Burkina Faso 2016

May 31st, 2016 9am

The Ministry Team Offices, Burkina Faso

We started out the morning with a wonderful team (Burkina Faso and Amercian) devotional.  Is was awesome singing worship songs with this group.  We sang familiar songs, but in a different language.  It was a fun experience.  While sitting down to do our devotional, we had a wonder crepe breakfast.  DELICIOUS!  We had another day full of activities so we had to make sure to fuel up.  And the crepes were just the thing to do it.

Breakfast with the team

11:00am

After a wonderful morning of breakfast, devotionals, and worship, the team prepared quite a few “Widow Sacks.”  What’s a “Widow Sack” you ask?  Well, they’re exactly what they sound like.  Bags made for widows with all kinds of supplies to help them.  They had fabric, supplies, food, and all kinds of other things.  In the African culture, if a woman’s husband dies, there’s no one else to take care of them.  Much like in Biblical times.  And, as we read in James, pure and faultless religion is taking care of the widows and orphans.  And that is very much at the heart of Streams in Burkina Faso.  With the widow sacks prepared and lunch eaten, it was time to hit the road.

1:00pm

On the road, again…Africa Style. Once the widow sacks were loaded up, we took off to the village of Doumole.  Once there, we met with the village church and they celebrated our arrival.  I love the African church.  LOTS of singing and dancing.  After the celebrations, we took a tour of the village.  Beautiful.  Even though, water is scarce and it’s in the middle of Africa, the land was a beautiful reminder that God’s creation is amazing.  During the tour, I think just about every child in the village came to join us on our trek.  While there, we saw their well.  It wasn’t one like we installed in Tankiedougou, but an open water well with a bucket and a rope.  We learned that Doumole was also one of the applicants to receive the well we raised money for.  But, since Tankiedougou’s well was in much worse shape, they received the well.  We discussed with the Streams team what it would take to make Doumole’s well better and cleaner and were given the specifics.  Later that night we talked about how we could help the village of Doumole with future Well Done Run proceeds.

One of the things that stood out to me (literally), was this huge baobab tree in the middle of the village.  At one point, we had everyone stand around it holding hands.

Baobab Tree

After our tour, the Streams team setup an outdoor showing of the Jesus Film.  By the end of the night, they had showed it 3 times!  While the village was watching the Jesus film, we were invited back to the village pastor’s home for dinner.  We were very honored to have a meal with his family.  They even setup a make shift shower so those that wanted to bathe before our “sleep over.”  Not entirely sure what the meal was that we ate, but the hospitality was second to none.  A lot of us felt bad, because we didn’t want to be served.  We wanted to serve them!  The whole reason we raised money and came to Africa was to be servants.  But, the Streams team assured us that by us allowing them to serve us a meal, it was a great honor for them.  After the mean we went back down to setup our hammock for a night beneath the African sky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYUhetPNC1M