medical outreach pics

Here are some pictures from the outreaches. The bottom one is of the students testing urine samples (obviously the best job) the second is of some of the kids in line with me, and the top one is one of the doctors doing a check up on one of the students.

Medical Outreaches and more...

I have had the great opportunity last week to help out with an ongoing medical ministry that is happening on the outskirts of Ouaga. A Belgian doctor here goes to schools on the outer parts of town and gives the students medical check ups. He also partners with the school where I do a great deal of my ministry so my students have over the past few months been able to help out with this. I finally had some time to get to one of these and I have to say I was very excited about what I saw. Now mind you that elementary age students who don't even speak french are not my cup o' tea per se nevertheless it was fun for me to measure height, weight, and administer vision tests to the students. After they have those checked out a series of doctors give them a more thorough examination and the kids are able to get basic antibiotics, ointments, and eye glasses for next to nothing if needed. In one week this doctoer will see up to 400 kids. Helping these kids with medical issues is a huge step towards them being able to become better students. If they can't read the chalk board many (as you can imagine) stop paying attention to class and become bored. Not only that, but these outreaches are meeting basic needs of the community and are doing so in the name of Christ. One of the school that we went to last week was an Arabic Islamic school where kids go specifically to learn and read the Koran. I believe wholly that these types of outreaches take large steps to peoples of other faiths in showing them the love of Christ.

As for the more part. For the past 3 years the youth group has raised funds for a food distribution here in Ouaga. Well, we are gearing up for another year hopefully that will challenge the youth group to give and ask others to partner with them and also meet a need here in the community. We will be partnering with friends of ours who do a ministry that puts kids in school teaches them vocational skills and gives food to their families. They also do work with justice issues where parents are physically abusing the students and property issues with women (a major issue throughout Africa). I am excited to see what our students will do with the challenge given them and I pray that as a leader I can help inspire them and show them what it means to be a generous giver to those less fortunate.

My internet is being slow so I'll try to post pictures from the medical outreach tomorrow, until then enjoy your Sunday rest.

As Time Goes By

It is February now and it seems that the days continue to fly by. Part of that is because I have stayed fairly busy doing several different jobs and tasks lately. The bulk of my time right now is being spent on preparing lessons for the Thursday night youth group though. We have started a series that deals somewhat with apologetics and how to share our faith with friends. This has proved to be a gi-normous task on my part. I am spending a good deal of time reading and formulating my lessons, but thus far I have been very happy with the way it is going. My end goal is to teach them how to think about their faith in a more mature way and give them more confidence in sharing that faith. Some of the topics are quite deep and I do at times find it challenging to make these ideas accessible to both Jr. High and Sr. students, but I am learning from this process as well.
Earlier in January I also got to give a talk for a bi-monthly Saturday service we do. We are doing the 7 deadly sins so I got to talk about lust. Trust me, this is no easy topic to discuss in a relevant and truthful manner in a group that consists of students and parents and men and women. That was another challenging message but I got positive feedback and I think I handled it as well as I could.
Life here seems to be going along just as normal in a lot of ways. I have a weekly routine that includes teaching a few students weightlifting, weekly Bible studies, and some softball on the weekends. We actually have a tournament coming up just like the one that I traveled to back in October. I am looking forward to that again and having fun competing in a tournament.
Finally, a brief weather report. My outside thermostat states right now that it is about 100 degrees in the shade. The nights are not as cool as they were a few weeks ago, and so I pretty sure that our "cool season" is officially ending. That means I can only look forward to much much more sweating!
Until next time keep on truckin'.

Some Christmas pictures and stories

So my brother Adam actually came out to visit me here in Burkina for Christmas and New Years. It was kind of weird having someone from the "back home" world come into my "Africa" world, but to quote the great George Costanza from Seinfeld, "WORLD'S are COLLIDING!!!" It was fun to have him there and with the limited time he had I felt like I was able to show him a fair bit of life here in Africa. No elephants or village trips per se, but we did sit on crocodiles and for part of my Santa candy give-a-way he and I and my other friend Joel went to the local kids hospital on the night of Christmas. Me as Santa we gave out candy to probably about 30-40 patients a few of the doctors and many of the parents staying with the kids. To be honest it was very hard for me to see so many of the kids with malaria or severe burns or even AIDS. I did my best to smile and try to give them a little joy and hope. Whether or not I was successful, I'm not sure but I pray that God's love was shown if only through a few pieces of unexpected candy and a smile from a crazy white guy in a red suit.

If you'd like to check out a few videos look here

So the same missionary friend of mine who I did the Give-a-Kid-a-Christmas has posted some of the videos on a site called "vimeo". This is a link to one video that he and I did for the youth group, and you can also find other videos there about the outreach.

http://www.vimeo.com/2537648

Merry Christmas

Picture from Give a Kid a Christmas and more

This is a picture of my new roommate Tyler and I at a local Christmas party.  We keep it real.
This is a picture from my perspective as we got the truck towed back to the local town during the give a kid a Christmas.  My other passengers road in the back of the other truck while I steered mine.
This is a photo of my old roommate Reid and I at the airport.  He unfortunately had to leave unexpectedly for family issues.  He was a good friend to me here in Burkina.
This is a photo of some kids at one of the outreaches opening up their Christmas gift.  I did my best to capture some of their joy as they opened their backpacks.
This is a photo of some of the kids watching the drama's we put on during the children's outreach at a local school in Ouaga.

