Monthly Archives: February 2013

The people have Jesus, but not his gospel.

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The first two months back in Togo have been very busy, but we are finally feeling that we are getting back into our groove. Keeping a house here in working order can sometimes be a part-time job, as it seems that I have had either the plumber, the electrician, the repairman, the painter or the carpenter at the house more days than not over these past six weeks. Heidi jumped right into homeschooling Abby and learning how to handle all three girls while carrying her heavy workload of cooking and cleaning and continuing to minister to both the kids and the ladies of our “neighborhood”. She is an amazing woman and, in my opinion, the perfect missionary wife. I started teaching in the Bible Institute right after I got back and really before I even had my bags completely unpacked. It is such a joy to teach these students the Word of God, and I’m excited about what God has in store for those that will graduate in June.

As I explained to those churches that I visited while on furlough, in addition to continuing to lead the Bible Institute and oversee our first village church plant, we are planning to both start a small orphanage and plant a new church among the Lamba people about an hour from our house. The Lamba are the largest unreached people group in Togo, and we are excited to take the gospel to these that have never heard it before. I have been looking for a while for a good translator who speaks Lamba as one was not easy to find. Now I believe God has answered our prayers with a godly young man who grew up in another part of Togo, but who is Lamba and speaks the language fluently. With a translator found, the next thing to do is to determine where we are going to start our witnessing efforts.

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After scouting out the area known as Defalé for about an hour, I asked my guide if he would show me the way to the top of a mountain where it looked like the Catholic Church had placed a very large cross. He guided me up the mountain where I found out that I only had it half right. It was the Catholic Church that built this monument, but it was not a cross; it was a statue of Jesus. It is ironic that these people are the largest unreached people group in Togo; they have “Jesus”, but they do not have the true gospel. Please pray with us as we work, by God’s grace, to change that.

What in the world is funeral month all about?

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This is funeral month here in Togo, so I asked a friend of mine to explain in English the background of this month dedicated to honoring the dead and why participation in this celebration is unchristian. I have tried to only make minor changes to the text to make it a little easier to read. As missionaries, we have to be students of their culture in order to best understand how to disciple them in the midst of their very unique circumstances. I hope you find this glimpse into some of the traditions of their animistic world interesting. He chose to focus more on the background (the why) rather than on all of the practices (the what). So he did not mention how prayers are offered to the deceased that they might, for instance, bless the fields of those that are honoring them. The rest of this blog is his explanation.

The Kabiyè people have many traditional rites and initiations from birth till death. When a child turns twenty they are initiated into manhood or womanhood. This initiation is called Evala for men and Akpéma for girls in Kabiyè language. It is a ceremony that involves both families. They have to be in agreement because during this traditional ceremony the uncle of the teenage boy (Evalou) or girl (Akpénou) is the one who will buy the dog that the boy will eat. Eating a dog is a delicacy here. Before the time of the ceremony the boy will have never eaten dog meat before. The girls never eat dog meat at all so the uncle will buy an animal such as goat or sheep instead.

This initiation is to tell the boy or the girl that he/she is a grown man or woman and can now get married without a problem. So during this ceremony the boy has to struggle with other young men of his age to really show that he can enter into adulthood. This shows his endurance and strength to face the future. Things are a little different for the girls, as they have to walk nude in the eyes of everybody without shame to show that they are mature and ready for life.

Five years later the young man goes through another traditional initiation, which is called Kondona. From this initiation, everybody in the community will start looking at him as a man of experience. They will start counting his age after each five years, which is called a Waaa. So after every five years they count another Waaa. After living long enough to have counted 10 Waaas, the man now is reached the age of 75 years old, which is called a Wassi.

When the man succeeds in living till that age, then family and friends will dance during his funeral. This funeral will be a festival and the family organizes the festival. All the children and descendants will participate for the success of the ceremony, which is the honor of the family and the dead. During the ceremony they have a ritual in which the spirit of the late will be taken into the house. They will build an idol in his name. He becomes an ancestor who can protect and defend the living family, his descendants, that he left back. In future years when honoring the deceased they will sacrifice animals and add a new idol.

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If the deceased attained 75 years of age, but did not bear children then they would not dance at his funeral because the tradition considers the person as a child still. They will just bury him and finish. It is the same for young people who die before the age of 75. During their funerals, people are not allowed to dance because the person is still a child in the traditional context.

