Come to the well.

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

If there is one thing that epitomizes the difference between the first world and the third world it may just be how easy or how hard it is to get clean drinking water. Access to clean water is such a big need for so many people here, especially for those in the villages and even more so for those whose village is on a mountain.

This is the case in the village of Kpaha where we have been witnessing and holding Bible studies for the last two months. These people live on a mountain and the terrain is so full of rocks, large rocks, that they are unable to dig the traditional wells that other villages are usually able to dig.

Ladies and kids are forced to go to watering holes like this one to scoop out enough water for the family.

I found another watering hole that the villagers use, even though it has frogs swimming around in it!

Many years ago the Germans were here in Togo and they put a well in this village that the people are still using today, but that’s not the cleanest water you’ve ever seen either.

Thankfully some organizations have paid the big bucks necessary to have the large equipment brought out to drill down through the rocks and install a hand pumped well like this one put in by the United Nations Development Program.

There are three of these type wells in the village of Kpaha, but when we showed up two months ago, two of the three wells were not working. They had broken and the people did not have the means to fix them, so they just drank dirty water from either the old well or from one of the watering holes.

This is where another great partnering church, located in Graniteville, SC, enters the picture. They have used creative means to raise funds for wells in Togo and have sent us over $1,800 to be used to help in just these sort of situations.

So a missionary friend here in Togo put me in contact with some well mechanics that were able to fix both of these wells for only $400.

And now they are pumping water that is probably cleaner than what is being pumped into our house!

Seeing kids come to the watering hole with their empty buckets and leaving with them still empty because the hole was dry was a tearjerker, and I could not bring myself to take a picture of them in that pitiful state.

Seeing ladies immediately come to the well and start pumping water as soon as you finish repairing it and having them thank you for caring about them was a tearjerker too, a good one though.

Orphanage update for April

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

It’s Labor Day here in Togo and the construction crew for the orphanage have a much needed day off. They have been working so hard, all day, every day but Sunday, all month long. We are still in the latter part of hot season too, so usually they are out there in the scorching heat. By 9:00 am they are ready for us to bring the daily large chunks of ice to add to their water cooler, so that they can get a refreshing drink. Those guys, many of them from our Bible Institute, are working hard, and by God’s grace they have made a lot of progress this month. Below are some of the pics to let you see how things are going.

The first bit of good news is that the hard to come by cement has not been as hard to come by recently. We have actually been able to buy so much cement that we had to start storing some of it in the Bible Institute. Below are 100 bags of the best cement that we can get here, and both the masons and I are very happy to know that we have plenty of cement on hand now to make sure the work does not come to a stop.

Prior to digging the footers, the guys made a ton of bricks, literally, and they do it the old fashioned way. Their cement mixer is like my dishwasher, they both have two arms.

I thought this picture, with the digging done, would be helpful to show the proximity of the orphanage to the Bible Institute. How awesome will it be to see little orphans grow up right behind the BI and then, Lord-willing, enroll in the BI and get training to serve or lead in their local churches.

This last picture is one that I took today while standing on top of the neighbor’s roof next to our property. I’m excited that I can start to see the lay out of the building!

This is a big and challenging endeavor, but by God’s grace and because of awesome ministry partners we are on our way to creating a place where lives will be changed for time and eternity. Thanks for being a part.

Our first safari!

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

Some people think that living in Africa means that we drive past lions and giraffes on the way to the post office or market. That would be pretty cool but unfortunately most of the safari type animals were killed off here long ago by the local people. So if you come to visit us here in Togo the only wild animals you will see will be the ones under our roof.

At one time or another most all of the missionaries here have crossed the eastern border of Togo into the country of Benin to a game park called Pendjari. We had never made the trip before but determined to do so this past week as there was a veteran missionary back in town who knows the game park very well who would be acting as our guide.

The first picture has got to be the best of them all. We just have a simple point and shoot camera but another missionary in our group, Jesse Shanks, had a great camera with him that took this amazing picture.

