Two Different Worlds

SUNDAY NIGHT, OCT 16th

Talk about two different worlds. Sunday is a work day for me, never a day of rest. I was down the road a bit in the village of Kaiteme for worship this morning. I walked back home in the scorching heat. Took a brief nap (poor Kelly gets “day care” with the kids all day pretty much), then I was off again by 4pm. I stopped by one village to pick up a some of the Christians in another village nearby. We were heading to a village called Gbotayidohoue (just call it “Bow-Tie” for short). Our evangelism team has been working in “Bow-Tie” for several months. We are just about ready to launch a new church plant there. It’s a typical rural African village. We were meeting under an open-air meeting place of palm branches laid on top of 5”diameter sticks. Nothing fancy and certainly no A/C (by the way, the A/C is out in our truck, too!) The red dirt floor turned to mud from the rains we’ve had the past couple of days. Some of the team preached a little, others prayed, and we called for a list of those who wanted to follow Christ and be baptized. (Note: Although I believe we have and are teaching a high view of baptism, since water is 15+miles away, we “schedule” baptisms, often it seems as if we do them about every three months or so; we rarely do any on-the-spot-Ethiopian-eunuch-style baptisms.) Anyway, that’ll come in about 2 weeks. After we were done, we headed back just as it started to rain again. The dirt paths around this area were washing away right in front of us, so the one-lane truck path converted to a narrow motorcycle path quickly. Thankfully, with four-wheel drive, we made it through by using the water-filled ditches for traction. Definitely some off-roadin’ going on! After dropping off the guys in their village (where there is no electrical power), I came down the road closer to our house where we do have power…normally. Whenever a storm approaches, the electric company shuts off the power all over town until the storm passes. Needless to say, we love storms (the smell of rain is great wherever you are and the cooler temps are nice), but we dread them in the evening when the power goes out…get out the candles!! Kelly’s gone through just about every candle we brought back from America last time (we are at the end of rainy season). Fortunately, just as I was pulling up, the power was restored! Don’t know what context your kids learned the phrase, “Hallelujah!”, but for ours it was not in church…it has been when the power comes back on!

I’ll confess something to you. I am “suffering” from a bad head cold (so is Jonathan and so is Lael). No, that’s not the confession. With my head throbbing and finding it virtually impossible to breathe, it’s a little hard for me to concentrate on speaking the Aja language, and even harder to understand it when others are talking really fast. So during the evangelism meeting, my mind tuned out for a while to nothing but English. What came to my mind? The Cowboys’ game vs. the Giants! It was going on at the same time I was sitting in this hot and dirty African village…I was imagining myself sitting alongside my brother, DV, watching the game at his house, or better yet, sitting in the stands eating nachos and drinking a Diet Coke (or is it Pepsi products at Texas Stadium?) I’d snap back to reality from time to time, but I will tell you, that as soon as I walked in the door, I went to our computer.

After several days of frustrating phone connections (or lack thereof), I was able to get connected to the internet right away. I went to my FoxSports website to catch the scores and saw the Cowboys were up by 4 points in the 4th quarter. The site refreshes itself after each play, so I could keep up…but then the game just got too exciting. So I did a Google search and found LIVE streaming audio of the Cowboys’ game (with Brad and Babe!) broadcasting from KHOY.org…a Spanish-speaking Catholic radio station out of Laredo (TX)…it was such a clear connection (got knocked off a couple of times, but got right back on…no that’s internet talk, not talking about riding horses). I got to listen to the rest of the game, even as it went into OT! Great game Cowboys…first place in the NFC East!!! When I am in America, I prefer listening to the Dallas Cowboys Radio Network (with Brad Sham and Babe Laufenberg) over listening to the TV commentators…so it was like old times!

I dragged Kelly to sit with me and listen to the last part of the game (actually she got into it…it was just that it was almost 9pm here and she deserved a night’s sleep after a day with all the kids by herself…thanks SBG for watching it with me!) When it was over, I called Donny and we talked about the game and about ACU Homecoming Weekend. When I got off the phone, Kelly and I were talking about how amazing it is that we can be in such different frames of mind at various times in our living here in Benin…sometimes, we are 100% in the Africa thing…and other times our minds think about home, we get to connect with friends and family in America on a blog or on the phone, or even get to listen to America’s Team win a game on a Sunday afternoon (night here)!

-Randy