Remember Y2K?  The only thing I remember from those days is a story I told in a Y2K sermon at Foundation Church from 1000 years earlier about believers who gathered from all over Europe on the eastern shore of Spain to wait for the second coming.  The route they walked there became a pilgrimage known as "The Way," or the "Way of St. James," or The Camino de Santiago, as tradition holds the saint's remains are buried there. 

Since telling that story in 1999, I've longed to make this pilgrimage myself.  I had a couple close calls: my daughter Grace and I were going to join it in 2011, but she became an intern for Asian Access.  Last October, Grace and her husband Ryosuke and I had plans, but my mother-in-law fell sick, and they left Japan to care for her.  It was a good choice.

So in the weeks between getting my grades in and graduation, I'm joining The Camino.  It is a 500-mile trek with everything you need on your back.  For me, that is about 17 lbs.  As I age, I realize that this body may not always be able to traverse The Way, so today I leave to join it, and on Wednesday, join up with The Camino.

If you pray, here is a blessing I could use:

PILGRIM'S BLESSING (circa 1864)

Lord, you who called your servant Abraham out of the town of Ur in Chaldea and watched over him during all his wanderings; You who guided the Jewish people through the desert; We pray for you to watch your servants, who for the love of your name make a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Be for them:

a companion on their journey

the guide of their intersections

the strengthening during fatigue

the fortress in danger

the resource on their itinerary

the shadow of their heat

the light of their darkness

the consolation during dejection

and the power of their intention

so that those under your guidance, safely and unhurt, may reach the end of their journey,

and strengthened with gratitude and power, secure and filled with happiness,

may follow them home, for Jesus Christ, Our Lord, Amen.

Pilgrim’s Prayer, The Priest’s Prayer Book, 1864[1]

---

[1] Wittig, Stacey. Spiritual and Walking Guide: Leon to Santiago on El Camino (Spiritual and Walking Guides Book 1) (Kindle Locations 1089-1101). Spiritual and Walking Guides. Kindle Edition.

Helping to Celebrate Eid al-Adaha

“it’s like a Muslim Thanksgiving and Christmas all wrapped up into one…”,

Writes our friend Mary Grace writes in her Eid al-Adha blog “How many sheep did you have? A food approach to holy days.”  She writes of the “gathering of families, traditions of ritual food, and closing of most businesses for the specific days at minimum and possibly for the full week.” [1]  That was our experience back in 2011 when we were introduced to the holiday by an exchange student we hosted from Pakistan for a year. 

Eid al-Adaha, or simply Eid, celebrates the obedience of Abraham when God commanded him to sacrifice his greatest possession, his son.  Muslims believe it was Ishmael; Christians, Isaac, but either way, it is a holiday to remember Abraham’s obedience, and how God provided a substitute, a ram[2].

Rituals adapt to their context, and being so far and few from home, our Ashesi Muslim students come together from their different traditions to create a truly multicultural event.  That is what we saw with our Pakistani exchange students years ago when they served up a chicken Biryani, and we all danced to Pakistani folk music. Last year for Eid, I “helped” the Gambian boys sacrifice a goat in the garden outside our back door. This year we helped in a different way, it was fried chicken and fried Irish potatoes.   

Eid-2015 Pictures (photo credit: Francis Wachira)

According to tradition, the “meat from the sacrificed animal is divided into three parts. The family retains one third of the share; another third is given to relatives, friends and neighbors; and the remaining third is given to the poor and needy.”[3] I am not sure where our students draw the line between family and friends, or even the needy but what I do know is they make a tradition of inviting Christian students to join them. 

Inviting Christians seems to be part of an unwritten tradition of Eid, or at least a part of the tradition I have experienced.  In the early days of the faith, when Arab pagans were persecuting the Prophet Muhammad’s followers, Ethiopia's King Armah (a Christian) gave them audience to the family of the Prophet in his palace[4] , and welcomed them saying  "go, for you are safe in my country."[5] Muslims I know have never forgotten that kindness, and are eager to repay that debt to me.

