Earth Shaking in Sonyono
Posted by Linnea...

May 24, ‘06 They feel the earth shake under their feet . . . In the village of Sonyono, to the west of Ferke, the foundations of the earth have been cracked, displaced in such a way that people are confounded and confused. For years now (a decade?) a few young people have been rebellious enough to walk the Jesus Road instead of staying on the traditional paths of their ancestors. They have refused to participate in the annual sacrifices to spirits, and have insisted on continuing to meet together Sundays to worship the Creator God. Their parents and other relatives have tried to force them to cooperate, whether in sacrifices or in following through with contracted marriages to unbelievers, and the youth have put up with multiple beatings and severe ostracism--but have persisted in following Jesus. Now three “old” women have joined the Jesus Road, and another has stated her intention to profess her faith next Sunday. One is the main diviner/shaman, the one to whom villagers have always gone to find out why misfortune has come their way and what to do about it. If she is now following Jesus, that puts the whole world in question! One is the wife of the village chief, a prominent woman. Her step of faith, declared this past Sunday, has evidently put her husband in a difficult position. It seems that he, too, intended to enter the Jesus Road but just had not made that public yet. Now he faces great shame if he were to follow his wife; it’s supposed to be the other way around! Will he allow this to bar him from doing what he knows is the right thing? His position concerning spiritual things has already been revealed during this season of spiritual activity (cf. “The Time of Dangers”). As village chief, it is his responsibility to notify his people when the time is right to renew their covenants with the spirit world, when enough rains have come to indicate that the new year (in Nyarafolo terms) has begun. This year—this past month, as rains came--he never made that announcement. People began to worry that the time for planting was upon them, and no sacrifices had yet been made. He finally told them that each person was free to choose whether to sacrifice or not; he himself would not be participating. They feel the earth shake under their feet . . . Pastor Novaga Tuo, sent to shepherd this group a year ago, has a passion for evangelism and he is excited to see mature adults turning to Christ. When he came to Moise two days ago to share this news, his goal was to ask for concerted prayer for these new believers. Moise is leader of the Nyarafolo Outreach Group that meets Sunday afternoons in Ferke to pray for their people and to plan to get the Word out to them. He too, is deeply encouraged to see this development and well aware of the need to pray for protection for each new believer, and for their grounding in their faith. In March ’06 the Nyarafolo Group had chosen to hold their Fourth Annual Bible Conference in the village of Sonyono, their theme “Nyarafolo Believers and the Problem of Traditions.” They dealt with the difficulty each believer faces in remaining truly Nyarafolo culturally, honoring their elders, while avoiding participation in practices that would compromise their loyalty to Jesus. It was a rich time of investigation and sharing, and many villagers interacted with the visitors on the issues. Having all of these guests come to support the young group of believers definitely increased the group’s stature in the eyes of their neighbors, too! Pastor Novaga says that the first of these three “old” women (“old” is not a disrespectful term here, quite the contrary!) actually entered the Jesus Road soon after that conference! The others have been thinking it over, and are now certain of their decision. Mature adults find it much more difficult than youth to “change their minds” and decide to pursue another kind of faith walk: it is considered a shameful thing to do, a sign of instability or fickleness. When the young people make divergent choices it is sometimes viewed as more allowable. But not in Sonyono! There this has been cause for rigorous resistance – to the point where one young teenage girl was locked into a hut for three days while her male relatives took turns beating her, trying to get her to agree to become the fourth wife of an old man. She finally was able to leave and walked into Ferke, where a Christian family took her in until things calmed down back home. Others have had their fields taken away from them, and when they tried to raise pigs instead that endeavor was destroyed. It has been a long wilderness walk for those believers. Now, it seems that some of the older generation is seeing the truth in the Jesus Road too. And the turning is happening during the time of dangers, when intrigue and petition involving the spirit realm is at its height. Believers, pray for these new sisters in the Family of God, who will face many challenges in the coming weeks –perhaps even attempts on their lives. One old man, the one responsible for the village sacrifices in Tiepogovogo (to the east of Ferke), became a believer back in the late ‘80’s – the first and only older adult to join the Jesus Road there. Six weeks after his profession of faith he died. We believers were glad he had made his decision in time. The other villagers assumed he got what he deserved for deserting the spirits. Two young men from Gbambalivogo (also east), who had nearly completed their apprenticeship to be hunters (a profession in which much magic is involved), walked into town five years ago to find Jesus. They had heard that he could free them from the bondage to the spirits, who were increasingly removing their ability to farm or to enjoy normal life activities. They burned their fetishes and magical hunting charms before the rest of the villagers. A year later, the older of the two men died in a moped accident in highly mysterious circumstances. Aha, the villagers said . . . Nevertheless, four more people in that village are now believers. When the earth shakes under their feet, it is a time to reconsider what has always been assumed to be true--to weigh the bondage to fear and the scramble to obtain protection that are part and parcel of the traditional ways, against the risks of entering the Jesus Road and depending on him alone.

