The pioneering journey continues!
Since our stay in Dakar God has taken us across the Sahel (grasslands) of the West-Africa all the way to Niamey, the capital of Niger.
As the team was away on their Luke 10 journey and we were only meeting up with them again in Bamako, Detlef and myself decided to go on our own little adventure.
We visited the most western point of Africa, Point des Almadies, after which we explored the Lac Rose (pink lake) region. Lac Rose has a very high salt concentrate and therefore the pink colour of the water. It was here that we met Engal, who invited us to camp in front of his house in the village. He gave us food and water and we had the opportunity to share (in very broken french) the gospel with him and his wife.
After taking out my Arabic Injil (new testament) we eventually came across hardcore Muslims who could translate the Arabic for us into French. It was an initial shock when we were ushered into a small room and discovered the three, very obviously, extremely devoted Muslims. But after the first few moments it was obvious that the atmosphere was relaxed. The Senegalese wrestling match on the television helped to calm things down and we all watched in anticipation as the two heavy-weights tackled each other.
The call if the Imam came as a sudden surprise as they realised time had flown by, so after tearing themselves away from the television, they quickly ran over to the Mosque for their 5 O clock prayer.
On their return I got them as far as reading the whole John 1 in the Arabic and then translating it to me in French as they went along. "Yes, Jesus is the Word," they say. "Yes, he is the Light," and "yes, he became flesh." But, "the Koran is enough and we don't have to read anything else."
With discussions like these I become more and more convinced that the war is not only one of reason, but of spirit. Mere logical reasoning will not convince. Loads of prayer will. But there is place for both.
As I become aware of how entrenched the Muslim culture is around me. I realise the key differences in approach between them and the Christians.
Everywhere they have places of prayer. Everywhere. If there's not a small Mosque, then there's a little cemented area or even a patch of dust sectioned off for prayer.
While the Mosque's are very communal places of gathering and discussing- a place to hang out and discuss the day, life and religion- the churches are mostly impersonal, lifeless, big buildings which are mostly used on Sunday.
Church life can quickly become exclusive, while a Mosque is inclusive. Being a Muslim is a way of life.
What I gather is that we have to take church to the people, rather than trying to get people into the church. We have to adapt to the communal African culture in order to be strategically effective.
The last night at Lac Rose I dreamed that we discovered a broken blue Land Rover next to a grey wall. After dealing with the owner- we bought it, fixed it and drove it to the next country.
As we left Lac Rose for the next town named Koalack, about 200km's away, we talked about trying to hitch-hike from Koalack. We were experiencing a credit crunch of our own and thought it would be a great way to save money.
Koalack turned out to be one crazy city, with thousands of people everywhere, taxi and bus drivers continually trying to haggle with us and convince us to come with them. So we decided to rather move on the next town, 60km's away. That's when Detlef spotted a blue Land Rover next to a grey wall. As we walked over we realised it was broken and waiting repairs at a mechanic shop.
While we were looking at it a World Vision double-cab pulled up and we over-heard that they were on their way to Kaffrine, the next town. After asking, they agreed to give us a lift there and so our hitch-hiking adventure started!
The next day we caught a medicine delivery van to Tambacounda, the day after that a massive 18 wheeler truck to the border, from the border a small truck to Kayes and the following day we got a lift with a French couple in their Land Cruiser for the last 500km stretch to Bamako. It was unbelievable fun.
Meanwhile the team decided to jump on the Dakar- Bamako train at small town just before it crossed the border to Mali. It turned out to be extremely rough, very stretching and very slow. We had to carefully debrief the whole experience in Bamako and they took a few days to recover!
From Bamako we took a bus to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso where we got our Niger visas and then continued to Niamey, Niger. The heat and long travel has taken its toll on the team and they are tired. We hope to rest a bit in Niamey before we take the bus to Zinder.
We are looking forward to Zinder as we will be staying and working there for three weeks.
Please pray for our time there that we will be effective in ministry.
Greetings,
Willem