Guest Blogger: Humble.

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.

As I think back on my time in Benin, the feeling that continues to pop into my head is one of humility. It was a humbling trip for many reasons. First of all, I do not speak French. I had to be completely reliant on a man I had just met to communicate. It’s tough to be proud when you have no way of communicating with anyone! I was humbled by God’s grace in letting me have such an opportunity. I am undeserving of such an opportunity, but I am grateful that it was given to me. I am grateful for a church that desires the name of Christ to be spread across the earth.

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.

Photo with the attendees of the first session

Anthony trying his first real African food

the best hat he's ever purchased for $2

Ganvie trip 

He's now an African King!

Belated Halloween

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!

Chandler Renee - 7 months

Once again, a little late on this monthly update. We are just crazy busy and our little girl is busy growing up! This month she was extremely busy moving around. She started a real crawl... and then she began crawling FASTER and pulling up on EVERYTHING. She's giving us lots of exercise chasing her around. Of course, she wants to get into everything she's not supposed to... our shoes, electrical chords, electrical outlets... you get it. We cleared up her "tummy troubles" at the beginning of the month, thankfully. She's stayed healthy the rest of the month. When she started pulling up she started falling down a lot.. but it only took a few days for her to figure out how to get down. Now she's a pro.

She began eating real food this month. We decided to not do pureed foods and start with something called "Baby Led Weaning." Basically, she feeds herself from the beginning. She's done a great job with it. She's tried and loved everything we've given her. Bananas, avocados, green beans, carrots, cucumbers, pears, apples. She may have turned it down on the first try, but after day 2 and 3 she enjoys it! We're proud of our non-picky eater and hope she stays that way.

This month we did a little traveling to Ghana to visit with friends. We had a great time on the coast there. We also helped throw a baby shower for our friend expecting a little girl in December. It was good to take a little break from language and speak English.

 

Chandler Renee - 6 months

This crazy, silly, goofy little girl is 6 months old. Well, actually, I'm a little late on this post, so now she's almost 6.5 months old. She has grown so much this month. She sits up even better than before. She LOVES to army crawl all over the place. She does a much better job at holding on to her toys, but of course, the most fun toys are the things she can't have... like computer cords :) We visited the clinic a couple of times this month. First for some tummy troubles, that we're still battling, and second for 6 month shots. We were nervous of how it would be, but could not have asked for a cleaner place. The only complaint was that the nurse did not give the shots quickly, but at two completely separate times. The good news about the shots... 6 different vaccinations only cost $1!!! Her lab test wasn't as cheap. Apparently the government here subsidized the cost of vaccinations so that people will get them. On her 6 month birthday she even tried some real food. We're trying something called baby led weaning. Basically it means they learn to eat solids & feed themselves from the start. All the foods we give her are soft & easily mushed in her mouth. It teaches her to chew before she swallows. She really has not swallowed much food, but she's starting to enjoy playing with the food :)

We spent most of this month around the house learning language... which means Chandler is hearing lots of French. This month she's made new friends at our language school (of course all of them are our age). She's grown to also 17 pounds and 25" long.

Her 6 month pictures were harder to
capture since she's getting so active

Chandler Renee - 5 months

How the heck did we get here?! I cannot believe this little girl is 5 months old! The past couple of days I've been watching her sleep and keep thinking, "When did she get so big?!" This has been a fun month for her. Her daddy got her a doggy (or got himself a doggy). Chandler loves watching Barley play. She also went to an African beach for the first time. And celebrated with mommy on mommy's 26th birthday. She spent time in the village when we went out with volunteer teams and did an amazing job. She also attended her first wedding. It was different than most other wedding she'll attend since it was a Muslim wedding. For the most part she did good, but she did get a little overstimulated a few times :) 

Possibly her biggest accomplishment this month is getting on a sleeping schedule. She's started taking 2 main naps a day... one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Sometimes she takes one more in the evening just depending on how busy the day was. This has been a blessing for us. Her morning naps just so happens to be during my language time! Also, all we have to do is put her on her belly in her crib and she goes to sleep! She's not quite back to sleeping through the night again yet. Some nights she gives us that pleasure and other nights not so much. She LOVES to laugh! She can sit up for about 30 seconds at a time. While on her tummy she's figuring out the crawling movement with her legs. And we had to buy a rug so she could easily roll around on our tile floor. Let me just say, she rolls all over the place. She's become obsessed with textures & her exersaucer!