Lament
Posted by Linnea...

May 24, 2006 Before there were drops of rain, human tears fell in the garden, and that was when lament began. (Michael Card, A Sacred Sorrow, p. 15) We were coming back to Ferke from the all-night evangelistic outreach in Tiekpihe on Sunday morning at dawn, when we saw Senijuu (seh-nee-joo) walking the road alone, heading out to the village. Her husband, Kurugodihe (koo-roo-go-dee-eh), one of our night guards), had been with us for the event; she had not. We stopped the van to greet her, and asked what was up. Her father had died during the night, she said. The funeral was to be that afternoon. She was walking the 15 kilometers to her home village to let people know. Her father’s village, where she had been with him during his illness, was just outside Ferke. So Glenn and I slept a few hours, had lunch, and headed out to find the funeral site. Senijuu and her husband are believers from the Tiepogovogo church, part of our inner circle of friends. Her father had remained Muslim, and the funeral would be according to that rite. We veered off the main road to head out toward the place indicated but could only go a short ways in the van until the road ended in a small path circling some huts. So we left the van there, and walked, looking for crowds. Soon we were back in the grassland, but bikes were passing us carrying stacks of white plastic chairs so we knew we were headed in the right direction. Sure enough, Speedy, from our translation team, buzzed up behind us on his motorcycle as we approached another grouping of huts. He parked in the rows and rows of other two-wheeled vehicles, and we made our way together towards the little group settled on the eastern edge of the village where we saw familiar faces. Our friends (all of them men) were huddled in a wedge of shade, the shadow of a rectangular hut. Kurogodihe got up to meet us, taking the sack of rice from Speedy and the funeral cloth and money from us, gifts for the family. We went to greet the old men, heads of the extended family, sitting in a circle of chairs under an ancient mango tree with a vast umbrella of shade covering them. Then we rejoined our friends. They found chairs for us, the only white-skinned visitors in the crowds. That used to bother me a lot, the insistence on chairs for us, but we’ve come to recognize it as their courtesy to the outsider, the visitor. And now we are insider-outsiders, but aged. Sigh. And still white, no matter how much we love and are loved. I was the only woman in this group, and kept scanning the pockets of women sitting with their backs against huts across the way, their legs straight out in front of them, hoping to see my friends. Finally Glenn asked Kurugodihe if he knew where the Tiepogo women were, and he found them for me. They had not found a place to sit in the village, so were just outside it to the east, sitting on their sandals on the ground in the shade of a big tree. I joined them. Of course they found me a chair, and insisted I sit there. So I made them happy. From where we were we could see the activity in the old men’s circle and in a rectangular hut across the village where people were going in and out—where the body was being washed, and visited. In situations like this I just do what my friends do. They stayed put and waited. We talked, trying to stay awake. The women had gotten the word about the funeral soon after arriving home after the evangelistic outreach, and had walked the 15 kilometers to get here, coming down a path that emerged from the woodlands behind us. None of them had slept yet; I counted my blessings for the four hours I had snatched. Geneba, who had sung for hours last night at the outreach, kept dozing off, her head bobbing towards her shoulder until she would jerk back upright. Several of the young women in our group were new to me. I probably had known them once, as children, because they knew who I was. Now they were married and had babies tied on their backs. One, a boy not yet a year old, was a precocious hyperactive guy who kept squirming, wanting to do something interesting. He let me hold him, talking earnestly to me while investigating my face and hair. His mother was quiet, answering questions with minimal phrases, sad-looking behind her beautiful eyes. The other women were talking animatedly, lapsing into their most colloquial mode with all their s’s turning to h’s. I was hard put to follow, asking my friend Parifali (pa-ree-fa-lee) for help when I was addressed and could not figure out for the life of me what was being asked. She always laughed, then pronounced the phrase carefully in town dialect and I could sigh with relief and respond. Twice a line of women emerged from a woodland path behind us, those in front bursting into wails of mourning as they threw their hands behind their heads and broke into a run to enter the village. These were