Well, it’s been a mighty warm week in Mahadaga, Burkina Faso, my new hometown, out here on the edge of the world.
My favorite time of the day has been the mornings. Each morning I wake up at 6:15 am and quietly slip out of the boys’ house. After I let myself in the team building, I put a kettle of water on the stove to boil and start my devotions. When it’s ready, I’ll eat hot cereal (Fonia Proper or Oatmeal) and drink my tea. I have been reading Proverbs this trip and have had the opportunity to read them in French alongside my English translation. As I am doing this, different team members will slowly trickle in until is has reached 7:30, and we are ready to get to work. I’m always a little sad to leave my mornings behind in favor for the day’s labor, but there is always tomorrow.
As we got ready to depart for Mahadaga two Sundays ago, we sat around the breakfast table, and Matt Walsh suggested that we make a list throughout the trip of things that we missed and did not miss about home and or life there. The idea being that upon our return, we would be able to take that list and try and apply it to life at home. I can think of a few things that have stuck out to me, some more obvious then others, and I’ll share a few of them. The first one for me is spending time with people. This past semester at Messiah College, I was very busy: I took a number of classes and became heavily involved with my work on the Bio-Diesel project. Because so much of my energy was spent on either school or Bio-Diesel, a number of my relationships with people were strained. I had less energy at the end of the day, and, more often then not, I wanted to go to bed instead of talking the night away. Being taken out of my comfort zone and my normal life at Messiah has forced me to live differently. Besides taking showers once every few days if I remember, I can’t spend my days working in the lab or doing homework like I might normally. Instead, I spend most of my time with my team playing games, walking in town, or climbing trees. When I return to Messiah, I don’t want to loose that! I want get outside and climb some trees or maybe campus buildings… Something I don’t miss, is the amount of time I spend on my computer. Not specifically TV or Facebook, just the mindless tooling around that takes up so much of my day and accomplishes so little at the same time!
Every Tuesday night, there is a prayer meeting, but, because of logistical conflicts this week, it was tonight. We opened up singing a number of songs and closed in prayer after which there were some announcements. I have really enjoyed the chance to worship with other believers from around the world and got a special treat tonight. As we were praying, we got to hear prayers in French, Spanish, and English. Hearing people pray to God in languages that I do not understand brings a sense of breadth and depth to the power that God has and his dominion over the whole earth.
After the prayer meeting, Matt pulled our team aside, and we talked about cleaning up tomorrow and getting ready for the ride back to Ouagadougou. It feels so odd that the trip we spent all fall semester planning is now coming to a close — what will we do and think about when we return!?
And that’s the news from Mahadaga, where the temperature is always above 90, the humidity is either 0% or 100%, and everyone is above average.
Andrew
Messiah College BioDiesel 