Light of Togo

Hi!  We are Jesse, Tiffany, and Joshua Shanks, headed to Togo, West Africa as missionaries.  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 right to find other content on the site.

Well, the vacation part of our trip is over, and now we’re in Accra waiting for the Huff’s arrival tomorrow evening.  They are probably already in the air, so please pray for their safety.

Our vacation at the beach was absolutely wonderful.  It was such a great break from the busyness that has consumed us for the past few months.  Tiff and I got to spend some time together, and we both had a great time playing with Joshua on the beach.  He and I built a large sand castle and then channeled all the rain water (yes, it rained quite a bit) into the mote around it.

We also had a great time with our friends and fellow missionaries Jim White and Lisa Lewis.  We did several fun things together that we’ll post some pictures of when we get back home with a faster internet connection.

We’ll be crossing back over the border into Togo on Thursday, so please pray for that.  We had some complications coming into Ghana, so we’re really hoping to get back in easily.

Once we get back to Kara, we’ll let you know how the rest of the trip went.  Thanks so much for praying for our safety.

Tomorrow morning bright and early we’ll be leaving Kara for Lomé with our fellow missionaries Jim White and Lisa Lewis.  The purpose of our trip is to go pick up the newest missionary family (Jon, Heidi, & Abby Huff) from the airport in Accra, Ghana on the 1st.  However, for a few days before that we’ll be taking much-needed break in a hotel on the beach.  We are really looking forward to this, considering that it seems like we haven’t stopped long enough to catch our breath since our plane landed on Feb 3!  We’re hoping to have a good time of family bonding, which of course will include things like sand castles, burrying Dad in the sand, and throwing Joshua in the ocean.

On a more serious note, please pray for the Huffs as they will be coming in.  They are entering into the same exact situation that we have been in for the past few months of finding a house & vehicle, waiting for their container, and adjusting to the culture here.  They will be staying with us for a couple months until they get moved into their own place.

Pray also for our safety as we drive.  As I found out personally on our last trip down to Lomé, driving here is much more dangerous than in the States, but I’ll have to save that story for a different blog post.

We’ll try to write again once we’re in Ghana.

Click here to download this update on our letterhead.

Wow, what a busy month!  In the last letter we told you about the move into the  house, and this month we have been working hard trying to make that house into our home.  Although we knew it would be a long process, we are amazed at just how long it has taken so far.  We have been told by other missionaries here, however, that we are making lots of progress.

Other than getting settled into the house, we’ve also been very involved in ministry opportunities.  A few weeks ago, Tiffany made the observation that every time one of us goes outside our gate, it seems that within just a few minutes there are 20 or more kids gathered around just to see the funny looking white people.  So, two weeks ago on a Saturday morning we started a weekly kid’s program.  What’s very encouraging is to see the involvement of a few people from the Baptist church closest to our house.  They have learned to run the whole thing themselves and they are doing it all in Kabiyé, which is the local dialect spoken here.

Speaking of Kabiyé, please pray for our continuation of language learning.  I hope to begin Kabiyé lessons in about one month from now.  I’ve been told that it’s a pretty difficult language, but I truly believe it’s necessary for us to learn it in order to be most effective in our ministry here.

Joshua is doing great, as always.  He seems to not have skipped a beat in coming to Togo and adjusting to life here. Thank you to all of you who have prayed specifically for him during this transition.  He is very interested in learning French now, since most of his communication to his little friends comes in the form of English words pronounced with a French accent.  It’s quite humorous to hear!

I must confess that due to the overall busyness of life lately, I’ve done a horrible job lately at keeping you updated through our blog.  I have had many people asking for pictures and video of various things here, so during this coming month I hope to have those all on the website for you.  By the way, for those of you who previously had problems with it, the site is now fixed and should be accessible.  Remember, you can always sign up to get all our blog updates automatically by email.

Thank you for your prayer and support!

You might have guessed it, we now have internet once again.  It’s been 4 months of “deconnectivity,” which honestly hasn’t been all that bad.  What has really bothered me, though, is knowing that our website has been inaccessible to many people do to some unknown problem, and I’ve been able to do nothing about it.  So, now that we have a consistent connection, I am trying to figure out this issue.  I have disabled all but the most essential plugins for our website, and I’d like to ask your help.  If you are one of the people who has had problems accessing the site, could you please go to the site and let me know what happens.  Before you do, you may want to check to make sure you have the most current version of your web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) Meanwhile, I’ll be crossing my fingers and hoping that this works.

