Light of Togo

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have no access to clean water and not enough money to buy an expensive filter?  Unfortunately, that’s the situation of one billion people around the world including many here in northern Togo.  This has always been a concern of mine, but trying to figure out what to do about it can be a bit overwhelming!  That is until I heard about a form of water treatment known as SODIS, which is becoming very popular all around the world.

SODIS is such a simple method that it almost seems impossible that it could work.  All that’s required is a clear plastic bottle and 6 hours of sunlight, both of which are in abundance here.  Numerous scientific studies have shown that when using the right kind of bottle (PET plastic is preferred), the UV light from the sun will effectively kill all the common pathogens found in water.

I recently made a bunch of photocopies of the SODIS guide in French and have started giving them to people after talking with them about their need for clean water.  Our friend next door named, “Mama Bienvenue,” and her daughter were quite excited about it and asked for 10 more flyers to give out to their friends and family so they can explain the process to them as well.  She said that she’ll be buying some bottles (at 20 cents a piece) at the market soon so she can begin providing clean water for her and her kids!

I’m very thankful for those who have put in so much time and research in developing this method.  I pray that God will use it for His glory not only in our ministry here in Togo, but also around the world to bring physical (and hopefully spiritual as well) healing to those who begin drinking clean water for the first time in their lives.

Early this morning I got a call from a Togolese friend saying there had been an motorcycle accident, and that Tchala, a member of one of the churches in town, had been injured.  He wasn’t able to ride on the back of a motorcycle to get to the hospital, so they asked if I could bring him.  I rushed out of the house and headed to the “round point” (the major roundabout intersection in Kara).  When I arrived, there was a large group of people standing around.  I parked and got out as a couple men brought Tchala over to my truck.  Frankly, I was quite shocked when I saw him.  He is normally a very cheerful guy, always wearing a big smile.  Being a mason he’s also incredibly brawny.  This morning, though, with the help of two men he limped over to the truck like a wounded dog.  He had a massive lump on the front of his head, as if he had a baseball under his skin.  He was coherent, but barely.

Since there wasn’t anything more I could do for him after arriving at the hospital, I left some money with his pastor  to help with some of the expenses and headed home.  A couple hours later I received news that he had left the hospital and was resting at home.  He didn’t break any bones, but his knee was hit pretty hard by the guy who ran into him. Many people in Togo don’t wear helmets, but thankfully he was.  Otherwise, his head injury could have been fatal.

Please pray for Tchala that he can make a full recovery quickly.  If he is not able to get back to work soon, it can cause major financial difficulties for him and his family.

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.”

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.

Last week was certainly one to remember.  I believe it (the pastors’ conference) was a great help to the Togolese pastors as they were able to see every one of their “sister churches” in Togo, get to know the other pastors, and recieve biblical teaching on topics relevant to them.  I personally had a good time getting to know several pastors who I had never met before.  I would like to ask you to pray for them if you could.  Many, if not all of them are struggling to make ends meet, dealing with serious health problems, and trying to lead churches full of people in the same situation as they are.

I had the opportunity to speak two times during the conference.  I basically did a verse by verse study of Jean 15:1-17, dealing with the topic of abiding in Christ.  The main idea was that without a deep, trusting, abiding relationship in Christ, their ministries will only bear the fruit of their own efforts and not that of the Spirit.  The other sessions given by the other missionaries were incredibly helpful as well, and I was really challenged and encouraged by them.

Without going into too much detail about all the rest of what we did during the week, I’ll just say that we drove a total of 24 hours, many of which were spent on roads so bumby that they made my truck beg me for mercy.  In fact, it’s making a few new little noises that I’ve never heard before!  During the last two days, we were in the Dapaong area visiting some remote village churches.  It had rained really hard just a couple days earlier.

Other than my vehicle we had Jim’s, which doesn’t have 4×4.  Just in case you don’t know, remote village roads, hard rains, and no 4×4 aren’t a good combination!  Because his vehicle is larger, he also had the majority of the people (9) in it which just added to the problem.  Needless to say, he got stuck in the mud 4 times!  A couple times were pretty bad and we had to tow it out using my vehicle while everyone pushed on his.  Overall, it was a great experience.  Really!  There’s something exciting about being stuck in the mud out in a remote African village with no cell phone service.  It makes me want to buy a helicopter actually.

So, now that the conference is over and several other time-consuming things are wrapping up,  I expect to have quite a bit more “free” time.  Free time is a very relative term, isn’t it?  What I mean is that I’ll have more time to catch up on all the other stuff that’s been put aside while I was too busy.  So as always, I’ll do my best to keep you updated with anything else that’s going on.  Thanks so much for praying for the conference, and don’t forget to pray for the pastors.

Several weeks ago Randy, our coworker, proposed the idea of doing a conference/retreat for all the Togolese pastors.  We all thought it was a good idea, so we started planning it.  It will take place this coming Sunday through Friday.  The idea is to get all the pastors together from all the churches that Randy has started and bring them around to each church so they can all see in person the work that is taking place around the country.  So, that means that we’ll be taking a couple overnight trips during the week.  Please pray for our safety as we’ll be taking two vehicles (ours and Jim’s) fully loaded on some rough roads.

Each of the four missionaries, Randy (Alderman), Jim (White), Jon (Huff), and myself will be speaking two times during the conference.  I’m currently preparing for these, so please be in prayer for that as well as for the others who will speak.  We are praying that this will be a time of refreshment and encouragement for these pastors, as well as a challenge to those who are perhaps on the verge of ethical, moral, or personal problems in their life.

I’ll keep you updated as much as possible as the conference goes along.  Thank you so much for your prayers!

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.