The night before Eid, I FB messaged one of our Gambian students asking if they would be using my garden for the sacrifice, and learned had nothing planned and they had no funds, so I said come over after prayers and we would figure something out.  For Americans, it would be like not having a turkey at Thanksgiving and no family to spend it with.

[Atomic Down Goat Market (photo credit: Steve Buchele)]

So late in the afternoon, we drove to the goat market, but the selection was pretty much picked over.  All the goats were literally walking skin and bones which would not have been much of a celebration.  Kind of like a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, but with goats; and the goats were sad.  So I asked about chickens, since the idea is to sacrifice something and next to the goat market was the live chicken cage.   Chickens would be acceptable, but since we’re getting chicken, my student asked, could we get the frozen ones, since it was late in the afternoon (he was thinking the frozen birds from Brazil).

So off we go to the proper supermarket (of which there are 13 in the whole of Accra, a city of 3 million). They had fresh chickens  at the meat counter that were plump and local, and since it would take hours to defrost the frozen birds, he asked if he could get the fresh instead?  It was starting to feel like if you give a mouse a cookie story[6], and I half expected him to then ask, “if we’re getting fresh chicken, could we not stop at KFC for the already cooked ones?”  But he didn’t. 

We were back on campus by 5, and by 9pm I was getting texts of fried chicken and fried potatoes, thanking us for the celebration.

This was great Rev. Steve, we all had nice time together and with few other folks...you made it Rev. Steve! We truly do appreciate you...Thank you very much! Allah bless you

I learned this from my sister Beth, that even when you can’t solve someone’s problems, you can lend them $100, and sometimes, that will make all the difference. I was thankful Suzanne and I were in a position to do something because everybody needs a home at Thanksgiving, even if they call it Eid.

Thanks for reading.

PS: For a different perspective on Eid, I really encourage you to read Mary Grace Neville’s beautifully written “How many sheep did you have? A food approach to holy days.” on her blog about teaching in Morocco. 

[1] 2016 https://learninginmorocco.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/how-many-sheep-did-you-have-a-food-approach-to-holy-days/

[2] Genesis 22/Quran Surah 37:103 [link]

[3] 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha

[4] 2008, http://nazret.com/blog/index.php/2008/06/24/ethiopia_the_king_who_granted_asylum_to_

[5] 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migration_to_Abyssinia

[6] One of my kids favorite books, here is a video if you have never read it.

New Tools: Accepting Help and Borrowing Money

Living in Ghana I tend to read a lot of blogs, some of our colleagues in the field, others from people who just moved here.  It's almost a trend, move to Ghana, start a blog.  

Somehow I had ended up (mostly likely some enticing clickbait) on www.desiringGod.org, and was reading “What’s Wrong with Western Missionaries” [click here].  It's a great read, but the cliff notes version is that they are too self-sufficient. Self-sufficiency is a quality admired and encouraged by Americans, and especially by men but when author Nik Ripkin wrote about the missionary who was known as “The man we love,” the reason leading to that love was “because he borrows money from us.”  He borrows money from the people he came to serve.  

I’ve done a lot of things here in our time in Ghana, and I’m constantly looking for more experiences to add to our bucket list, but borrowing money was never on, nor a candidate for that list.  It never would have occurred to me, and so after reading it, I prayed a silent prayer for an opportunity that I might be open to.  

Next day I am invited to have lunch with a student and as we get near the front of the line to order, he says, “this lunch is on me.”  Now I know he is a full scholarship student, and my unconscious  reaction was, “Oh, no, you can’t buy me lunch, it should be I who is buying you lunch,” but then the words from yesterday’s silent prayer come back to me, and I said, “Okay, that would be great.”  