The fact that we now have internet also means that we’ll be posting to our blog more frequently once again.  We look forward to posting some pictures and other things to show you a little more of what life is like here and what we’re doing.

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

So much has happened since our last update that it’s difficult to know where to start.  Our container arrived in port on April 24, and we expected it to be out of the port and in our city of Kara within about a week.  There were some major complications, however, and the port authorities decided to open and search the whole container.  Because of the fact that they can assign any value to anything in the container, we were very fortunate to come away from it paying the reasonably low amount of tax that we did.  After two weeks, the container finally arrived at our house on May 9.  What an exciting day that was!  We have spent the past week trying to get everything unpacked and put in its place, but we’re finding that this is taking much more time than expected!

Our hope is to be completely settled into the house as quickly as possible so we can move on to focus on the more important things.  I’ll be picking back up with the institute course, and continuing to work with Pastor Nicodeme.  Also, as soon as I’m able to, I am going to begin studying the Kabiye language, which is the primary language of the people here.  This is all simply preparation towards the eventual goal of planting a church somewhere within the Kabiye people group.

I would like to share something personal with you that God taught us through this whole ordeal with our container.  I know that typical missionary letters aren’t supposed to be personal (tongue in cheek), but I want to take the opportunity to praise God for what He taught us.  First of all, imagine that you take every single thing you own and you put it in a container.  Then that container goes on a ship that might sink.  Then it arrives in a port and gets opened and searched by people who could easily take anything they want.  Then it gets loaded onto a truck and driven through a mountain range where there are numerous trucks just like it at the bottom of the mountains, but not on any road.  The worst part of it all is that you are completely unable to control any of it.  This might all seem very unspiritual, but that was the reality we were continually struck with, of loosing everything we possess.  There were two things that we realized in those moments: that the worst thing you can do to an American is to take away all his junk; and, that we were way too attached to our junk!  God truly brought us to the point of complete dependence on Him and trust in Him that even if we did loose everything, He is still in control and has a purpose to glorify Himself in every situation of our lives, whether good or bad.  We also learned a lesson of contentment, to be content in Jesus Christ alone in letting go of everything else.  So often we find our identity in what we have or what we do, but so rarely in who we are in Christ.  So, we praise God for teaching us these things and I hope it can be an encouragement to you as well.

Thank you to all who are praying for us during this time of adjustment.  We greatly appreciate it!

I know that it has been an incredibly long time since I have posted anything on our blog other than the monthly updates.  Yes, we are still alive, and I do plan on writing more often once we have an internet connection of our own.  For now, though, I want to tell about what’s going on with our container and to ask you to pray for the situation.

The container arrived in the port on April 24th, so we drove down six hours from Kara on the 28th, expecting to get the container out of port and up to Kara by around the first few days in May.  Well, we’re still in Lomé!  Without going into a bunch of unnecessary details, the basic problem is that something on the container’s paperwork doesn’t appear to look right to the port authorities.  So, they have decided to open the container and go through it.  They might get around to doing this on Monday or Tuesday, and the whole process could take several days.

There are several things to pray for in this situation:
Pray that nothing gets stolen while many of our things are laying on the ground outside of the container.
Pray that they will be content to only look through a part of the container instead of every single item in every single box, which literally could take a full week.
Pray that after looking through everything they will not assess an insanely high value to everything, which would then mean that we would be paying much higher taxes than necessary.

We are completely confident that all of this is just part of God’s plan, and that He has a very good reason for it all.  That doesn’t necessarily make it easy to go through it, but it does give us the assurance that God is seeking to do something through this that we either don’t understand or that we don’t yet know.  Thanks so much in advance for your prayers about this!

Click here to download a copy of this update on our letterhead (PDF format).

These are exciting days in the Shanks family!  Our container is going to arrive on the 25th of April, and so we should be moved into our home around the end of the first week in May.  Right now our house is in the process of being fixed up by the landlord, and it’s starting to look very nice.  We are very excited about having our first permanent house since getting married.