Before the films, we let the kids play with a big ball, which was a completely new experience for them. Joshua even jumped in there with them and had a blast running around with all the kids, stirring up the biggest dust cloud I’ve ever seen!

It was interesting to see how at the beginning of the films there were only a handful of church members there watching, but by the end there were probably around 150 people, many of whom were standing outside watching through the windows.

Afterwards, Pastor Sopa gave, in the local Moba language, a clear explanation of how to know Jesus personally. Sopa, by the way, is the pastor of six churches right now, and as you can imagine needs help very badly. He started out by walking to each church, then he upgraded to a bicycle, and now he has a motorcycle that Randy Alderman bought for him. He preaches at two churches each Sunday and rotates between them. Please pray for him, and for God to call other Togolese men to go help in this needy area.

This afternoon we will be leaving with Jim White and Lisa Lewis heading North to the city of Dapaong.  We will be working with one of the pastors in the area, Sopa, as we do some outreach events in a few villages around the city.  We’ll staying for a couple nights and coming back on Sunday afternoon.  We would appreciate your prayers for our safety, and of course pray for these events that God will bless and draw people to Himself to experience His grace!

We’ll tell you how it went when we return.

Here is the audio from the sermon I preached last Wednesday night.  You can either listen to it here with the audio player or you can download the mp3 file from the link below.

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In the last post, I mentioned that I’d be preaching a couple times this week.  Thanks to all of you who were praying for this.  I really believe that God worked in a great way through both of these opportunities.  I, of course, can take zero credit for anything that God does.  He simply used His Word like He has promised to do, and He just happened to use me in the process.  It’s incredibly humbling that God would ever use somebody like me, and I give Him all the praise and glory for it.

I’ll hopefully be able to post the audio from Wednesday night’s sermon if I can get it from the sound ministry at church tomorrow.

Only 3 days to go!  We’ll be writing one last blog post before leaving Tuesday, and we’ll give you some details about the trip.

Several weeks ago I was asked to speak at our church’s Men’s Prayer Breakfast on the 31st of this month.  Then a couple days ago our pastor asked me to take the entire service this Wednesday night to preach and share some details about our move to Togo and our soon-to-be ministry there.

So, needless to say, that put me in to “study mode” this week.  I really enjoy times like this when I can dig deeply into a passage of Scripture in order to discover the main, over-arching idea of the passage and then the individual truths that support that idea.  I tend to be a more introverted and studious person, so figuring out how to effectively communicate those truths to other people is usually where I struggle, but I thank God for showing me that I can never rely or depend on my own strength or abilities, but on His grace and Spirit.

On Wednesday, I’ll be speaking from a text that’s very familiar to me, 2 Corinthians 5, mostly verses 11-21.  It’s one that I preached from often during deputation, but I’ll be coming at it from a different angle.  That’s the beauty of the Bible; it can be preached over and over again and never get old.  There is no way in a lifetime - in ten lifetimes - that we could exhaust every truth and every application of every passage in the Bible.

I’d greatly appreciate your prayer for me as I prepare and then as I preach.  I have preached many times, but do not even remotely feel that I have mastered it.  And to tell you the truth, I hope that I never do because that will probably be the day that I stop relying on Christ alone in order to do it.  So, above all, please pray that I will be completely reliant and dependent on the Holy Spirit, and that I will communicate effectively the message of the passage and not my own opinions.  And pray as always that God will be glorified!

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours at church told us about his boss at work and about a unique donation that he had given to help missions work.  He works at Cutco, which is a very large knife and kitchen utensil maker.  His boss had heard about remote villages where the people spend countless hours peeling their potatoes and other vegetables with whatever tools they have available, which is usually just a very dull knife.  So, he donated a bunch of Cutco potato peelers to help some remote villages, in South America if I remember correctly.  Anyhow, they had a huge impact on the daily lives of these people.  They were able to peel and cut their potatoes in a fraction of the time it used to take, which freed them up to do many other important tasks around the village.

So after Eric finished telling me this, he said that he wanted to do the same thing for us in Togo.  Eventually, he was able to get 50 potato peelers which he gave to us to take over there and give to people in a remote village somewhere.

OK, so maybe potato peelers doesn’t sound to you like a profound way to do missions work, but as Eric and I talked it was very encouraging to me to see how he had thought through the implications of what a simple potato peeler can do.  He said, “You know, if these potato peelers can make a difference in some people’s everyday lives, that just might be the one thing that opens a door for you to talk to them about Jesus and what He’s done for them, and that is what it’s all about.”  I smiled and said, “You’re exactly right!  It’s all about Jesus Christ being glorified in all the world.  God is seeking people to know Him and worship Him in Togo, and if He can use potato peelers in the process, then He will.”

See, many times our problem is that we “compartmentalize” our lives into the “spiritual” and “non-spiritual” or “secular” categories.  But in reality, as a Christian, every part of your life belongs to God, and He desires that you glorify Him with all of it, not just the “churchy” parts.  What are the everyday, “non-spiritual” things in your life in which you could be glorifying Christ?

I just wanted to quickly tell you about two opportunities that I’ll have to speak this week and to ask you to pray for them.  Tomorrow I’ll be speaking at our church’s Forever Young lunch, talking about “how to pray more effectively for missionaries.”

Then on Thursday I’ll be speaking at a Bible club at Marshall High School in Portland.  I’ve been told that normally there are several students who come who are not Christians.  Please just pray that God will allow me to clearly present what Christianity is all about.  I’ve found that people - especially young people - have a very distorted view of what Christianity is.  Of course, we know that the Bible tells us that it’s all about the fact that God saves undeserving sinners by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, based on the perfect life, sacrificial death, and live-giving resurrection of Jesus.  Please just pray that God will allow me to effectively communicate this truth as I speak on Thursday.