This lion was literally 20 feet from our truck with nothing separating him from us but the grace of God. That was worth all of the travel and time to get to this park as encounters like that are rare even in a game park such as this one.

We got to see baboons, antelope, waterbuck, crocs, hippos, lions and elephants. The last of that group was definitely Heidi’s favorite animal to see. It was cute to see how excited she got when the elephants got close to our truck.

The lion was a rare and special treat but searching for and finding the elephants was what made this trip a special one.

Our 12th anniversary is coming up next month and I have been thinking about what I can get a wife who is content with what little she has. Maybe, I will make another trip back to that park and see if I can get one of the smaller elephants into the back of our truck and surprise her with it.

Assuming the mother elephant does not kill me, the game park officials don’t notice me leaving the park with a baby elephant and the border officials accept a small gift for allowing me to cross back into Togo with an elephant, this might work.

Day 1 of church plant 2

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

Planting our first church in Togo has been such an amazing adventure. Watching God work in the lives of those who were completely ignorant of even the most basic elements of Scripture, those that had never even heard of Adam and Eve before. Villagers who were devoted to practicing voodoo, offering animal sacrifices and consulting witch doctors are now followers of Jesus Christ who have destroyed their idols and are growing in their walk with the Lord.

It’s now been over two years since we started that first church in the village of Tchandida and while we would love to stay there longer, we know that there are so many more villages out there full of people who have yet to hear a clear teaching of the gospel.

One of those villages, called Kpaha, is found among the Lamba people and that is where we believe the Lord is leading us to start our second church. We have been going out there for weeks getting to know the people and have told them that after Easter we would start holding Bible studies on Sunday mornings at 8:00 at the local school.

So last Saturday we went out to the village to show a gospel film and preach a little to the crowd before inviting them to come back the following morning for the start of this new church.

When we showed up the people had just come back from a voodoo dance and were all gathered around drinking the local homemade beer. Not exactly what we were expecting! There is no doubt that this place is going to be a challenge as they have a syncretistic mix of Catholicism and voodoo with alcohol thrown in on top.

The next morning we showed up around 7:40 at this school and waited for the people to show up.

8:00 came and I think we had one adult lady and a handful of kids. Once again, this was not what I was expecting. The longer we waited around the more I started to wonder if this was really the right place for us to plant our next church or if we should keep looking for another village.

The girls where having a good time…

but I wasn’t. I would like to tell you that I was full of faith that God was going to do a great work out there, but that was not the case. I was doubting, a lot. I kept thinking about the stronghold that voodoo has on the people there and how they were probably gospel hardened by repeated exposure to unbiblical forms of Christianity.

We waited around for a while and then I told my translator that maybe we will come back for Bible studies on Saturdays instead of Sundays.O, missionary of little faith I was. But little by little, bit by bit, God started sending people our way.

Heidi started teaching the song “Jesus loves the little children” and then I talked to them for a while about how God had sent us half way around the world to bring them very good news.

When it was all said and done, we had 28 in attendance and I felt foolish for my lack of faith in God. We encouraged them to invite family and friends back for the next week and then we took pictures so that we could work on remembering their names, which can be quite difficult to do.

We don’t know what God is going to do in this village, but we pray He pours out His grace in amazing ways in the lives of these people, delivering them from the power of darkness and translating them into the kingdom of His dear Son.

Orphanage update for March

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

I thought I would keep you updated at the end of each month on the progress of the orphanage we are building here. We spent the better part of January and February trying to gather as much information and wisdom as possible about having an orphanage before even drawing up the plans for our children’s home.

By God’s grace, we have now been able to start this new adventure and look forward to the day when young orphans, little boys and little girls, will be rescued from extreme suffering and given a place where they will be loved, cared for and ministered to in the gospel.

The orphanage is being built on the property that we purchased for the Bible Institute. The BI is to the left of the rocks that you see lining the left hand side of the picture. The spot for the orphanage has been marked off by the wooden posts in the distance.