Our original plan for getting a vehicle was to have one shipped from overseas.  However, with a change in the tax rate for imported vehicles, we decided that this was going to cost way more than we were willing to pay.  Then, out of nowhere we got a call about a vehicle for sale in Lomé, which is the capital city six hours south of us in Kara.  The next day I hitched a ride there with some other missionaries and met up with the Togolese guy who had found the vehicle.  I had the intention of purchasing it the next morning and getting all of the paperwork done so I could return to Kara the following morning.  That was my American idea.  Africa had its own idea.

What happened after that, over the next five days, can only be described by saying “W.A.W.A.,” which is a common saying here among missionaries meaning “West Africa Wins Again.”  There was no one catastrophic event, but just a lot of little delays that caused me to realize that I truly am in a completely different culture where my way of doing things do not matter one bit.  To summarize, it was a great lesson learned!

In the New Testament Survey course that I have been teaching to Yélé, we are currently in the book of Romans.  It has been such an encouragement for me to see him as he is beginning to understand some of the rich doctrinal truths that are presented there.  He has a great hunger to learn the Word, and I hope that you will continue to pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance in his life.

We hope to write our next update letter from our own home!  Until then, we greatly appreciate your prayers regarding the container’s arrival and the process of moving.

Thank you for your prayer and support!

I just want to give you a quick update of what’s been going on lately. Last week we took a trip down to the capital city of Lomé with two of our missionary coworkers to get some supplies and other things for our new house. After living in Kara for a couple months, which is 6 hours up-country, we are amazed to see how many things we can find in Lomé.

The progress on the house is going well, and should be done by the time our container arrives.  The container got delayed, yet again, but is now on its way.  I’m working on getting an estimated arrival date, but I’m guessing that it will be around the first week of May.

We are still searching for a vehicle.  The company we’re using has not had much come available lately, so we are now starting to look in-country.  It’s a little more risky doing it this way because we won’t be guaranteed a vehicle that’s in great shape, but it should save some money and at this rate it will save lots of time too.

Joshua’s been having a great time lately.  Just the other day, when it was a nice cool 100 degrees (that’s not a joke by the way.  It’s been so hot lately that when it dropped to 100 it felt REALLY nice!), he and his “uncle” Jimmy (our coworker) took the garden hose and drenched themselves.  They then took a huge empty trash can, jumped inside, and filled it up with water and bathtub bubbles.  After dumping that out on the grass, it made a perfect place to run and slide on their bellies.  We got lots of great pictures, but they’re on Jimmy’s camera, so I’ll try to get them and put some on the website so you can see Joshua’s wet and wild afternoon!

A couple weeks ago, Joshua’s friend named Job brought him quite a surprise. It was Joshua’s newest animal buddy which he named Cami. Joshua and I take it out of its cage every morning and put it on a tree so he can eat and enjoy the sunshine. He’s very calm and doesn’t try to run away. Here’s a couple pictures for you.

Click here to download a PDF version of this update on our letterhead

Even though we’ve only been in Togo for six weeks now, there’s been a lot going on here lately. What we are quickly learning, however, is just how much patience will be required in order to live here! Nothing; such as the container shipping, vehicle search, moving in to our own house, and communication with the States, seems to be going according to “our schedule.” We have no doubt though that God has a reason for all of it, even if that reason is just to teach us patience! We realize that learning to slow down is just one of many ways in which we’ll have to change our lives in order to live here.

A couple weeks ago I started teaching a New Testament Survey course in the Bible Institute to a man named Yélé, who is just getting started in the institute. So far it has gone very well and has been a great experience for me.

I’ve also begun meeting on a regular basis with the pastor of the church we’re working in, pastor Nicodème. We have been praying together and discussing ways in which we can help the church grow and eventually become independent missionary assistance. Please pray that God will give direction to Pastor Nicodeme as he leads this church, and pray that God would use me to be an encouragement to him as well as a temporary help to the chuch.

Tiffany is doing really great. She is really adjusting well to the differences of opperating a home in Africa. Like most things here, everything is a much longer process when compared to America. Cooking is one thing that she really enjoys doing, and she has already had the chance to get creative with the different ingredients that are found here. She has gone “exploring” at the market a few times with our coworker, Lisa Lewis, and they have found several new things that we didn’t think existed here in Kara.

