To Every Thing There is a Season

Winter. How does one explain this concept to a room full of Ivorian teenagers who have likely never experienced temperatures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit? And snow? Well, some of them have heard of it, but that’s as far as it goes.

Two students in our
English class

During one of our English classes, we were faced with explaining the concept of winter because the word appeared in an article we were reading as a class. So, armed with my 10 years of teaching English as a second (or foreign) language, I knew just what to do: I asked what the four seasons were in preparation to explain the idea of winter and what it entails. Blank stares. Silence. “Uh, rainy and not rainy?” a student attempted. Well, he wasn’t wrong. That pretty much sums up the weather throughout the year here in Côte d’Ivoire: rainy or not rainy. Oh, and hot. Really hot when it’s not rainy.

We’re in the rainy season now in this part of West Africa, but the days, weeks and even months are not specifically designated as “rainy” or “not rainy” – it varies. How does one refer to time, then? Multiple times, we’ve caught ourselves just before explaining a time period as “autumn” or “spring.” How can one keep track of the months, elusive time?

In Ecclesiastes chapter three, we read about the seasons of life. No season of life looks exactly the same for any one person. There are times of change, and times of consistency. Times of laughter and mourning – sometimes during the same season.  Various seasons, so many chapters. When God brings up the next adventure in life, we sometimes re-evaluate our seasons. Maybe that season we thought was a season to soar was really preparation for this next season. Are we always in a season of preparation for the next season?

We are, and hope to always be, still in a season of learning here in Côte d’Ivoire. But this month has marked a bit of a change in the season. This month, our teammates, the Sellers, returned to the U.S. for their home assignment until next year – a different season for them as well.

One thing transcends these seasons: prayer. We need it in every season. So in our varying seasons, will you pray for us? Pray for Bobby, Jenny & Moore as they continue to adapt and learn how to minister in the Ivorian culture. Pray for Larry and LeAnn as they travel and share throughout the U.S.

Oh – and how does one explain time periods throughout the year in Côte d’Ivoire without using the seasons as a point of reference? We asked our French tutor and he explained the concept of trimesters. The first trimester: January through March. The second: April through June, and so on. So, we learned something new. And the season of learning continues.

Water of Life

On June 7th, Bobby and fellow missionary Larry Sellers travelled five hours one-way to visit the village of Sokoura, where a new permanent well had been drilled for this village. Bobby put together a video of the worship dedication service. To view the video, click below:
https://vimeo.com/131276609

The Driving Saga

A page from the driver's
manual warning one to watch for animals
and some blobs to represent said animals

The saga started seven weeks ago, at the beginning of April, when we went in to find out the best way to get Ivorian drivers’ licenses. We signed up, paid a fee and received the “rules of the road” book to study. The book was informative, although some of the signs in the book appeared to have blobs representing different things. Would we be able to recognize the blobs on the signs? We would try.

Graffiti on the door to the exam room reads "le terrible"

Four weeks later, at the end of April, we went to take the oral exam to get the licenses. We arrived at 9 a.m. & as we waited, the anxiety mounted...15 minutes...30 minutes...an hour. At 10:10, we were told to wait in front of the exam room, where a single piece of graffiti had been written on the door: "le terrible." Not encouraging. Other people keep jumping in line in front of us, then it's finally our turn. We sit. The man behind the desk asks me twice if I speak French, but he doesn’t ask Bobby. Bob gives his info & goes across the room to wait for the oral questions. I look across the desk to see that the employee has already signed his signature stating that Bobby has passed the test.

Another man currently taking his test (as Bobby waits) is getting questions wrong & his examiner is yelling "ZERO!" (Again, not encouraging.) The man behind the desk asks me an incomprehensible question (while yelling at others that there is too much noise in the room). I attempt an answer that does not satisfy him & he tells me to go across the room to identify road signs. But Bob is still waiting, so he orders Bob (who has yet to be asked a single question) out of the room, they ask me a few questions (including, "Which signs do you know?"), tell me I'm done & tell both me & Bobby to go home. Good news: We passed this portion! Bad news: At this point, I'm a bit concerned about the thoroughness of this process...

Bobby's view from the back of the truck during the exam

Fast forward two weeks later. Since I have never driven a manual transmission car, I decide to practice and Bobby goes in for the driving portion of the test. When he arrives, he is discreetly shown a stamped piece of paper, but doesn’t know what it means. He sits down and waits. And waits. And waits. Finally, an employee tells him that he will accompany Bobby to the site where the driving portion will take place. Apparently, the others taking the exam are already there. Bobby drives the employee, who questions how Bobby can be driving without a license (he answers that he has an international license), and they arrive at the testing site. Although Bobby is getting a license to drive a car or a moto, the testing vehicle is a truck…with about 20 people piled into the back. Bob piles in the back, too, and with the examiner in the passenger’s seat in the cab, each examinee jumps out of the bed of the truck to take turns driving…for half a block each! There’s jolting and lurching and finally, as each examinee finishes, he leaves to walk home and the number of men in the back of the truck gets less and less until no one is left in the back except Bobby. It’s his turn. He gets in the driver’s seat and drives the examiner back to the motor vehicles building. He has passed part two!

