The boy kills his mother's goat....

Ha ha! So I had to share this with you guys cause it's great. Our pastor friend here in Ouagadougou, Daniel Delma, is awesome. Today, Jason & I were explaining to him that we were kind of amazed that they are asking us to preach everywhere we go. We told him that we definitely don't consider ourselves true Bible teachers and this is what he told us: "Here in Burkina we have a saying: The boy kills his mother's goat so he can learn to sell the meat." I said that's awesome, what does that mean? :) And he explained that the standard practice is that you buy a goat, cut it up a special way, then sell it, but it's good for your first time that you use your mom's goat to practice on (you know, learn how to cut it up right so you can get the most profit :), then once you've got it down, you can go out & buy yor own goat! Great stuff. Basically, he was saying it's great to practice teaching the Bible in other people's churches (like yer mom's, no just joking) & that you don't have to have your own church to teach.
Daniel also shared this little golden nugget of an example. You see, here in Burkina, the staple food is this dish called Sagabo (which is this food made out of corn maize or millet or sorgum & it basically has the consistency of uncooked premade biscuits that you pop out of the container, but it's white & you put this oily kinda sauce stuff on it, mm mm, not really :(). So this is what Daniel said: "Even though the wife makes the best sagabo, sometimes you have to let the daughters cook too, so little by little their sagabo will get better." So basically for us that meant that even though there will always be better Bible teachers around, it's good for us to practice because we never know what God may ask us to do or where He may send us! That's wisdom, I love the African sayings, Daniel's full of em! :)
So I used both those sayings in my teaching tonight as I shared what God put on my heart today to a church here in Ouagadougou. I talked about how humbling it's been so far being treated like royalty, I shared the story of Jesus washing his disciples feet in perfect humility. I talked about how teaching scares me, but complete dependence on the Lord makes your faith muscles strong, how all things are possible through Jesus Christ (Phil. 4:13), how God uses the weak things to put to shame the wisdom of this world (yes, I love that verse Jo Dee!) & how complete dependence gives God all the glory (thanks Christina for being such an awesome picture of that!), and I talked about how in America we often don't depend on God like we should because we're so blessed that we don't involve God in the things we consider small, like food in our mouths or a roof over our head. We are blessed not because of who we are, but rather IN SPITE of who we are, that's God's grace!
Can't wait for tomorrow's adventures, but I miss you all very much! Thank you SO much for your prayers! Baraka Wennam (Praise God)!!
Love,
Ryan