Joshua is also doing very well. Even though we have explained to him a few times that we are going to be here for a very long time, it doesn’t seem to bother him much. That either means that he’s adjusting very well, or that he has absolutely no concept of “a very long time.” Either way, he’s loving his new life here. He especially enjoys the newest addition to our family, Cami. Cami is a chameleon that Joshua’s friend caught for him a few weeks ago. We keep him in a cage at night, and put him on a small tree during the day where he catches bugs and enjoys the sunshine. I’ll put some pictures of Joshua and Cami on the website when I get a chance.

Speaking of the website, we’ve been having some problems with it, and I’m still working on getting it resolved. If you have problems with it, one thing that may help is updating your browser to its latest version, especially if you are using Internet Explorer.

Thank you for your prayers and support!

Ever since we arrived in Togo six weeks ago, we have been experiencing the hot and dusty Harmattan. We’ve been told about this thing that would happen soon called rain, which we vaguely remember from Oregon, but we were starting to doubt whether or not it was possible here. Then yesterday, during the hottest part of the day, a huge wind started blowing and did not stop all afternoon. With it came a huge black blanket of clouds which brought great joy to us webbed-feet Oregonians! We all went outside and enjoyed the great relief from the heat. Joshua stayed out so long running around the yard that he was soaked down to his underwear. After coming inside, it felt SO nice to actually be cold! I know that this probably isn’t even worth a blog post, but it was quite an exciting event for us!

What’s interesting is that this rain has two purposes. It will ripen the mangoes which grow everywhere here, and it will get rid of the dust in the air from the Harmattan. That can be good and bad. Good because it’s not so dusty all the time, but bad because the dusty air serves as a filter for the harsh sunlight. So, we’ve been told that in the next several weeks it will start to get even hotter before the rainy season starts in May.

As of one week ago, our container was shipped and is now somewhere over, and hopefully not in, the Atlantic Ocean. We’re not sure yet of an arrival date, but they usually take anywhere from four to eight weeks. Please pray for a timely arrival; we can’t wait to have mid-summer Christmas unpacking party!

Yesterday morning I had the privilege of beginning a New Testament Survey course in the Bible institute with a guy name Yélé. I think it went pretty well, and I think that he will be a great student, but it showed me many areas where my French can use some improvement. Please continue to pray for our improvement in French and please pray for the course as well.

Also, I’ve met a couple times with Nicodeme who is the pastor of the church where we are currently working. Each time we meet we spend some time praying together and discussing what kinds of things can be done to help the church. On Sunday we will be meeting again to develop a schedule in order to put into practice some of the things we’ve discussed. Pray for this church, and for Nicodeme and his family. He has gone through some incredible difficulties in the past several months and needs a lot of encouragement. I reminded him the other night as we talked that God has a purpose for every difficulty, trial, and persecution, and that purpose is to bring glory to Himself as 1 Peter talks about. Please just pray that God will use me to help him and the church here.

Thanks so much to all of you who have responded to my asking if the website was loading correctly. From the responses, it seems that about 75% had problems and the rest had no problems at all. Strange, huh?

It’s very difficult to troubleshoot a problem like that, since I my difficulties in accessing it were inconsistent as well. However, I think that I narrowed down the problem to a particular plugin that I was using. I have disabled it and the site seems to load much faster for me now, with no problems at all 100% of the time.

I’m curious to know if you will have the same success. If you could please visit the site one more time and let me know what happens. Sorry to keep bothering you with it, but the only way I’m going to know that it’s fixed is to hear from you.

Thanks so much!

For several weeks I have been receiving various emails from people who are having difficulty with this website. I have also had some of those same problems but unfortunately have not had a sufficient internet connection here in Togo to even take a look at the problem. Today, however, I think that I might have figured out the problem. Could you do me a big favor and if you are reading this by email or RSS, can you go to the website and let me know if it loads correctly and looks alright. You can either email me directly, or leave a comment at the bottom of this post. Hopefully the problem is fixed, and sorry to all of you who have had difficulties with it. Thanks for your help!