close relatives, mourning in the prescribed manner for women. But the tears coursing down their cheeks were real. They ran to the center, to the house where people were still going in and out. We waited for hours. I wish I could recount more interesting things, but the hardest part about funerals is that you just sit there and wait. It was the hottest time of the day, and the gnats were whirling around us, getting in your eyes if you didn’t swat fast enough. One woman came out of the village to our group and put her sleeping child on Geneba’s back while she went out into the woods to relieve herself. Geneba dozed standing up, balancing the child perfectly. Finally, around 5:00, the imams got up and said prayers. Shortly after that the men got up and moved as a horde out along another path toward the cemetery. We got up too, hanging back just a little to join the swarms of women that were also making their way that direction. I followed Parifali carefully, so that I would have all the necessary cues. She took side paths along the trail, then merged with the crowd again when she had spotted our sister, Senijuu, deep in sorrow. She had stopped in the middle of the trail along with the rest of the female crowd (who are not permitted to enter the cemetery during the burial), bent over, hands on her knees, sobbing. Parifali and Geneba came alongside her and put hands on her shoulders, murmuring to her urgently. I listened, and they were telling her to hush, to get hold of herself, this would pass, she would be all right. Senijuu straightened but just moved to the side of the trail to lean her forehead against a small tree, tears falling off her cheeks. Other women were wailing too, little girls and grandmas, all ages. This is lament, I thought. I had begun reading A Sacred Sorrow the previous day, and was contemplating the points that Michael makes about lament and its appropriate place in our lives. Lament is a necessary path to true worship, he says, a heartbreaking sorrow that has fallen on our broken world. It asks two fundamental questions: God, where are you? God, if You love me, then why? This last one questions God’s hesed, his loyal covenant love, his lovingkindness. Our two deepest hungers are for the presence of God and for his lovingkindness in our lives. Lament is the natural wailing for these two essentials. But from the moment we are born, we are shushed, told not to cry out. I looked at the women around me, their friends all coming alongside, telling them to be quiet. Yes, the mourning is permitted for these bereaved women, at two precise times: as they enter the funeral gathering place, and as the body is carried to its burial. It is even scripted: who is to wail, how the wail is to be produced, for how long. But at least the women have their moment, and they take it. Despair and anguish were coursing from their throats, their eyes. They hit their heads with palms beseeching the sky. Death awaits us all, but even when it comes to an old man who has lived his life, it leaves us full of emptiness and questions. Where is he? Did he make it to paradise? What about me? And meanwhile, their best friends encircle them with well-intentioned mufflers. Senijuu had every reason to weep. Her father left the earth without having trusted Jesus, thinking his good works just might outweigh the bad. She knows better, having accepted forgiveness. Her family, although Muslim, will still observe fetish rituals as well, trying to make sure Papa is allowed into the ancestor village. She alone has chosen the narrow path that leads Home. And surely she is right to mourn. Finally her sobbing lessens, and she notices that her ankle is bleeding where a branch scraped it. She bends to wipe it with a finger, and straightens, her eyes never meeting ours; she turns to slowly return to the village and her duties. We follow. Under our tree, the rest of us sit again to wait. When the men have gathered and finished a few more courtesy rituals, I am called by Glenn’s group. We’ve been given the road. So we say goodbye to our friends, shake hands with the key elders, and walk back towards the van down the winding bush path. I’ve been grieving my sister’s death for two months now, allowing the tears to come when I feel the loss. But my tears are different, not the lament for lack of Presence or seemingly absent Love. They are tears of sorrow for our broken world, where we still lose each other in the uneven flow of life and death, where some are cut short and others linger, where the “why” is rarely clear. They are tears of bereavement, missing my friend, my soulmate; tears of grief for her widowed husband and motherless children. I guess when I admit that the “why” is unclear, I admit that the Loving intention is unclear. But I trust his Love. This, too, is lament. There is a time to weep. (Eccl. 3:4)

Up All Night Long . . .
Posted by Linnea...