She's now 25.5" long and her head is 18" around! We don't have a scale so I'll have to get her weight tomorrow at our supervisor's house :) But she's definitely grown all around.

going for a walk

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

sleeping beauties

Wearing red, green & yellow for Benin's independence day

excited about her treats brought by a volunteer team

rug infatuation

with the bride the night
before the wedding
(also the end of Ramadan)

overstimulation at it's finest!
(with the bride & her best friend)

the first time I drove in Africa

We've physically been in Africa for 10 months. During those 10 months I've only sat in the driver's seat to drive around a compound. That's it. Any of you who have traveled here probably understand my hesitation for driving. Let me try to put it into words. There are rules here that are loosely followed. There are red-lights at some intersections that work some times. There are sometimes lines on the road, but they're not really followed. There's a few hundred motos (meaning motorcycles/scooters/two-wheeled vehicles) surrounding you at any given time, who also loosely follow any rules that might be there. Not to mention there are people walking/running across the road wherever they want and whenever they want. The only thing I have going for me here is that I already know how to drive a stick shift (thanks, Dad!). So, I think you can understand my hesitation.

Yesterday, everything that had held me back from driving had to be thrown out the window. I had to drive in Africa.

We had a bit of an emergency situation. First, let me say everyone is ok now. And it wasn't Chandler. Let me just take you through our morning.

Chandler woke up at 5:15 a.m. wanting to eat. I fed her and she was back asleep by 5:45. At that same time, Trey got up because his stomach was hurting him. He went to the bathroom and came back with no relief. He then started saying he was itching all over. I told him to see if he had a rash anywhere. He went to the bathroom again and was in there for a few minutes before I realized he was throwing up. I say to myself, "Hm, that's not good." At the risk of waking my sleeping beauty, I turn on the light and wait for him to come out of the bathroom. He says again that he's itching all over & that he feels like something is really wrong. As he lays down on the bed I begin to examine the itching, noticing a rash showing up on his legs... and his arms... and his chest. I immediately begin to search for medicine and find nothing that I know will help while Trey finds himself back in the bathroom. At this point we decide to take the chances of waking up our supervisors. We didn't have any medicine that I knew would help and his rash was spreading quickly. As I'm on the phone with Barbara, he continues to get worse. He's lying on the bathroom floor, trying not to vomit again and trying not to scratch the uncomfortable rash. Barbara gets off the phone to look for medicine and come up with a solution. She calls back and I tell her it's still getting worse and she says to get him over to their house.

Ok, get him to their house.... hmmmm... that means I'm going to have to drive. ME! DRIVE! WHAT?! So I change clothes, grab a shirt for Trey, and grab the babies bag (since I have no idea how long we'll be out) and run to the door. I decided to get everything to the car before making Trey get off the floor and waking the baby up. I went outside and told our guard, "Bonjour! Monsieur est tres malade." (see, my French is coming along.) He understood and began to help me get the gate open. I run back inside and get Trey & the baby. We all get in the car and off we go. Lucky for me it was only 6:30ish and there weren't many people on the roads. We get to their house and Barbara tells us to stay in the car we're heading to the guest house where the volunteer medical team is staying. At this point, Barbara drives. We get over there and see a doctor. He says Trey is having an allergic reaction to something. He gives us Benadryl and says to take Prednisone as well. We head back to their house and Trey decides he just wants to get back home and get in bed.

Off we go... I'm back in the driver's seat with lots more traffic. I go to pull onto the busy road and seriously, it probably took me 5 minutes to inch my way out. No one would stop to let me out.. the motos were honking at me, the cars were flying past me, and people were giving me dirty looks. I finally get out there and start on my way. Oh my. SOOOO STRESSFUL. And it was only for a few minutes. I needed to get about a mile on the main road before I could get on side roads. We turn on the first side road and Trey immediately says, "Turn around. We have to go back." WHAT?! BACK?! Luckily we knew of back roads that could get us to their house. The worst part of that is they are very bumpy roads with a very sick husband. We get back to their house and get inside. Trey crashes on the couch and I can finally breath.

After about 2 hours (and 2 other doses of medicine) Trey's feeling well enough to get in the car again. This time I was a little less stressed. We made it home safely & without hitting anyone. Trey crashed for the rest of the day. In total he took 5 different medicines to help with the symptoms. We are still racking our brains as to what could have caused this reaction. It was too long after he ate to be a food reaction (so we think) and can't seem to find any bug bites. We're not the only ones trying to figure out what happened, we have some nurses & doctors helping as well. He's doing much better today. And so am I now that I don't have to drive again!