Give-a-Kid-a-Christmas!

It's Christmas Time! First let me say merry Christmas to all of you. For those of you who received my quarterly update you might remember that I mentioned a few short stories about Give-a-Kid-a-Christmas. Well I am here to elaborate on that project a little more and share some of the craziness that was my life for 3 weeks or so.

It began in the middle of November with an overnight trip to a town called Dori. That was where we were originally going to do this outreach. Before I go further let me explain the background. A missionary here in Burkina with another organization does a kids outreach each Christmas year which joins together the gospel with a social aspect to development. A team of Burkinabe do skit about brushing your teeth, washing, not eating old food ect. This is done at the schools. Then a gift of a backpack with pens paper, a few pieces of candy and the like are given. After that or maybe the next day we do a gospel skit. Showing and acting the story of creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So back to the story at hand, we went to Dori but it turned out Samaritan's Purse is going there in April so we didn't want to do it there. So after some prayer and consideration we chose Piela. Now I'd been to Piela a few times before but none of my trips were like this. First off we went to Piela just to meet with the pastors to see if it was o.k. to do it there. We got the go ahead and began making plans and packing 3,000 gifts! The next week we did the same program at schools here in Ouaga. Then the first week of December it was the big show, Piela. 1,800 kids 6 or 7 school's 4 days ya. Well it started Tuesday but I got the pleasure of Driving 600 gifts in a truck on Monday and then turning around and coming back the same day. It's about 4 hours each way.
Tuesday comes I get up bright and early at like 5:30 or some unhuman hour of the morning, get ready and head over to HQ. Well due to complications and set backs (not unfamiliar to Burkina) we left at about noon. So I'm lead truck heading the 2 truck and 1 mini van convoy to Piela. But when my truck reached the half way point I realized I'd lost the convoy and they were seriously slow. Then I found that my phone had rang several times. I called back only to find out the mini van went down for the count about an hour earlier. A piece inside the back right wheel broke, the wheel smoked up and caught fire! So about 8 or 9 of our team was stuck. I waited in a town about at the half way point for the other truck. We waited, the truck came and off we went to drop the gifts and equipment off at which point we'd come back for the van.

The other truck took lead and we headed out, about 10 miles outside of this town guess what? Yup, my truck went M.I.A. on me! Not only did it die but it wouldn't even turn over at all, we tried push starting it several times... nothing. I thought at this point I was going to have to jog the 10 miles back to town to get help to tow it. We couldn't stay there in the middle of nowhere that night, because that area is known as bandit country plus there were 2 girls with us and I didn't feel comfortable with having them be stranded. Well, a blue truck did pull up to help us. At first we thought it was the other team members, but nope, it was 4 rather dirty somewhat shady characters getting out of their truck. At which point I went on high alert. They did end up helping us and towed us back to town, but at one point one of the guys was taking a real long look at what was in out truck and I thought we were going to get robbed. So, 2 out of 3 are now down and out. We can't get a hold of the driver of the blue truck so the passengers in my car and I sat in front of a shop next to the mechanics shop for 5 hours with nothing to do.

The blue truck came back went and picked up the van people and came back to where we were around 11:30 PM or so. At that point we decided the girls and some of the needed equipment would head up that night, I and about 5 guys would sleep in the town on the street next to the truck that night because of the valuable equipment in it. So I have now experienced homelessness and sleeping on the streets. After a great night of sleep we got up the next day. The blue truck picked us up at about 12 to head up. We left the truck and arranged for a mechanic from Ouaga to drive up and tow it back to Ouaga to work on it. So we get up to Piela and do a couple of the social dramas. They actually go over pretty well and after an exhausting day we get to go to bed. However at this point I start feeling downright awful. I've got some kind of headache and I woke up in the middle of the night so thirsty I was about to drink my own sweat. I found some water but didn't sleep well. I didn't get tested but I'm pretty sure I had malaria at that point (I took some medicine when I got back to Ouaga). So after another sleepless night we had about 5 schools to do the social dramas at. That night we set up and did the gospel dramas. Wouldn't you know it, just as we got the crowds attention, did a few minor skits we got everything ready for the actual drama and... boom! The speakers blew out because the generator surged! Now the actors act and one of our other team members have to yell out to explain what's going on.

Despite all that almost 200 kids came forward to find out more about Jesus afterwards. Which was great. We got back to basecamp I ate some food and tried to go to bed early. I slept slightly better that night, and got up by 6 or so to catch the bus back to Ouaga at 7. Most of us caught the bus and a few stayed behind in the blue truck to do one more outreach. On bus ride back I got a text saying... the blue truck was broken! 3 for 3 we batted that trip. Eventually the blue truck got back the next day. Nevertheless I can honestly say I've never had a trip go that way with that many things go awry. It was an adventure to say the least. Discussing with a few of the guys afterwards we all agreed that some spiritual warfare had to have been present in a situation like that.

I know this post was pretty long, thanks for sticking around to the end. I'll get some pictures up in the next couple of days so stay tuned.