SENEGAL REPORT #4

Modou Diop and Awa Ndour

(You Know Them!)

       
 

"Get out of your comfort zone." If you hang around mission work and missionaries for any length of time you will hear this said. I remember hearing it from team leader Don Bove in 2001 before our first trip to Senegal and it has lingered in my mind since.

What does that mean? In simple terms it means you take a photo like the one above, not just see someone else's. You are there smelling the smoke from the fire mixing with the strong odor of the onions the women in front are peeling. You hear the fire crackle and feel its heat as you walk past it.

You hit your head on the wood thatch on the open-wall covering on the right, maybe three times like I did, getting giggles from the 15-old-girl working underneath that you can't see in the photo.

You hear the unmeaning sounds of a language not as melodious as French but not as harsh as Russian. And the words come fast, with emotion, with much laughter.

And you see. You see how tall those alien trees in the background are and the fruit hanging off their limbs. You see children carried on mothers' backs and know that they never seem to squirm and rarely seem unhappy. You see the odd (but know it is common) combination of bright African-print fabric clothes with Western t-shirts.

There's a huge difference between being with the missionaries in church and being with them in the field. The first hurtle to jump to get from one to the other is to be willing to get out of your comfort zone.

This report is about me being out of my comfort zone in a way I had never experienced before. It has a lot to do with Modou Diop and Awa Ndour. But I'm jumping ahead of myself.

 

 
         
  Sunday morning the medical team piled into the Senagelese rapide outside the MIS headquarters in Thies and headed back into bush country. Connie and I went with Jose Oliveira in a separate vehicle. The destination was a village church that MIS had built along with a building used as a classroom and a third building that will be a library.
 
           
 

A lot of us have a set idea of how long a Sunday church service should be. There is a clock in our heads that can tell within five minutes whether the pastor has gone over his usual sermon time. In village churches in Senegal you had better leave that clock unplugged. Our church service started before we got there and three sermons and an announcement later it finished.

As I said there were three sermons by three men. Each was good, based in Scripture, explaining different aspects of God's relationship with His children.

 
 

But one sermon stood out. One sermon was historic...at least to the man who preached and his wife. Brian Robinson is a seminary student who came as part of the medical team along with his wife Laurie, a nurse. As a seminary student you preach in different churches. But how many can say that they preached in a village church in Africa? Brian can. Talk about stepping out of your comfort zone!

In addition to the three sermons there was an announcement, one that created a stir among the Senagalese believers there. Jose walked to the front and took from a man on the front pew a book. Not just any book but a Bible. Not just any Bible (is there such a thing as "just any Bible"?) but a Bible translated into the Seereer language which these brothers and sisters-in-Christ spoke. And it was the first! Praise God!

         
 

Following the service there was a time of fellowship and sharing. This was followed later by a report by MIS church planter Antoine on the great work the Lord is doing in this area. Particularly powerful was Antoine's testamony of how the Lord guided him to be a church planter.

  In this village MIS is involved in another project to benefit the people and make their lives better. This village had a community garden to grow crops for its inhabitants but the garden suffered from lack of water. MIS laid pipes from the water supply to the gardens and set up water stations that the people can use to water the crops.
         
  'When Connie and I got the schedule for the medical team and saw that they would be spending two nights out at the villages, we wondered exactly how that would be done. Would they sleep in huts? Would they sleep under the stars? We found out that they were sleeping in modern tents. Here are some set up beside the village church.
     
                 
 

There's More!

Click here to go to the second page of Report #4....