May 21, ‘06 Staying up all night lends huge importance to an event. Maybe that is why it is so popular in Senufo country and beyond! American teens would probably agree with the Senufo perspective. But the older Glenn and I get, the harder it seems to be to make it through the night – whether it is a wake for a funeral, for prayer, or an evangelism event. To us it usually feels more like a sleep-fast (as opposed to fasting from food)—an intentional spiritual discipline of sleep deprivation to serve the Lord. It is also a key way to show support for ministry or for friends, though, so eventually one must do what one can to participate. It came to that, Saturday night! The church we planted twenty years ago, in Tiepogovogo (chay-po-go-vo-go), now has their own pastor and their own program to reach their region with the Good News. We’ve been glad to support them in prayer, having just been back in the country for two months and giving ourselves time to readapt. Saturday’s outreach to Tiekpihe (check-pea-eh) was the last one planned for this season, however. Dry season is when people are available to come, since the work load is far less than in rainy season when farming takes precedence over everything. The rains have already begun, but the church wanted to reach this one last village. So we joined them. Two women from that village, Fatou (Fah-two) and Silwe (Seal-way), walk to Tiepogovogo for church on Sunday. Another woman had once wanted to enter the Jesus Road, but after her first visit to the church her husband had forbidden her go again, and has never relented even though elders from the church have tried to intervene on her behalf. So choosing this village indicated the church’s support for these women, and was an attempt to open the way for others. That night it seemed that there were far more obstacles than usual to overcome. By midnight, the believers were getting very discouraged. Several of us realized that we needed to be much in prayer so that the Good News could even be communicated. We were supposed to have left Ferke at 7 pm, but when Glenn and Pastor Fuhoton (Foo-aw-tone) went to the Ferke church to pick up the sound equipment and Pastor Cissoko (see-so-ko) they discovered that the mikes were still at the repair shop. It turned out the repairman, who had had them for a week, had not yet repaired them. They convinced him to do it right then. So we loaded the car (nine of us in the seven-passenger van) and left Ferke at 8:30. It had been raining since 2:30 pm. The hard rain settled into a drizzle at about 5 pm, and it was still lightly misting as we drove out into the countryside. The road to Tiekpihe was more of a path, with deep crevices where rains had worn away the dirt and left patches of hard rock as what was left of a roadbed. Sometimes Glenn aimed the car off into the shrubbery to get better purchase; sometimes he just chose his dangers. I quit looking sometimes, just praying for safety. Cissoko was astonished that Glenn was able to navigate the way that he did. We piled out at the village and followed Fuhoton around in the dark to greet the old men of the village. I had a small flashlight, which helped. The clouds capped the village, where normally there would have been starlight and moonlight. I kept seeing tiny blue lights like fireflies flickering about; Glenn told me they are the LED lights on cellphones. Out in the village! Fuhoton found the widest gathering place, in between a circle of huts, and determined that we should set things up there. The only problem was that some of the women had used the expanse to lay out a huge harvest of karite (shea) nuts to dry. They were now very wet, of course. They brought basins and swept the nuts up into them, finishing in about 20 minutes. The men, meanwhile, were working on setting up electric wires with three light bulbs spaced around the clearing, setting up a table to hold their sound equipment and movie projector (the old reel-to-reel type), and get the generator going. The latter absolutely refused to cooperate. After countless false tries, with the light bulbs briefly blooming and wilting, someone brought over his own tiny generator and the lights held. Allo, allo! Sure enough, the mikes were working too. There was not nearly enough current there to run the film, but they tried to see if they could make it work, over and over, finally giving up. “It’s time to sing,” Fuhoton said to our group. By now it was close to 11 pm, but kids and adults had gathered around to watch the light show and see what would happen. One of the teenage girls, Nyihenemekiye – or Helene, which is easier in this context – led off with a series of Nyarafolo songs: Come and follow Jesus; Listen, all you people; He is always watching over us . . . Then it was Fatou’s turn, her opportunity to lead singing before her very own neighbors. Two women stood beside them, holding mikes as well, leading the responses. Two teen men were soon glistening with sweat as they played the ballophone accompaniment, mallets bouncing back and forth. It was still misting, and after a while steam began rising from the wooden ballophone keys. Women from the Tiepogovogo church led the circle of dancers in the center of the clearing, a pile of flip-flops standing in for a fire in the center as more and more people decided it was easier to dance barefoot in the mud. I joined the circle right away, but kept