Bursting Hearts and Tired Legs

Friday, July 6 was an emotional roller coaster ride to say the least.  Our first mission was to distribute grain to about 300 families from the villages surrounding the school complex here.  Between 9 and 11 am we distributed almost 9 tons of grain to the poorest of the poor in this area.  We poured out the grain in a big pile in a classroom maybe a bit larger than one of the big classrooms at FAC.  The people lined up with their pre-distributed tickets, and each family representative got a 50-lb sack of very dusty corn, enough to feed a good-sized family for about 3 weeks.  It was a joy and a blessing for us to distribute the grain, which was paid for with YOUR gifts to Grain of Hope a few months ago!

The hard part came when the tickets ran out and the people began pressing in on the little classroom building for what was left over.  Now handing out smaller portions, we were trying to get the corn to the poorest, oldest and weakest people of the villages, so we had to bar the doors and let them in one-by-one while the crowd tried to force its way in, holding out empty sacks that would never be filled.  As one of the ones assigned to hold back the crowd, I can say that this job was no fun at all, not because of any real physical danger, but because I was the one keeping hungry people from the corn.

Eventually the last bag of corn was given out, and we walked slowly back to our house, shell-shocked and physically and emotionally drained.  I can guarantee you'll be hearing a lot more about the events of Friday morning when the team returns from Burkina!

It was kind of ironic, then, that we spent much of the afternoon spending money to buy things we didn't need.  Pete had arranged for several vendors to come by the house, and we went souvenir shopping in the comfort of our own dining room!  While it may have felt weird spending all this money after the events of the morning, we were also able to be a real blessing to the merchants who visited.  One of them said he did more business with us in one afternoon than he had in any two of the previous months of 2012!  (From the sheer size of their haul, we think the Barber family alone added 2% to the GDP of Burkina Faso :-)

Still at the brink of exhaustion, we ate dinner very late and then went out onto the school campus for a night of traditional African dance (all to Christian music).  This is basically like really happy step aerobics on steroids.  And by the way, the Africans have not yet learned the term "slow dance."  It's a ton of fun; at the same time, it's very challenging for us rhythm-deficient Americans.  We danced with the African youth group as long as we could (until about 11pm) and retired to our house to enjoy about a 4-hour power outage (after dark, "power" = "air conditioning in your bedroom").  Fortunately, the generator kicked in so we could at least run the fans, albeit with no A/C.  The scary thing is, at about ten after three when the power finally came back on and we got up to close the windows, the dance was still going in high gear.  We have no idea how this is possible, but we are not joking.  As far as we can tell, the Africans danced until about 4am.

This morning, we got a well-deserved break to sleep in until about 9:00.  Then we drove around the city running errands and visiting the youth center that was Pete's vision back in 1998, and which gifts from First Alliance were instrumental in building (some of you may remember this -- it was a little before my time!).


In about 45 minutes (4:00pm our time), we are going to walk through the villages with some of the church members here inviting them to an evangelistic message and movie, which will probably take place on the soccer field here at the school.  Please pray, as I will be sharing one of the messages, and as we have a very direct opportunity to lead many Burkinabe to the Lord Jesus.


We hope to check in again on Sunday!


Love, in Christ Jesus,


Pastor Paul for everybody