Time to get his license, right? Wrong. He retrieves his paper with the stamp on it, goes to the office to get the license and finds that the state where he was born in India, the state of Meghalaya, does not exist in the computer system. One’s place of birth must be stated on the license and since his state is not in the system, no license.

But the employee assures him that they will call their main office in Abidjan and have the state of Meghalaya added to their database in order for it to be printed on his license. They will call him next week when the system has been updated.

He receives a call on Monday afternoon: Meghalaya now exists in their system. He has all he needs for his license. He goes to the motor vehicles office and when he arrives, he is asked for a copy of his passport, which he had produced six weeks ago at the start of the saga but he does not have with him now. Another trip back home. He finds his passport and, voila! He finally gets his Ivorian driver’s license…which never expires.

We were thankful to finally have the saga come to a positive conclusion and now we ask you to join us in praying for safety on the road!

UPDATE: Two weeks after Bobby received his license, Jenny took her driving test. She may or may not have attempted to drive with the emergency break on, killed the car twice and heard "Doucement!" (French for "Gently!") from passengers in the backseat, but she passed and also received her license! 

Welcome to Weevil-Land

Sifting through the pasta for weevils

Friday night was my turn to cook. I boiled and de-boned the chicken, added the spices and vegetables and now I was ready to add the packaged noodles to complete our meal of chicken and noodles, one of my comfort-food favorites. Opening the package and dumping in the noodles would be the easiest part of the process…or so I thought. As I opened the box, I saw something small and black moving around: weevils. They had burrowed inside each and every noodle and were eating their way through. I was faced with a dilemma: Do I throw away the whole box? Would I have time to go get another box at the store in order to salvage dinner? 

I sought LeAnn’s advice. She was the one who had taught me how to shop for pasta and be sure they didn’t have weevils by looking through the clear packaging to see if there were any white spots on the noodles. (White spots would indicate that weevils had burrowed inside.) But this particular package of noodles was the only type available at the store the day we went shopping and it was not in clear packaging, so I wasn’t able to check the weevil population before my purchase.

An old anecdote I had heard popped into my head: When a new missionary finds a bug in her cereal, she throws away the whole box. After being on the field for a short time, she picks the bug out and continues eating the cereal. The experienced missionary finds the bugs, mixes it in the cereal and exclaims, “More protein!”

Zooming in on the evil weevils

I wasn’t quite ready to raise my protein level in this manner, so I had to decide between throwing the whole box away or picking out the weevils. Would it be worth it to go through each piece just to pick out the good parts of the pasta? LeAnn suggested we pick out the weevils. So, there we stood, scrutinizing every millimeter of every piece of pasta to see if it had been weevil-ized.

LeAnn mentioned that it reminded her of a Bible verse about searching and sifting in our own lives. In 2 Corinthians 13:5, it says, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves.

Standing at the counter, examining each of tiny bit of pasta to exterminate the unwanted guests took a while. Longer than I’d hoped. Longer than I’d planned. But it made me think: How much time am I spending examining myself to see if there is something unwanted that needs to be sifted out in my life of faith? I’m glad that the Lord finds it worth it to spend time helping me sift through what needs to be exterminated from my life.

As we stood at the counter, two repairmen arrived at the house to work on an appliance. As they entered, I wondered what might be going through their minds as they saw the two of us picking through the pasta.  “We should say, ‘Welcome to Weevil-Land,’” I whispered to LeAnn as they entered.

Cow Dung Slip ‘n Slide (and Some Chicken Calling)

This morning, we visited a church in the village of Kononfla, about 30 minutes from our home in Yamoussoukro. The worship was dynamic and the kids worshipped alongside the adults during the praise time. Then, the kids went outside for Sunday School.

While the other kids sat under a tree outside the church building and learned all about King David, my kid was playing cow dung slip ‘n slide. A small herd of cows were going down the road by the church, and Moore pointed and yelled, “Cows!” as they went by. Well, to be a little more accurate, my one-and-a-half-year-old refuses to say anything just once. So it went more like this: “Cows. Cows. Vaches! Cows. Cows. Cows. Vaches. Cows!”

A little chicken calling after the cow dung slip 'n slide

After the herd passed behind some bushes and he couldn’t see them anymore, he wiggled out of my grasp, running to the road to watch them as they disappeared out of sight. Turning around, he ran down the other way and when I followed him to get him to come back and join the others for the Sunday School lesson  -- SPLAT! He fell straight into a cow patty. Thankfully, one of the Sunday School workers saw us and brought over some water to clean off his hand, which was covered in cow dung, half an inch thick. I stood up after having cleaned his hands, and then  

Moore stumbled backwards – this time landing with his bottom in another cow patty a few feet away!

Welp, I guess it was good I put an extra pair of clothes in his bag before we left. I was thinking I should just in case he had an accident. I hadn’t imagined the “accident” might be the result of cow dung slip ‘n slide. 

After he got cleaned up and the service ended, Bobby joined us outside and Moore was pretty enamored by the chickens. He’s pictured here, squatting and calling some chickens.