on my sandals. This was my first time since we returned to get to worship this way, round and round, singing the responses, watching the woman in front of me so that I blended in, following her step pattern and the swing of her arms. Her baby was blissfully sleeping, tied on her back. I knew that villagers were stunned to see a white woman participating; I only hoped that they would not mind the way I can never get my posture quite right (having a hopelessly flat rear) and would instead see me as one of the worldwide family of sisters. One in the Spirit! Some of the young men, believers, made a second circle around the women, making their steps unique, swirling in counter rhythms. Little boys lined up behind them. Little girls began lining up with us in the center as well, one little thing (a preschooler) copying the bigger girls for hours, her feet only slightly off the beat. We rejoiced. We called out invitation. We bent forward to make scooping motions in the air in the center of the circle, as if we were farming—we were preparing the soil, sowing seed. At midnight we paused to hear a message from Pastor Esau, chaplain at the hospital. He is not Nyarafolo. He preached in French, about Hezekiah on his deathbed, wanting longer life. He pointed out that each of us must die, even Hezekiah; no extension makes that truth different. And then what? Are we prepared to meet Creator God? What choices are we making? Fuhoton translated to Nyarafolo. And then, while the men kept trying to get the movie to roll, we went on singing and dancing. It was the only way to keep awake, as well, but this time I was feeling a definite call to intercession for those who were intent on showing the Jesus film. Finally someone figured out what had been wrong with the bigger generator, and finally they also got the movie projector to work, with Pekaly standing behind the take-up reel to keep it moving with his hands the entire time. By then it was 2:30 am, and many of the mothers had gone home with their babies; the row of little kids that had huddled along the hut wall behind my chair had disappeared. But there were still a fair number of people staying to watch the only movie that had shown in their village all year. I watched the first reel, checking to see how it would go. They turned the Bambara sound down to a dull roar and Fuhoton spoke over it with a Nyarafolo summary of the dialogue. (Luke’s gospel is not yet translated into Nyarafolo.) Somehow it made the story fresh, brand new, and I found myself tearing up with gratitude for Jesus who had come on the scene, bewildering his parents, healing the sick, calling out people to follow him—and they would just get up out of their lives and walk after him! But when they threaded in the second reel at 3:30, I realized I had been dozing off way too often, and when I stood I had searing pain down my left leg. Several of our group were flat out asleep, hanging sideways over the arms of the plastic chairs. I hobbled through the dark toward where the van was parked, out behind the hut where the movie was being thrown onto a sheet hung from the roof. Glenn had already been dozing there off and on. It took me another hour or so to sleep, as I listened to the Nyarafolo story of Jesus’ life. Then Fuhoton was waking us up at dawn, saying it was over now, time to go home. He was smiling broadly. It had been a discouraging night, with so many hurdles to get over, but they had succeeded in their objective. The seed had been sown. We headed back toward town, everyone quiet from fatigue while Glenn threaded his way back over the obstacle course of rocks and ruts and mud. There was a cloud hanging over the peak of little Ferke Mountain, but a large crescent moon was hanging above us in the gradually bluing sky. Sunday morning.

The Time of Dangers
Posted by Linnea...

This is the first Sunday of May, and like all first Sundays, it is a day of prayer. Believers stay after church to pray for hours – or, if Nyarafolo and living in Ferke, they leave church and come to the apatâme in our back yard to pray in their own language. We are gathering here now, two by two as the group straggles in. It’s a good thing the Christians are at prayer. This is the Time of Dangers, in Nyarafolo tradition. With the first rains a new year begins (April-May). It is time to make sure that you have covered every angle, tied every loose string, renewed any ongoing contracts with the spirit world so that you have adequate protection. It’s a perilous universe, full of malignant beings who may hurt you if you don’t keep them happy. People go back to their roots – to the village where they were born, to their clan – where others are also gathering in order to make appropriate sacrifices. This morning we left the house early to attend church in Neduulo, where we have not yet visited the believers since returning. There is a large village just beyond the edge of Ferke where a mammoth ancient sacrifice tree looms over huts, and there the road was blocked by a hundred or so young men in shorts. Their shirts were hanging in the trees across the road. They were the new group of initiates to traditional religion, and they had just stayed up all night as part of their training. They backed away to the edges of the gravel to make a path for our car, but coming toward us was a “mask,” a man completely covered in costume. Nafere, our colleagues told