Precious in the Sight of the Lord . . .

It’s been almost a week since a post…time really does fly.

Last weekend was very full…a variety of ministry opportunities. Friday night (here’s the way I spent my 10th anniversary) I went out about 2p and made an errand run on our way to Ainahoue (yee-nah-way). We arrived there a little after 3p and saw Mathias, the church leader in that congregation. He was not feeling well, but he managed to get around and collect some oranges for us to eat while we waited. (By the way, our oranges are not orange, they are green. The info you can get here, wow!) My colleagues who accompanied me (Senou and Ferdinand, both from the Kaiteme congregation) piled in the back while Mathias rode in the front on our way to the home of widow. Her husband had been an active church leader many years earlier in an area where some of my former American colleagues worked. Once we focused our concentration on a certain region, my contact with Patrice (pa-trees) was limited, although I heard he was still active in sharing his faith with the few churches in his area. We don’t know the full story, but after battling some “stomach pain” (his family’s description), Patrice died on September 30th. Mathias had worked a lot with Patrice, but because of some typical Aja communication challenges, even he did not hear of Patrice’s death until late-October. So we finally got to make a time to visit his wife. Apparently, I also learned that within a few days of the father’s passing, Patrice’s baby also died (not sure if it was a boy or girl). Strange and very sad…still there are four other children, two school-aged and the other two very young. We sat with her and Patrice’s mother and father for a long time expressing our condolences. His father served us all large sweet cola drinks (called “Youki”…like you-kee...this is the one they bottle locally so you’re always guaranteed something “extra” floating around in there!) We then went and visited the burial site, a corner of his father’s cornfield with a cement slab over it with a crude stick sketching of:
GUEZO Patrice
30 September 2005

Only a few of the readers of this blog know this man (and I’m sorry you had to find out this way). It was humbling and weighty to be the last in line of 3 other Christian brothers, crunching our sandals on the dried up corn stalks on the way to a man’s grave, a man only a handful of people on earth even know. That’s why the Lord calls it precious when one of His passes from this earth to be with Him…because in heaven, our names are etched in the Book of Life with the indelible writing of God himself. Very precious.

After sharing with Patrice’s family our condolence gifts of rice, beans, oil, oranges, money and potatoes, we returned to Mathias’ house (about 30 minutes away). Once dark hit, we began the next-to-the-last lesson in the John series that I’ve been doing with them for a couple of months. I was thrilled to see a larger crowd than ever, including some non-believers from a nearby village called Missebo (mee-say-bo). Excited because in my previous studies with other congregations, this is one of the more memorable ones...why?...because it the lesson where myself and my other co-teachers wash the feet of those who come to hear God’s Word. As the lesson encounters the final days of the life of Christ, we speak a lot about Christ’s desire for his disciples to love one another and demonstrate humility. In this village, myself and Senou were involved alongside some of my former American missionary friends in planting this church back in 2000…so we are treated with a great deal of respect here. When I pull out the basin and the towels, you could hear the whispers and I inspected their reactions closely. Most were visibly uncomfortable with what we were doing. A lot of ticklish people giggled (my favorite is to watch the crodgy ol’ timers bust out with a grin). Then there is always the one “Peter” in the bunch (remember when Peter first responded, “Lord, you’ll never wash my feet”). I observed Mathias’ behavior from the beginning. He immediately stood up and started helping us (we told him to sit down). He then got up again to go check on something at his house (25 feet away). When he came back, he stood at the entrance of the thatch church building…the entrance on the other side where we had already washed everyone’s feet. Obvious avoidance going on. Finally, when asked if we had washed everyone’s feet (knowing the answer), the entire group said, “No, not Mathias.” While this demonstration is often a time of laughter (ticklish or just immature participants), Mathias was visibly uncomfortable and took very seriously the lesson on humility (not an arrogant man to start with). I pray that more than they’ll remember a foot-washing by a foreigner with white skin, that the disciples at Ainahoue will model Christ’s humble love for all of us. At the end of the meeting (9p), Mathias and his co-hort, Janvier (john-vee-ay) asked me to visit some with the Missebo visitors. They would like M&J to begin evangelizing in their village. So they have invited myself and Senou to return tomorrow to Missebo (prior to our final lesson later in the evening just down the road at Ainahoue) to greet some of the older men in their village, a practice customary in evangelizing a new village. Oh how I would love to see a group of disciples take root at Missebo and be the beginnings of a good cluster of churches around Ainahoue! After taking everyone home, I got home a little after 10p.

Saturday evening, I joined another group of Aja believers (including a hard-working Senou again…his name is pronounced like “see-new”) in the village of Aflantan (ah-flah-tahn). They had spent the day praying and fasting and asked me to come at the end of their day to encourage them and pray for them (oops, I forgot they said they were going to be fasting…I ate before I went!) After the prayer time and a break-fast of beans and oil, I stayed on while they continued their own efforts in advancing the Kingdom (they hard been praying since 8a!) by showing the Jesus Film in an open-air format. I would say about 150 people; many of them were young people hearing about Christ for the first time. I’m not sure of any immediate responses, but I’m convinced that good seeds have been planted. I gathered with the believers on Sunday morning and we talked a lot about nurturing those seeds, how to lead people to Christ, and on doing good deeds among the pagans around them. On Saturday night, it was another late night…I offered to take home many of the believers who had either walked or rode their bikes…since it was after 10p, they strapped on 4 bicycles on top of my truck and I drove to 3 different villages and dropped folks off at home. Finally about 11:30p, I pulled into our house. I don’t always work that late, but last weekend, it was the norm!

We’ve been in Cotonou a lot this week…this is the capital city where we come for shopping, vehicle maintenance, etc…we’ve done a little Christmas shopping which has been a lot of fun (especially for Tori, who got to take some of her allowance and spend on gifts for some of her neighborhood friends…supplemented by Daddy of course). We also had another visit with the attorney who will be advocating our adoption case before the Tribunal sometime early next year. We still need to get Lael’s official birth certificate and then get our marriage license and birth certificates translated in French. Once all that is completed, we will ask the attorney to request a hearing. Please continue to pray for us as we walk this adoption journey with our cute little Lael!

This week, we are especially mindful of our families. First, Kelly’s brother, Andy, is graduating from Abilene Christian University (we’re proud of you Andy!!) All the family will be together over the weekend and we are aware that we are not. Also, on my side, this weekend is our 14th Annual Vaughn Family Christmas weekend (I think I counted right). Whenever we are here in Benin during the holidays, my role is to telephone in while everyone locally listens in on speaker phone to my reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. We do that game where on “and” you pass whatever wrapped gift is in your hand to the left, and when you hear the word “the” you pass it to the right. That’s been one of my roles to play since we can’t be there…oh, I wish we could! Donny and I swap turns in designing the “official VFC invitation”...used to get it sent out in time to everyone, now we just print off one copy for the VFC scrapbook (full of pictures and invitations from previous years). I’ll try get the invitation posted over the next couple of days. UPDATE: SEE INVITATION BELOW

We’ll try and post some more pictures of the kids and shorter postings over the next week…sorry so long today!

-Randy