Talking over lunch is something our students have to learn when they come to Ashesi.  Talking while eating is not part of the normal culture of Ghana, and you can almost learn what year group a student is in by what she/he does at lunch. The first years are silent, the final years, won't hardly shut up.

Outside Ashesi, rarely have I observed Ghanaian families eating together, and when they do, they eat in silence.  Sometimes they have invited me to dine with them, and that means sitting in another room, eating by myself while the rest of the family is off working, cleaning the kitchen or watching TV. It is a strange and lonely experience.  

Now it wasn’t as easy as just buying lunch, as the accounting system in the canteen isn’t set up for such generosity, but they figured it out, and we had an interesting conversation over a lunch of RedRed, plain rice and fried chicken.  [Here is my RedRed’s recipe]

You know, I have trouble accepting help, not only in Ghana, but back in Texas too.  The past month when I was there helping to care for my mother-in-law, so many friends and people I didn’t even know offered to help, and I just couldn’t accept.  I’m won’t be a candidate for “the man they love” anytime soon if I don’t learn to be as accepting as I try to be giving.  

So be patient with me, and keep asking and when I offer, be a good example and accept.

Peace,

Steven

PS: Even if you are not a missionary, I recommend reading the blog on "Whats Wrong with Western Missionaries" [click here].

Remembering Kevin Coats

A picture from Kevin's FB Account.

I was in Australia when I learned that Kevin had died.   I had had a dream about him a few weeks ago, and wish I had followed up.  

Kevin was the first person to call me pastor.  We were at Schoepf's BBQ in Belton, Texas.  “Hello Pastor!” he said.  I remember I was a bit shocked at being called pastor as I was still in seminary.

For the first four years of Foundation Church, Kevin copied the bulletin each and every Sunday, at the office machine store where he was their top salesman.  Kevin always had time to chat, or take me to lunch and explain how things worked in Temple-Belton, or in this young church.  Jack Riley, the church’s founding pastor, said Kevin was a person I could trust, and over time I learned to lean on him, and found Jack’s words to be true.  

Later he made it possible for the church to have its own copy machine, but still he gave us great support when things went off, ie a few 1am meetings at his office make bulletins when “his” machine wasn’t working.  

Kevin managed The Building Committee, the overseers of design and construction of the first building for Foundation Church.  I remember the long hours Kevin spent on what would later be called The Riley Center, as a tribute to Jack Riley.  Meetings before construction started, (including all the different UMC committees).  Once construction began, the early morning gatherings on the slab (we could see our breath), then in the shell, and finally as the finish out began.  He was so faithful in that project and The Riley Center served the Kingdom well.  

I remember stopping by his new office after he started his own business, how well Coats Insurance did (we left State Farm to support him), and the good customer service he gave.  I was proud of him and the courage it took to open up a new business.  

As often happens when a church builds a building, the chair of the building committee has to leave. Sunday becomes less a day of worship and more about explaining/defending the design/construction of new building.  After a year being in the building, this was still happening so Kevin and his family took some time off from the church family, but before doing so, Kevin stopped by to tell me. It was the honorable thing to do, and appreciated him telling me first.

The last time I saw Kevin was in spring 2006.  I wanted to tell him personally that we were taking a sabbatical year to work in Ghana.  I had been going around to all the people I wanted to tell in person, and even though it was supposed to be SPRC only, Kevin knew.  He also seemed to know (though I didn’t) that we would not be coming back.  I tried to say then how much I appreciated him, and all the work he had done for the church, and how grateful I was for his wisdom and support in the early days of the church.  To this day when I think of him, I consider him a life long friend.  I am sorry I never got to say good-bye.

Godspeed Kevin, you were a good and faithful servant and friend.

Two Years and Three Days: Home?

It has been two years and three days since Suzanne and I moved to the place we call home…

“So where’s home?” the usher asked as in the foyer of the church in Iowa. Suzanne and I had flown in early that morning and were still were bundled up like ticks against the 20 degrees and a blue northerner outside. The usher was new here (or new since I had moved away some 40 years ago), so he didn’t know Ames was my childhood home, and this was my home church.