us, the coordinator of the initiation, the one who would organize activities and discipline (with a whip) any disobedient participant. In his baggy pants and voluminous long-sleeved shirt he looked much like a rag doll dancing like a marionette, bouncing in a vaguely menacing way towards the car then back. His head was covered with a black sack painted with large red polka dots, eye holes permitting sight. A red hemp fringe shawled his neck and shoulders. We kept moving, not getting involved, and passed on through. After dropping Pastor Fuhoton and two others off at Tiepogovogo, we continued further east along the dirt track that ends at Neduulo. Moise was preaching there today. We followed him through the first section of the village, greeting the men (sitting in the shade of small porches) and women (pounding grain in large wooden mortars), then went across the small clearing that divides the two sections of the village to the other side, where the believers live. The families that inhabit the two sectors often quarrel, and found it best to live apart. Our brothers and sisters in Jesus were surprised and truly happy to see us finally back in the country. The old man, one of the first believers, laboriously lifted himself off the mat inside his hut doorway and painfully lifted his legs over the sill to come out and greet us. He stayed hunched over, no longer able to stand straight. And he did not come over to the meeting place where four simple benches were waiting for us under the spreading mango tree. We took our seats while the small group gathered, and I suddenly squealed as a large black ant dug his pincers into my ankle bone and hung on. Glenn finally pulled it off. The women were intrigued that a bloody cut was left there, but I was relieved that at least it no longer hurt once the ant was removed. Mango trees are well-known habitations of red pinching ants so I pulled the insect repellent out of my bag and lathered it on. It seemed to prevent any more incidents:). The five adults who came to the meeting were all known to us; some others have fallen away during the three and a half years of our absence. But these have stayed faithful, and were eager for this meeting. A young boy, maybe ten years old, led out with the first song in a surprisingly mellow youthful contralto and we all responded with great enthusiasm – then it was the turn of two of the women who have themselves composed songs. There was a time of prayer, but this time the “requests” were thanksgiving for our return, and for the way God had been with them during the Crisis. Parifali expressed gratitude that she is alive (she had a hysterectomy during that time, and would not have been able to afford it without our help sent through our colleagues). They asked me to pray again today, and I once again did it in Nyarafolo, thanking God for his faithfulness to them and for healing her – wishing that my prayers were more fluent and making a mental note to review the structures needed for that kind of speech. Glenn prayed too, and then Moise. The offering was collected in a five-inch calebasse hanging from a short cord. Then Moise preached. His sermon was unusually well-crafted to the context, and it occurred to me that if our planned workshop on contextualizing preaching for Senoufo peoples does take place, Moise should be one of the teachers! He began telling a story, one that he had put together from his own experience as well as something he read in one of our texts collected for research: Long ago there were three villages all ruled by one chief. Every year when the rains would come, all the people from those villages would give one day to gather together and work in the chief’s fields, to honor him. The men brought their tools for clearing the land and preparing the soil, machetes and large daba (shovel/hoes). The women brought large basins for bringing water to the workers, or carrying away weeds. Every year they worked hard for him, and the chief’s fields became bigger and produced more and more. After a while the people began to complain among themselves. It didn’t seem fair, that he was gaining so much profit from their hard work, merely thanking them afterwards. So finally there came a year when they agreed together to limit the payoff for the chief. The men took only their machetes and axes, leaving behind their dabas. The women accompanied them but left their large basins at home. Well, it just so happened that the chief had been thinking about his fields, too, and realized that the people’s work had really benefited him. How could he ever repay them? He had a small hut where he had been collecting gold pieces for a long time so that, the day that he died, his sons would have lots of wealth at their disposal so that they would be able to give him a huge funeral befitting his age and station. He decided that this year he would share that wealth with his people. So he went to the field where they were working, and thanked them for coming once again. “This year,” he said, “I want to repay you for all you’ve done for me. You see that hut over there – there is gold in it. I want you all to line up beside it, and I will open it and let each of you fill whatever farming implement you have brought today, with as much gold as it can carry.” Well, the people got in line and were astonished at the pile of gold they saw when the chief opened the little hut. But