Guest Blogger: Ministry

Well, I am writing the third of three blogs. It has been more difficult than I anticipated it would be. My desire was to share about “Firsts” in my journey to and time in Nigeria. The previous blogs described my travel to Nigeria and the culture which I witnessed Trey and Kristen living in daily. This last blog in the series (I can’t believe I penned a series of blogs. Thanks Kristen, for this opportunity) shares about the ministry in Nigeria.

Now remember, as one of Trey and Kristen’s family members, I believe that I can speak for the family. We live in a world of emotions that combat each other. First, like any parent or family member we want them with us, but as believers in the Almighty God and Creator, we believe that they are in the center of God’s plan for their lives and we are comforted by that fact. I can honestly say that I would rather have them in Africa in the center of God’s will (yes, I still believe that with the addition of Chandler) than living next door to me out of God’s plan for their lives. The reason they are in Africa is to minister to the lost and hurting people of West Africa. It is this first hand experience that I want to share about.

One of the greatest illustrations that I can share is one that the kids shared with me. They shared of a church that was burned to the ground by enemies of the Gospel. They began worshipping under a tree at the location of the former church building. They brought cement blocks and 2 by 12’s to sit on. It was not long before the enemies of the Gospel came at night and destroyed the cement blocks. The church continued to worship at this location, now however they brought logs to sit on as they heard the teachings of our Lord and Savior. Question - how will they keep these logs from being destroyed? Answer – the Deacons of the church carry the logs home to their houses and brings them back at the next time of worship.

I am thankful to Trey and Kristen for showing and providing ministry opportunities while I was in Nigeria. There is a ministry there that is fascinating to me. It is a ministry to women who are outcast and hurting. They teach them the skill of sewing. One part of this was making clothes. I spoke with the missionary there about buying a shirt that was tailored for me. I had just experienced them selling a shirt, measuring the individual for the size and promising them the shirt would be ready in two days for their departure. I thought that was a good idea, I said “I am also leaving in two days” and then I asked, “what would it take for me to have a shirt made to take back home with me?” She measured me and said, “A miracle.” Needless to say Kristen brought the shirt back to the states to me when she came a month later. I want you to understand this, for almost a week I had been seeing people who showed lostness and hopelessness on their faces.  In this place of sewing, I saw hope and faithfulness.

In the marketplace I saw an ocean of people who did not know the Lord. A flood of emotions flowed through my body as I saw people who visually showed lostness and hopelessness. I can say with 100% confidence that I have not seen that in my life in the states. An experience opened my eyes to the pain that is a part of daily life in this land. We were in the marketplace and as a six foot, white American, I stood out. A group of children approached and I saw that they were well organized in their persistent requests for money. It became obvious why, when their master came into the picture. All I could see at the moment was this non-believer and follower of a false religion having complete control over these children. I pray that God’s light is seen in this dark place. It is sad, but yet not unlike our own country where many times false gods dictate the lives of people. Our co-workers, our next door neighbors many times live under a dark master. The enemy is well organized and has a plan, but “greater is He that is in me, than he that is in the world!”

I had an experience on a Thursday night in Nigeria that transformed the way I pray for missions. We had the great privilege of eating dinner with 12 missionaries and family members. After we ate, they gathered together as they always do on Thursday nights and prayed for their ministry partners. I pray daily for all Christians around the world who face persecution (in a all encompassing prayer). This night as they spoke prayer requests they mentioned individuals who lost their home for their faith, they mentioned people who were beaten because of their faith, and then they mentioned individuals by name who gave their lives for their faith. They spoke of individuals that they had just seen a week earlier. My life will forever be changed because of this night. I know we don’t experience persecution in the states, and we have the freedom to share Christ whenever we want. The Christians in northern Nigeria don’t, but in persecution they find strength in the Lord. My prayer is not only for them, but for us. “God in our homeland of freedom, may we experience the urgency of sharing the Gospel as our brothers and sisters do around the world who experience life threatening persecution.”

 Our days on this earth are numbered. We choose each day how we live our lives. It has been said that we make 1000 decisions a day. Yet each person makes one decision that is for eternity.  How dare you or I walk through our day without an urgency to share the Gospel.  How dare we share our lives with people around us, and not share the meaning of life as God’s child.

As I finish this third blog, let me go back to the phrase “Go big or go home.” Let’s all “go big” for Christ (whatever that may be for you; missions, sharing about Christ, using your place of employment to tell others of God’s love, etc.) because our home is not of this world.