bit, and us getting more tired by the minute, we went back to the curb-jumping idea.  We moved several small concrete barricades out of the way, payed our toll, jumped the curb, and drove off into the sunset.  Well, the sunset part isn’t exactly true since we missed it by several hours.

In all, the 6 hour trip took 12.  A 12 hour trip doesn’t sound that bad, but I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase before: “You just had to be there.”  Honestly though, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything!  It was a great adventure and something that we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.  I can imagine us missionaries sitting around 20 years from now laughing about the “good ‘ole days.”  Just do me a favor and please tell me if 20 years from now I’m repeating this story over and over again as if it’s the first time you’ve heard it.

I’d like to ask you to pray for my trip to Lomé today.  I’m taking the Huffs down so they can pick up their vehicle from the port, while Jim and I will do some shopping and other errands.  Please pray for our safety there and back on Thursday or Friday.

Asking for prayer for safety on a trip sometimes seems like such a “catch phrase” kind of thing to say, but after taking a couple long distance trips here in Togo, I take it very seriously now!  During the pastors’ conference, we were coming down a mountain around a curve when all of a sudden a guy on a motorcycle was in the middle of our lane coming straight at us.  To make matters worse there was a large semi in the other lane, which gave the motorcycle guy no place to go.  But, he was completely unaware of all this because he had his head turned almost completely backwards talking to somebody behind him!  With only a split second to react, I honked and swerved as far off the steep road as I could, which gave him barely enough room to squeeze between me and the truck, just inches away from hitting our bumper.

This is just one of the many “incidences” we’ve had already in the short time we’ve been here.  So, when I ask you to pray for our safety, it’s because we really do need it!  Thanks very much!