[Steve * Suzanne outside in the snow]

Suzanne and I look at each other nervously, never certain how to answer the question our global nomad kids hate. “Maybe I should have asked, where are you guys from?” he asks, saving us.

“That’s easier,” I sound relieved. “I grew up in Ames, Suzanne is from Connecticut; we lived in Texas for 30 years, and now in Africa.”

That is our answer, however, ask a Ghanaian, and the answer will be to a nearby question.

“Where are you from?” I asked a student one day. For some reason it never occurs to ask about home.

“I am from Burkina Faso.” A French speaking country just north of Ghana. I hadn’t detected the trace of a French accent in her voice.

“Really, what is it like there?” I ask.

“Oh, I have never been to that place.” She was telling me where her family comes from.

“Your mother moved here from Burkina?”

“No, she stays in Nima.” A Muslim region of Accra; stays means grew up there too. Who knows when her family actually moved to Ghana, but that is where they are from.

“So you were raised in Nima.” I say, thinking I should remember to start with that question. It does get me thinking about the concept of home. Is it the place one grew up, or where your family came from? For me, I grew up in Iowa, but my family came from Kansas. Iowa formed my genetic dispositions into this person I became; and had it been another state, I would have grown to be a different person. That is where I’m from, but is it home?

home is the place they have to take you in

Another definition: Home: the place they have to take you in. Suzanne and I learned this definition a few months ago, when our son moved back into our house in Texas, a move his mother and I had not encouraged, and yet did not prevent. It is his home, so it has to take him in.

home is the place you take responsibility for

Another definition: Home: the place you take responsibility for. When one takes care of the place they stay in, it becomes home. Even the animals know not to soil the place they sleep (well not chickens, but who credits them with much intelligence).

home is where you know where the silverware is kept

Another definition: home is where you know where the silverware is kept. This came from my niece Mary Lynn. So home implies familiarity, which I understand. A few years back my father sold my childhood house and built a new one. While being filled with furniture familiar, this new house does not feel like home; it always takes a few drawers to find the silverware.

[Mary Lynn and our snow shovels]

What was weird about being back in Ames was the amount of Africa stuff I saw in the local food coop.   

[so secret we don’t even know about it in Africa]

[Authentic African Black Soap.  Have we been using the fake stuff?]

[Baskets for $39.  We buy them for $7]

[yep, these baskets are from Ghana and have the cool tag we don’t get for $7]

[The food co-op my mom helped start]

Suzanne stayed a week longer after I returned to Ghana, giving me airplane time to think about that question of home.  I should have told the usher, “Home is wherever Suzanne is.”   For me, she is what makes a place, home, and her staying that extra week has me thinking about where our home is. Perhaps, home is the place that needs you most. I know we certainly felt that being back when Suzanne’s mom and our daughter’s faced major and minor surgeries respectively, and our Texas house needed some work.

home is the place that needs you most

I’ve been thinking about home a bit because Suzzy Phonecard is homeless….(read about Suzzy).  Right before we left for the States, Suzzy moved out of her home, suffice to say there were family issues, and she felt safer to be out on her own.  I helped her move to an uncompleted abandoned house in the next village over. Ghana is filled with uncompleted construction, half built structures of concrete and cement blocks that look like an active worksite but truthfully, no work has been done since the money ran out. Workers just dropped their tools like it was Pompeii and the volcano just erupted.

home is wherever Suzanne is

I meet the main family squatting staying there and the mother is quite pregnant. Suzzy shows me her room and by room I mean a windowless closet and she asks me to buy her a door. The current one is cardboard. “How much will that cost?” I ask but she doesn’t know.  I leave it to her to figure out the details and get back to me.  She is disappointed I just buy her a door and we play this game for weeks, she asks for a door, and I ask some stupid question like where do they sell doors, or how much will they cost, or what happens when you move?  I want this to be her problem, and finally she figures out a different solution, and that door appears without me.  