when they went forward to scoop gold in their hands the chief called them back, reminding them that they could only use the tools they had brought that day for the work. Some asked him to wait while they went home to get their big dabas, or their basins, but he forbade them. So some went to the gold and stuck in their machetes, but when they drew them out all the gold slid off. Due to their recalcitrant attitudes they had missed their opportunity to get their reward! The listeners were not only intent on the story, they were responding verbally all along the way as is required for storytelling. Then Moise told them that Jesus had told stories like this too, and he recounted the parable of the workers who were each given something to work with, to make multiply for the master. But one refused to do anything with it, hiding it away. The others were able to bring some profit to their master, having worked with it, but when the master returned this one man had nothing. And he got no reward. “What are you doing with what Jesus has given you?” he asked. “He gives each one of us some work to do – whether it is leading singing, or sharing with others what Jesus has done for you. Are you sharing with the villagers about Jesus?” Parifali insisted that she had done so many times, telling how Jesus had made it possible for her to have her surgery and to get well, but—she said—they refuse to credit him for that, attributing other motives to her (like showing off the benefit she had had). Never mind their reactions, Moise said, just be a faithful witness. Then he warned them that one reason others might not be taking them seriously was their lack of even a small church building. All the diviners have a hut, he said. Every fetish has its house. But for Jesus, we just use the shade of the mango tree. How many years have we met under this tree? It’s time to show the others that we respect Jesus, and build a shelter for our meetings. The people admitted that this was true, and said they have gathered dry grass to make it, but were waiting for the pastor from Tiepogovogo to come and approve the site they had chosen. It seems like this will soon be happening. It’s important not to wait until the rains are coming more frequently! We left Neduulo, picked up the passengers from Tiepogovogo who were going back to town with us, and made our way toward Ferke. Just south of Lasologo a motorcycle came whipping at unbelievable speed around the curve toward us, right in the middle of the road. As we all gasped while Glenn swerved the car to avoid his trajectory, our passengers told us that the rider was Laji from Gbanbalivogo, the village near Ferke Mountain where a small group of believers meets each Friday. They told us that this Laji calls himself “Satan’s Laji,” and that he is head of the hunters and a very powerful fetisher. People walk all the way out of Ferke to find him and get help with their problems. He obviously believes himself to be immune from danger on the road. Magic, protection, power . . . As we passed the village where the Poro (secret society) initiation was going on, we saw that the crowd had moved off the road to a clearing behind the village. Moise said they would be killing lots of animals as sacrifices, and sharing the meat as well as more information. A few kilometers later we turned right, after the railroad tracks, to take the small streets leading through town toward our courtyard. There beside us were the cologo, the young men from the blacksmith clan who have their picturesque initiation every seven years. Their heads were encased in their unique masks, long wood-frame cylinders with mirrors inserted. They were bobbing their heads so that light flashed in every direction, sunlight off the mirrors, as they filed past a shack into the forest by the railroad tracks. It’s the season of dangers, as Moise said. This is the time when the spirit world is being courted and consulted all over this region. This is when the Nyarafolo people do everything they can to shove aside the fear that closes in on them. All that they are hearing from their teachers in the initiation ceremony is about what could happen to them if they are not careful to treat the spirits correctly, to ward off evil. Moise knows; he went through the rites long ago before he came to know Jesus. A friend asked me what one word I thought would characterize what Nyarafolo believers have found in Jesus, and I had suggested freedom. Wondering now what Nyarafolo believers themselves would say, I asked Moise and Pastor Fuhoton what word they would choose. No hesitation! It was protection. Protection from evil, protection from spirits, protection in a dangerous universe. And yes, they said, that protection does bring freedom. In fact, people watch a believer living his life without doing any of these services to the spirits and they are astonished: how come he is even still alive, when he does nothing? they say. What they don’t understand is that God himself is their Protector, their strong shield and defender. So today we go to prayer in the shaded apatâme, thanking God for his protection and bringing to him all our requests. The world around us is working hard to find freedom from fear. Today my prayer will be that they will find that freedom by coming through Jesus to the Father who alone is able to deliver them from evil.

The Rebel South of Pogo
Posted by Linnea...