These funerals, in Kabiyè culture, take place in the month of February. Funerals have at least three objectives. 1.) They celebrate funerals to bring the soul of the deceased back to his house. 2.) They want to keep the person as an ancestor in the family and never forget him. 3.) They would like to honor the person. This honor is to mark the humanity of the person. Funerals for humans let them be seen as different from animals. At the same time this honor goes to the family too. It raises the name of the family. If a person dies and the members of his family don’t celebrate his funerals, it is an insult to him and his family. For that reason some go into debt in order to avoid dishonoring the dead.

“Sir, someone just crashed into your truck”.

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I hesitate to travel in Togo more than necessary. Our capital is six hours away, the roads are pretty rough getting down there and run-ins with the police occur more often than one would like. That being said, I had several things that I needed to do/buy in Lomé, so I decided to make the trip down there Monday.

Hardly any stores have special parking for their customers, as most vehicles just park parallel to the street in front of the stores where they are shopping. Thankfully, lots of people use moto taxis so a parking spot is usually not very hard to find. I parked in front of a hardware store where I would do some shopping once the store re-opened after the mid-day break that most all stores take here in Togo. While waiting for that store to open up, a friend of mine told me that the hardware store across the street was open, so we went over there to shop and were just about done when a guy came in telling me the last thing that I wanted to hear, “a motorcycle just crashed into your truck!”

Things could have been worse. At least no one was hurt, the guy did not flee the scene, etc. These are the things that you tell yourself in order to keep a good attitude. The guy said that he had to swerve to avoid hitting someone and therefore smashed into the front left panel of our truck. His three-wheeled moto also gashed the tire and ripped the side of our brand new bumper loose.

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The guy wanted to me to change the tire and then go to a local garage to see about fixing the rest of the damage. The only problem is that as soon as you leave the scene of the accident, there is absolutely no way to make sure the guilty party takes responsibility for the repairs. Even though it took almost an hour for the police to show up, they eventually did, and thankfully they did not blame me for the accident!

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We spent several hours that afternoon between the accident scene, the police station and then the insurance company, but things seem to be going well. Before leaving the police station, the police did remind me as he was standing in the exit I will have to go down to Lomé again once all the police paperwork is done, and the insurance company tells me that the full cost of the repairs will be covered. The funny thing is, this is the second time that a three-wheeled moto has smashed into me and done serious damage.

We pray for safety out here a lot, especially traveling on these crazy roads, and we would appreciate your prayers for our safety too and for the well being of our poor truck that these three-wheeled motos would leave her alone.

Wow! One more story about God’s provision.

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Seeing that we started this blog near the end of our furlough, I wanted to take a few blog posts to mention some of the highlights from our time back in the States.

Shortly after returning to the States we were at one of our amazing supporting churches in Keystone Heights, FL for a Sunday morning service. This is a church that I first visited when working at the Trinity Youth Camp almost thirteen years ago. The people have always been so sweet to us, and the pastor and his wife are some of the most encouraging people God ever put on the earth.

The children of the church had just finished their VBS the week before we arrived, and they were singing that morning in the service. Those cute little kids had adopted us as their missionary of the week for VBS and wanted to present us a check of $500 for the ministry in Togo! When the pastor handed me that very generous check from the kids, he also gave me a church love offering. It was another $500!

The people listened attentively as I spoke about the many ways that the Lord is working in Togo, specifically our first village church plant where many have turned from practicing voodoo to the One and True God. They were so easy to preach to as I explained to them about the necessity of taking the gospel to those that have never heard before.

When I finished, we went to the lobby and waited to greet the members as they left. Before ending the service, the pastor encouraged his people to contribute personally that morning to the ministry in Togo and contribute they did. So many kind people would come by with $20 handshakes that it makes you feel embarrassed to be on the receiving end of so much generosity. One couple gave me a check that I quietly put into my pocket and thanked them for their kindness. When I looked at the check later I was amazed; it was for $1000! Wow!

When we were packing up our stuff to leave, a man in the church said that he wanted to go to his house to get me something before I leave. I told him no problem, we had lunch plans with the pastor, but we had enough time to wait around for him to go home and come back. Well, we were out in the parking lot, with the kids buckled up in our van and the AC on when he returned with his wife.

It was at this point that he handed me a wad of cash that looked like his life’s savings. I was more than hesitant to take such a large sum of cash, knowing that sometimes people can decide to do something in the spur of the moment that they might question later. He told me to take it and assured me that he believed whole-heartedly that this is what the Lord wanted him to do. That one generous couple gave $8,400 for the ministry in Togo! Wow! How amazing is our great God?

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