[Christmas on the Hill, we left for Texas the next morning]

home is the place where you know people on the flight back

Home is that place that feels like you belong.  As I was waiting to board the last leg of the flight back to Ghana I see two different sets of friends from Accra and wonder if maybe home is the place where you know people on the flight back.  I so appreciate what Lisa McKay wrote in her grand memoir of travel and romance Love at the Speed of Email about the relationship between home and adventure, that there is no adventure in home; and no home in adventure.

there is no adventure in home; and no home in adventure.

On our first Sunday back at Asbury-Dunwell Church, Auntie Pamela greets me at the door and gives me a deep hug saying “Welcome Home,” and I almost tear up.    Home is the place where the people there claim you. 

Home is the place where the people there claim you. 

Ghana is our home now, but so is Texas, so is Iowa for me, and Connecticut for Suzanne and who is to say there can be only one home?  Maybe that is why we like Ghana so much, because here, we really can have them all: adventure, home and each other.

[At the Zilker “Tree” in Austin, Texas, one of our many “homes”]

we really can have them all: adventure, home

and each other.

The “You’ve preached long enough club!”

 

On Sunday, I was invited into an exclusive preacher’s club, the “You’ve preached long enough club” with the invitation coming in the form of a note passed to me in the pulpit.

[10 Minutes More Please]

“What about the Church?” was the topic for the day, and I had been speaking for about 25 minutes the note invitation came. I was about to introduce the bride analogy St. Paul developed for the church, calling it the bride of Christ in his letter to the Ephesians. Now for many of us guys, this bride analogy makes us a bit uncomfortable, being called the wife of Jesus.  It just doesn’t work for us.

Typically, I have heard this “church as bride analogy” explained as an ideal, where the God-church relationship is like the intimacy between husband and wife. The ideal is for a church to mirror that relationship, with God. Still not helpful.

Them, then ; Us, now. My mentor and pastor, Rev. David Gilliam taught me long ago when something in scripture makes you uncomfortable, seek to understand what it meant to them (who it was written to), to know what it could mean to us, now.

To know what it means to US, NOW

We have to know what it meant to THEM, THEN.

I looked at my invitation, smiled and explained how the people Paul was writing to might have understood a bride to be property, owned by her husband. Production of children was a primary value. If she did not or could not produce children, the bride could be dismissed, or replaced.

Instead of the seeing the church as a romantic love partner with God as his bride, the church could be the property of God, like a first century bride, who’s primary function was to create children of God, (aka new believers). If a church could not, or would not make and disciple new believers, could it too be dismissed I wondered?

Oddly, a few minutes later, it was time for announcements and we heard the third and final “Banns of Marriage”. For three Sundays in a row, we had heard these Banns for our worship leader, who is to be married in a few weeks.

Banns is an old word for proclamation and according to Wikipedia their purpose was to “enable anyone to raise any canonical or civil legal impediment to the marriage, so as to prevent marriages that are invalid.” These banns inform (or warn) the public via advert in the local newspaper, and three times read in their local church(es) saying:

If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, you are to declare it or speak with the pastor, or board of elders.

All according to the 1951 marriage ordinance of Ghana.

Therefore, it was interesting to me that on the last Sunday before Advent, we learned about the bride of Christ, heard the banns for the future bride to Fiifi, and I preached long enough to be asked to stop (in 10 minutes).

 

[Their Invitation]

Three Times I Meet Thee – Applied Proverbs I

One of the situations our Ashesi students discover when studying in the States is a difficulty in making new friends. This complaint is typical:

We sat and talked after class for an hour or more, talking about all sorts of things, but the next time I saw her, she walked right past, like we had never met and I thought we were friends.  Americans can be so rude.