Living in rebel territory you get used to dealing with the frequent hassle of road barriers. But we were NOT expecting the situation we faced this week. We were heading north to Mali, our car full of national coworkers in translation and literacy work. We had our “ordre de mission” to show at the various barriers, letting people know we were on legitimate mission business together. Most of the young rebel “soldiers” manning the barriers were not interested in us once they saw the “Mission Baptiste” signs on the side of the green Hyundai van, and would wave us through. If they approached the window, Glenn would show the paper or just let them know what we were doing. A couple of them asked what gift we had brought for them, hinting, hinting. Glenn offered blessings, and they would smile and gracefully give in, going to pull back the barricade. Just south of Pogo, near the border, we stopped the car in front of the long spiked metal bar that closed off the road. This time a soldier in camouflage and bandana strode purposefully from his shady seat up the slope to the car. Glenn took one look and realized this was no one to fool around with. Middle-aged, his gaunt bearded face and haunted red eyes immediately spoke of horrors lived and perpetrated. We all tensed. He bent to bring his face to the level of Glenn’s open window and said briskly, “I want a Bible – I want to know about this Jesus Road.” Not what we had expected! I remembered that we had just one New Testament left in the little sack of tracts in the glove box, and reached in quickly to pull it out—relieved that we actually had one! (I would have pulled my other one out of my briefcase if we hadn’t had it, though.) Glenn gave it to him and he made an exclamation of satisfaction, turning quickly away and waving to the assistant to let us through. As we gained speed on the other side, Ezekiel (from Korhogo) said that he knew that man – he was well known as a thief and murderer in Korhogo! He had been a prisoner there, set free by the rebels when the Crisis began. He had joined their forces, and was the very one who had put Ezekiel’s boss in the community health project into prison for several weeks as a suspected “spy.” The rebel had eventually been made guard of the prison, and was known for killing any prisoner who did not please him. He had finally been moved out of the community and sent north due to his terrible reputation in the entire town. It gave us pause to think of the criminal power that had approached us, only to ask for a Bible! That night at the introductory workshop session we shared the story and asked for prayer for him. His face and stark need stayed in our minds all week. Could he have been serious? Was he really reading, seeking? On the way home on Friday we all watched for that particular stop, south of Pogo. There he was under his tree, in t-shirt and pants this time. He recognized the van and strode toward us, but this time his face was different. The eyes were clear, the hard lines softened. He bent his head toward my window, which was nearest him, and Glenn greeted him, asking him if he had been reading the Bible. “Yes,” he said, “and I have some questions. I’ve read some really interesting things!” So Glenn pulled over and got out of the car, coming around to the right side to stand by my window too. “I read that Jesus says he is the only way to God,” he said, “ and then that he said he would be coming back and we are to wait for him.” So, picking up on the need to explain why Jesus offers us our only hope of salvation, Glenn began with an illustration he has often used in teaching to explain why good works cannot purify us from sin. If he were to offer a drink of water, but put a piece of caca (stool) into it, would the man accept it? Of course not! How about if I were to add more water? No, it’s still got that other stuff in it! How about if I add a whole gallon of water? No! Right, no amount of added water will change the fact of the impurity that wrecks everything. The fact that we have done wrong has made our lives that way. No amount of added good works can make us pure. We come before the judge, and he looks in our file and sees what we have done, and the sentence we deserve. If another criminal were to offer to take our place, it would never be allowed – he has his own sentence to serve. But if Jesus comes, and replaces our file with his own file (completely free of any wrongdoing), then when the judge looks at our file he finds no charges against us. And Jesus will forgive any sin when the person turns to him in trust and asks forgiveness! What he desires is life change, including restitution, at the very least going to those who have been harmed and asking their forgiveness. I was listening, head bowed to stay out of the way and to concentrate on sending up flash prayers that the Lord would work something wonderful here. The rebel was following Glenn’s words with quick comprehension. That was his world, the world of crime and payment and power. He seemed to know much more than we expected about Jesus and his pure life, his death, his power to forgive. His chief suddenly came up behind us, wondering what the problem was here, that the driver was out of the car and this conversation was going on, but the rebel assured him that it wasn’t a problem and Glenn added that they were just chatting. The chief looked a little confused but went on his way. Now the rebel admitted that he had once been baptized, but was now a Muslim. Then he said that he really wanted to understand all this and would be looking us up sometime to continue the discussion. I confess I had a momentary shiver at the thought that he would be able to find us, quickly reminding myself that he seemed to be sincerely seeking – so why should I fear? “My name was Abbas,’ he said, “ but now it is Rudolph.” A Catholic background? (Converts take a saint’s name.) Then he waved and stepped back, and Glenn got back behind the wheel. There was an excited buzz of conversation as we pulled away. If God could save Paul, who was terrorizing and killing Christians, he could save this bad guy too! What would it be like to have him show up in the Christian community in Korhogo? Would people trust his confession of faith? Maybe that’s why Paul pulled away to the wilderness for years! Maybe Ezekiel’s boss’s testimony actually had an effect on his jailer. After all, one of Paul’s jailers became a believer too. We must keep praying for him! Where is Abbas tonight, and what is going on in his heart? Is he frightened as the peace process takes it baby steps forward? What will he do when he no longer has a rebel position? How will he re-enter society, with such a reputation? And what if he soon faces the Judge of the universe, with his personal file stacked full of putrid acts? Is he convicted in his heart of his wrongdoing? Will he let himself be forgiven and transformed by Jesus? Will we see him again?