I was able to take my time getting ready this morning since the first thing I planned to attend was Jon and Kristin’s discipleship class at the sewing school. It is always a great walk in the morning, being able to stop and say Sannu to the people I now recognize and try to predict what the weather will look like for the day. Faith Alive is in a very friendly neighborhood. I made it to the sewing school with a few minutes to spare so I spoke with a couple of people waiting to get interviewed as participants in the computer classes. Once things got under way (ten minutes late as usual) I took a seat in the middle of my fellow classmates and was immediately handed a child. He is one of my favorites, we have been getting well acquainted over the past five weeks, and he never causes any problems during class. Today he was especially good since he fell asleep on my lap about five minutes into our discussion. Team D has been spending the last few days in discipleship class trying to break down myths about Christianity that seem prominent in Nigeria. Today’s topic was praying for wealth. The “Prosperity Gospel”, belief that once you accept Jesus you will be blessed with good finances and material possessions, is a core value in many churches of this area. Business owners are told that if they start to lose money it is because God is punishing them, where on the flipside a person who becomes wealthy is told that Jesus is the source of all their income. It is a very strange philosophy, but one that is quickly infiltrating Christian minds around the world. The dozen of us in the room spent a good while looking through Scripture and pulling out life experiences related to worshiping money, wanting things that sometimes aren’t healthy for our relationship with God, and realizing that whether we live in poverty or in luxury it is the same God that we serve.
I promised the women to be there more consistently over the next few weeks and made my way down the street to the Clinic where my seat was being saved in the pharmacy. It is starting to feel a bit like Cheers every time I walk in (“Cait!”) and I am always so glad to be with this group of individuals. They are phenomenal! I grabbed some bottles of pills to count while Matthew turned on the small television in the corner of the room. To our great luck there was a cheesy Nigerian movie just starting so we spent time working with one ear open. Matthew and I gasped (and laughed) our way to the conclusion before everything fell apart. The hero of the movie found out his wife bore a child by his brother and in the end shot down his own mother, brother, and pregnant wife before killing himself at his court hearing. When the credits started to roll Matthew looked at me and exclaimed, “Cait, that was so stupid and tragic! Why on earth did we watch the whole thing?!” I guess it is all part of the experience.
An enjoyable lunch allowed us to get back to Faith Alive for some odd jobs. Adrie and I were able to leave earlier than expected so we took a detour to Blessing’s shop to thank the women again for our outfits. This shop has become a magnetic force-field to me. I took a seat on the floor with Miriam, one of the lady’s young daughters, who was drawing pictures on the back of an old flyer. She handed me a pen and the two of us went to work making beautiful sketches for each other; one from a twenty-year-old hand, one from a four-year-old hand. We laughed our way through the suns and ducks and mamas and babies that appeared on the paper and I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I had been able to draw. Adrie spent a good deal of her time trying to nicely get away from a friend of Blessing’s who wandered in and was obviously hoping to get a date. (Poor Adrie, she is the heartthrob of every single man in this neighborhood. I told her she needs to stop being so dang pretty!) Miriam only speaks Hausa and my four phrases in her native tongue weren’t coming in very handy. She told me elaborate stories with hand motions and skirt-twirling while I sat and tried to imagine what this little girl was trying to relay to me. My favorite conversation started with “Onja lama pab shiniki BABY!” She surprised me by successfully counting to ten in English followed by teaching me the ABC’s using her toes. I seriously wish I had been taught the alphabet using a foot rather than a song. When I counted to ten on my fingers she opened her arms and, with a giant squeal, threw them around me and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. I think that was my favorite moment of the day. Or possibly this trip.
Happy and exhausted from a long week I spent the hour before dinner lying on my bed with my eyes closed listening to Deniso Witmer. Folksy acoustic guitars and sung poetry seems to be a good way to unwind. Dinner was delicious, company was great, and the girls knew pilates was on the way. After an hour-long exercise routine we felt stretched and sweaty, key signs that it was time to check out for the night. Reading Three Cups of Tea I ran across something that caught my attention:
“We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We’re the country of thirty- minute power-lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their ‘shock and awe’ campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them.” - Greg Mortenson (p.150)
This author spent many months over many years traveling to the isolated Balti regions of Northern Pakistan in order to build schools. But providing education and meeting basic physical needs didn’t end up being the most important part of this great adventure, it was the relationships he allowed to bloom with those he came in contact with. I want to do the same. And God-willing that is what has already started.
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