Church on the Edge

Yikes, over two weeks since I last blogged.
We survived a pretty intense heat wave that lasted about 2 weeks. Temperatures were in the 40’s, with 44 degrees being the highest that I’m aware of. Seriously hot!! At night it went down to about 33 degrees. So now that it’s back to normal - high 20’s to low 30’s, we sometimes feel chilled, especially at night. Sounds crazy, I know!!!
Sweet!!! Colton just brought me my first guava from our tree. Norma, Tina and Netty, remember how much I like guava!? Be right back, gotta check this out…  Just picked our first harvest of tasty fruits. It’ll be tricky to beat the birds to the guava. There’s a good yield of fruit, but we also have a bumper crop of birds in our yard.
The Sunday before last we went to a church up country with our friends Travis and Astrid. Travis is from California, Astrid from the Netherlands; they met in the States at YWAM. They’ve done missions in Kenya for one year, and in Rwanda for four years. They’ve been in BUJ (Bujumbura) for one year, and are on the tail end of registering their own ministry called SOZO. Anyways, there’s a YWAM team (two Canadians!! one however hasn‘t lived in Canada for years) here for the service part of their DTS, and so they asked us to join them.
We drove up into the mountains, parked the vehicles and started a very strenuous 30 minute trek further up the mountain. The narrow, steep, windy, one person width path took us over two “bridges”, with about half of the logs missing, making the streams under us a real possibility/threat of cooling off our sweat drenched bodies. And all this in a skirt!!! And VANS!! Nice combination, eh?
We finally reached the little church, and I kid you not, some of the YWAMers could have wrung out their clothes!! They had only arrived 2 days prior to this expedition, and had not yet acclimatized to this weather. We were given some time to catch our breath, then ushered to the front of the church. The pastor of the church is the husband of Travis and Astrid’s cook. The worship was typical African - uninhibited, wonderful. Travis preached on Ezekiel 37 - one of my favorite O. T. passages.
It would have been rude and offensive had we not stayed after the service, which ended at 1:30, and allowed them to serve us lunch. So while that was being prepared the pastor couple and a regional pastor took us further up the mountain.
This whole mountain side was where about 10 years ago the rebels were a deadly force as the Hutu and Tutsi were killing each other. This war only ended about three years ago.
The view from high in the mountains is beautiful. Bujumbura lies right on the shore of the second deepest lake in the world at 1470 m at it’s deepest - Lake Tanganyika, which is also the second longest in the world at 673 km. long. The average width of the lake is 50 km. (We can see the lake, with the Congo mountains behind it, from our kitchen window.)
God is really helping me with not really thinking a great deal about the cleanliness of the people that sometimes prepare our food, the food itself, or the places where the food is prepared. Once the food was ready, we were again ushered into the church where they had set up a little 4-6 person table, and 18 of us crowded around it!! Seriously!! The pastor couple served us. The food was… food.
The one side of the church was literally built onto the edge of a steep drop - the bamboo wall was attached to the side of the embankment; this is the side that we sat on. About 1 foot from the end of our row was the edge, with only the bamboo sticks between the chair and “the fall.” We sat about 4 feet in. The roof - tin, the floor - dirt, the presence of the Holy Spirit - awesome and powerful.
Thankfully, our descent was much easier (though perhaps more dangerous with slipping on loose rocks) than our ascent.
We may have future ministry opportunities here, as the pastor was eager to have our contact info. Please pray about this with us. There are 12 churches up country that are affiliated with each other, and the regional pastor was adamant that we visit others as well.
This brings me to another subject. I’ve mentioned in previous entries that we are really praying about what the Lord’s full purpose is for bringing us here. We still believe that it’s for more than we’re currently doing. Yes, I know, we have a tiny influence on people we meet day to day, and Isaac’s influence on the guy that “works” with him is great, and yes, being able to teach devotions to 3 classes, where many of the kids are Muslim/Hindu is a huge blessing, and there are some other “little” things, but we feel in our spirits there’s more. But at the same time, even if one person will be in heaven as a result of us being here, it’s worth it. When I was a little girl, my mom taught me; “Whoever doesn’t honor the small isn’t worthy of the big.”
It’s not that we don’t honor the big, … I don’t know if I’m succeeding in making you understand in one paragraph what we feel… sometimes it’s hard not to see what we’re doing as ‘just’ a job, albeit the fact that we get to talk about Jesus and faith and salvation to people.
But many of these kids come from the wealthiest families in Burundi; they are the privileged. Yes, I know, the privileged need Jesus just as much as anyone else. They learn about Jesus from other teachers as well. And Isaac sometimes wonders  where his spiritual giftings are put to use in fixing things. We came here to serve, and we want to serve. And if this is all that the Father has us here for, we want to be content in that.
Please pray with and for us in this regard.
Love as always,
Isaac, Rosel and Colton