One of my biggest frustrations this month has been what felt like a lack of time. We would go to a church or village with absolutely amazing people and then be ushered away later that afternoon. Until last week the longest we had stayed in one place had been two days. This was definitely not what my expectation of the race had been. I expected to stay in one place, with one ministry, with the same group of people. I was excited for the opportunity to really invest in the people that we were getting to live life with, and I was disappointed that this wasn’t happening the way that I thought it would.
Thankfully the Lord always shows up.
On our last full week of ministry we were taken to the village of Dabou. We got to spend four days there. I know you are reading this thinking that four days is nothing, and in the grand scheme of things it isn’t, but to us it felt like a lifetime. We arrived the first day and met two young men and an adorably sassy little girl. Here’s the catch, they wouldn’t even talk to us, and the little one, Miss Sassafrass, wouldn’t even come near us, but something amazing happened in the next three days.
Little by little, the people of Dabou started to open up to us. They went from saying nothing to dramatically playing charades with us to try and communicate. We worked alongside each other restoring an old hen house that was being turned into a two-room dormitory. We built a wall, painted, and replaced the roof. I say we did all that, but really we would do something, the locals would laugh at us, and then they would take our shovel, paintbrush, hammer, etc. away and do it themselves. It was definitely a week of building, but not just the house. We also built amazing relationships.
Normally, I have the role of teacher, but this week I became a French student. I was led by the hand and taught every word that was within our sightline: seeds, papaya, mango, coconut, dog, cat, bottle, wheelbarrow, chair, bench, table, and so many others. I can say all of these words in French, but spelling them is another matter, so you’ll have to give me the benefit of the doubt. I never thought I would grow so close to a community of people that speak no English. We got to eat meals together, shovel chicken poop together, paint, and even learn each other’s languages.
AIM talks about making disciples in every country that we go to. I didn’t get to have a lot of deep conversations with the young men of this village, but I hope that my willingness to look silly while trying to pronounce all these French words helped them to see a piece of God’s love for them. The Lord loves to be silly with his kids. I hope that they know they have a heavenly father who would be just as excited as I was to be taken by the hand and taught that the French word for dog is chien.
Leaving Dabou was the hardest goodbye I have had to say this month. I ugly cried, for sure. It was hard to leave a place that had so quickly stolen my heart and not know if I would ever be back. As we drove away from Dabou I found myself fiercely praying that the Lord would bless those amazing people. He quickly gave me an answer.
“I already have.”