The grassy area at the bottom of the property will undoubtedly become their little soccer field.

Even though cement is hard to come by right now, but we were able to get our hands on enough to make over 1,000 bricks so far that will be used for the foundation.

I drew up the plans for the Bible Institute myself, but we decided to hire an architect for the orphanage as it is much more complex than the two simple buildings that we have built so far.

So things are starting to come together. I just bought a bunch of shovels and picks and we are going to break ground on Monday! Thankfully we have had a couple of rains to soften up the ground and I can’t wait to get my gloves on get started digging!

Thank you so much for your partnership with us that is going to make this very important ministry possible.

Come with me to the village of Kpaha.

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

We knew that 2013 was going to be an exciting year, and it is quickly becoming one already. We are continuing the ministries of our first village church plant and the Bible Institute, while also branching out to start a new church among the unreached Lamba people and also starting a small orphanage on our Bible Institute property. I will give more updates on the orphanage construction with my next post.

We had more questions than answers about these new ministries, but we were confident that our Sovereign Lord would give us the wisdom that we needed, when we needed it. He has opened doors for us and allowed us to get connected to many people that have shed light on our path and helped us tremendously. God has provided us with both a great translator and a wide open door among the Lamba to start our first church.

I would like to take you on a little tour of the village where we are going to start that church in less than two weeks. It is among the largest unreached people group in Togo, the Lamba. The village is called Kpaha and it is another ten kilometers down dirt roads after traveling about thirty-five kilometers north of our house.

The most important thing to do when seeking the opportunity to plant a new church in a village is to talk to the village chief and get his permission to do so. Thankfully, we were able to meet with both the village chief and the chief of the region, “chef canton” and they were both glad to have us come out to their village and gave us their approval to start a new church among them. In the picture below, it was very important for the chef canton that our feet were in the picture too. I just thought that was kind of interesting.

We met them both at the local school where they graciously gave us permission to use one of the classrooms for our Bible Studies as we get started out there. The kids were having a big soccer game that day, but you can see the school in the background.

You see a lot of interesting things when you walk around in the villages.

I saw a lady making this long rope…

using this straw.

Wow! It takes several days for the whole process of cutting the straw and weaving the rope and she sold me the ball of rope for $2.20. Let’s just say that if lazy people exist in these villages, I’ve never meant one.

I next came across this young girl in her kitchen cooking up some pâte. It is basically just flour and water. Heidi has tried some before, but she was hardly able to get it down. Time did not permit me to try some. Maybe next time.

At each stop we take time to get to know the people a little bit, learn about their life and share the gospel with them too. At the next stop, I saw another young girl picking fruit from a tree with a long pole and I asked her if I could try my hand at it too. It was not easy to snag the right fruit with the hook shaped end of the very long pole. I enjoyed trying something new, and they got a kick out of the white guy having trouble doing what they do every day with ease.

After talking to these villagers for a moment, I noticed that the young boy had caught a bunch of frogs and was drying them out on his roof before eating them. Did I ever explain why I do not eat village food? I know the missionary prayer, “Lord, where you lead me, I will follow, what they feed me, I will swallow.” But I have never prayed that prayer and do not intend to.

Now take another look at the picture and notice the clay pot to the left of the picture. Any idea what that is? A fetish for their voodoo worship. They pour the blood from the chicken sacrifices into the pot and also put the feathers on the outside. That’s why we are planting a church among these people. God in heaven deserves the worship that they are currently giving to their false gods.

This last picture was of a very well spoken man that I talked to for a long time about the gospel. He had lots of reasons why he should reject this “white man’s religion” and why he should not reject his ancestor’s religion. I felt like I was living out my years of studying apologetics and I guess I was.

There was a strange sense of confidence that filled me while trying to answer his reasons to refuse the gospel. Even though this man seemed so unwilling to believe the gospel, I know he is no match for the overwhelming grace of God and the awesome power of the omnipotent Holy Spirit. I look forward to speaking with him again and prayerfully sharing the good news with you that he has accepted the good news that I’m sharing with him.

