I'm not exactly a fan of Halloween. Frankly, I think it's a creepy holiday and I don't like creepy things. Vampires, witches, ghosts, skeletons, blood... these things are creepy. And they're all very Halloween-y. But that's just my personal feelings on Halloween.
Growing up we didn't celebrate Halloween. We decorated the house for harvest. I only remember dressing up for preschool once. My mom once told me we didn't celebrate or trick-or-treat because it was satan's birthday. Later, she denied ever saying that, but for years that's why I thought we didn't dress up and ask our neighbors for candy. We always had a family night. We'd leave the house and get dinner, maybe a movie, always leaving all our house lights off so no one would come ring the doorbell asking for candy {however, if you've ever been to my parents house the busy road and general creepiness of the woodsy surrounding would probably deter trick-or-treaters :) }. When we realized our friends were getting lots of candy on Halloween night and felt like we were missing out, my mom started buying us a bag of whatever candy we wanted. Then we had the best of both worlds... candy we liked & helping our friends eat their candy.
I don't feel like I missed out growing up. And I've rather enjoyed being overseas the past two years and not being surrounded by all the creepiness {if you don't count the voodoo culture we live in now!}. I know my mom had her own convictions about the day. I wish I could talk to her about them now. I'm not sure how I feel about it as a whole. However, when BB sends Chandler a cute little fairy costume, she MUST dress up. And she did look pretty dang cute. We dressed her up to leave the house for our French class and to go to the grocery store. There's not many fall festivals here :) She got ooed and ahhed over by everyone. It was fun! And she enjoyed some apple cinnamon puffs for the first time. I guess you can say that was her treat ;) Thanks for the costume, BB!
Anthony is Trey's good friend from high school & church. He is now on staff as a Ministry Associate at our home church, Hiland Park Baptist. He and our Pastor, Steven, had the opportunity to come here and train pastors and leaders in our churches. The first training took place in Cotonou and the second further north in Bohicon. Steven had to leave suddenly due to a death in the church. Trey jumped in and helped Anthony teach on 2 Timothy. On Sunday, they hosted a seminar on Islam, the view Christians should have, and how to share their faith. I asked Anthony to share a little something about his trip here.
Most of all, I was humbled by the love the pastors we spoke to had for God and his Word. Some of the men traveled as far as 6-7 hours on a motorcycle on terrible roads to listen to us. Most of them slept on the concrete floor of the church at night. At some points when our messages were being translated into two different languages, the men were only able to understand what was being said one-third of the time. It’s not a mere desire for knowledge that causes a man to do such things. It is a love for the God that dramatically changed their lives. These men had experienced the love of Jesus Christ and as a result wanted to know as much about him as they possibly could. They wanted to better understand his commands. They wanted to better serve their Savior. It was humbling to see their love for God and compare it for my own. I often found myself feeling inadequate to teach them. They were so receptive to what we had to say. That thought. The thought of their love for the Bible and the God who gave it to them will stay with me forever.