Rude - Is this how I am seen here, I wondered? I think about the people who have befriend us from the village, and admit until I’ve run into them a few times, I have trouble remembering their faces.    Often they come up to me, start talking, and I am wondering who is this?! Then they say something that triggers our previous conversation(s) and I clue in. Sadly, I know this will happen a few more times before I figure out we are friends.

Is this what happens to our Ashesi students in the States?

Is it me, or has the art of making friends in the States become a complicated two-step between chance and circumstance? Do we leave friend making to chance: If chance brings us together three times, and we build on that encounter each time, do we then become friends?

There is a saying here that a friend is someone you share the path with and I like that definition. Maybe new friendship is more complicated than it needs to be when apparently the only requirement here is a shared path. Of course, there is another saying: two footsteps do not make a path and I think this saying highlights more than our cultural differences. Americans just need more footsteps to recognize the path and realize it was not chance that brought us a new friend, but our shared path.

Bolgatanga Regional Hospital and other stories

Last summer, Steve was on a tour of Ghana to visit our Mission Society Colleagues serving in northern Ghana and Togo. Having spent some time with Sue K [her blog], he is now in Bolgatanga, with the Bolga Bartletts, Dave and Ellen.  For some reason this post never posted, and suddenly it just showed up.  So here it is a year later. 

One morning Dave and Ellen take me to see the Bolgatanga Regional Hospital.  We are there to help along the process of a young man, Brother A., who has Hepatitis B. The process we are helping has nothing to do with efficiency.

The hospital has misplaced Brother A’s folder:1, and so orders are given to create a new folder:2, then to wait in long, slow moving queue, to create a new folder:3, and with folder in hand to wait to see the doctor:4,5. It could be a study in inefficiency, but Dave and Ellen know the system and somehow captured the doctor’s cell phone number. A quick phone call later, the doctor agrees to meet them and we join the queue to wait to bypass what could have been days of waiting, instead of just hours:6. Six hours.

Receiving the doctors news, and what is next.

It all would be a tragic situation, hopeless, without the evidence of God working through Dave and Ellen, and yet through it all Brother A’s mother is patient. Jolia’s son is the top student in his class, a strong good looking young man that is the picture of health. He is in contrast to the baby Jolia back loads all morning. Known locally as a spirit child, something is a bit off with Baby Y. His eyes don’t catch yours, and he fusses and cries even less than most Ghanaian babies, who are stoic, a back loaded passengers to their mother’s life.

It is believed that the birth of a spirit child’s coincided with some tragic event in the village or family , like a sickness or death of a family member. Babies born under these circumstances are believed to be a bad omen, cursed by the ancestors, and must be returned otherwise more bad things will happen. Yet Jolia has gone against tradition, and fought for the child to live, not letting the village elders take it to be left to die. Read more about Baby Y’s story.

Jolia is the living embodiment of a quote by Barbara Kartz Rothman:

“Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength” [2]

And I would add that for Jolia, her inner strength, if evidence of a quiet faith in God. Read more of her story

Still the process takes all morning. Lab tests are ordered for Brother A, new prescriptions given, and by 1:30pm--we’ve been at this since 7:30am--we drop him off at school. Ellen gives him a cedi to buy lunch (thirty cents),and that how we learn this will be his first meal of the day.

Ellen asks “Jolia, do you have any food in the house?”

“Oh, no Mommie.” So it is off to the market to buy rice, oil and fish.

At the Market

Ellen’s compassion is so heartfelt. Dave has been so steadfast in his support of her heart’s longing, never complaining, or even rolling an eye. Later we meet another woman who runs a foster home, whom the Bartletts have been helping and Dave has to remind her that they can only help One by One. In fact Dave made her a T-shirt that says just that “1x1”, and she happens to wearing it today.

Bolgatanga Sunset
References:
[2] Rothman, Barbara Kartz Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Religion, Beacon Press, 2005