Planes, trains and automobiles. Well, not exactly.

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

Togo is a very poor country, that much is clear. I can hire a mason to do back breaking work all day and give him the equivalent of $4 and he will be very grateful for it and ask me if there is more work that he can do. Just this morning, my doorbell rang at 6:45 with another mason wanting work making bricks for the orphanage. I told him to talk to my head mason to see if he will hire him or not.

Because the people are very poor, only a very small number of people have vehicles. Most people pay a moto taxi to get around or find a way to buy an inexpensive little moto that is more like a glorified moped. This moto goes new for about $800.

We always get a chuckle out of all of the things that we see people carry on their motos. Just the other day, I saw four adults riding on one moto! The driver looked like he was siting on the gas tank! I’ve seen cows transported in small cars, but another way to transport a bovine is to cut it up first and then have your passenger carry it’s head on his head!

His buddy had the rest of the animal on his bike, it looks like they were headed to the restaurant. Bon appétit!

So the lack of vehicles here brings me to this past Saturday morning. My good pastor friend, Moussa, called on me to assist the church by transporting the body of the recently deceased mother of a church member. So I showed up at the carpenter’s shop at 5:30AM and picked up the casket before heading over to the morgue to get the body and then to the family’s house for the funeral service.

When we left the family’s house thirteen people got into my truck with the casket to head to the cemetery. My poor tires were not handling the weight well, so I asked two people to get out and wait for us to return after the burial or pay a moto taxi to get to the cemetery. While they started the graveside service, I aired up the tires and was then able to take fifteen people back to the house where they spent more time with the family.

There are no domestic flights in Togo. They do have train tracks, but no working trains and relatively few vehicles. So it’s not exactly planes, trains and automobiles. It’s more like motos everywhere and a few vehicles, that also act as hearses when needed.

Thankful for the little things, like water.

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

When I decided to start this blog several months ago, my goal was to help family, friends and ministry partners feel better connected to what is happening in our lives and ministries here in Togo. These blog articles would range from things like new efforts at reaching unreached people, like the Lamba, with the gospel to little things like getting “arrested” in Ghana for an expired fire extinguisher. Today I thought I would mention how our strange water supply works here and how thankful that we are when “the tanks are full.”

For some unknown reason the water company only sends water out to our house during the night and unfortunately that is not every night. When we first got here, we knew that we needed to buy some water tanks that could be filled during the night so that we would have water during the day. We bought one tank and then soon figured out that was not enough, so we bought another, and then another. Now we have two tanks on the ground and one on top of the house.

We decided to buy a pump too that would pressurize the water for the house as the water pressure was pitiful without it. The problem comes when the water company goes several nights without sending any water and then the tanks dry up. We can tell when this is happening and we go into rationing mode, i.e. taking military showers and holding off on doing laundry or washing the truck.

One other problem with the lovely water company is how the dirty the water has been of late. We take advantage of the times when the tanks run dry to scrub them out, but when the water comes back on, the tanks get dirty in a hurry.

In an attempt to deal with the dirty water, my plumber found us a filter in town. The filter is trying it’s best, but it is not quite up to the task. I called him today and asked him if there are any better filters around and he is going to see what he can come up with.

Thankfully that dirty filter is only the first line of defense and not the only one. The water gets filtered again as it comes into our house and then we fill up our Katadyn filters for any water that we want to drink. From there the water goes into a water cooler or to about twenty-five 1.5 liter water bottles that we can refrigerate and also have on hand for when the water runs out.

Living in Togo teaches you to be grateful for the little things in life, like having constant clean water. Hopefully we are learning the lesson well (no pun intended).

The people have Jesus, but not his gospel.

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

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.

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?

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Jonathan Huff

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.

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.

THE HUFFS IN TOGO

Tag Archives: Togo