"Will it be enough?"

In my post of August 28, I explained the hardships faced annually by many Senegalese subsistence farmers whose first fall harvests often aren't sufficient to meet the needs of their families.

In this photo of our Elementary Chapel service earlier today, you can see the stack of bags of rice and beans--over 2-½ tons--collected by our K-12 students. Tomorrow, a small group of students and staff will deliver the staples to suffering villagers.

"Will it be enough?" asked one of my fourth graders. I had to be honest. "No," I told her, "it won't feed everyone, but it will help."

If you would like to help with similar efforts, send a donation to WorldVenture / 1501 W. Mineral Ave. / Littleton, CO 80120 / Attn: Special Project #6403-933 Famine Relief, or you can give online at www.WorldVenture.com.

Spiritual Power, not Electrical Power

In my past four years here, the months of August through November have been quite frustrating because of the almost daily power outages. (The first year was the worst—I was teaching computers. Imagine doing that with no electricity!)

This school year has been different. So far, we’ve lost power on campus only a handful of times, and for only a half hour or so each, instead of the typical 6-10 hour outages. Nearby neighborhoods, on the other hand, continue to go without power for extended periods. Though it's impossible to say for sure why, one plausible theory is that a high government official has moved into our neighborhood, and is making sure his home has consistent electrical service.

Well, a letter I read today indicates someone even more powerful has "moved into the neighborhood." I'll copy in portions of the letter below, but for it to make sense, you need a little background.

For about a third of our students, DA is home for three quarters of the year; they live in dorms on or near campus while their parents serve as missionaries in more remote parts of West Africa. Each dorm has a set of dorm parents—a married couple who care for the students during the school year. Dorm parents get one night off each week, and someone else from school fills in for them.

Dan (our middle school/high school principal) and his wife, Patty (our second grade teacher), fill in as “dorm relief parents” for the middle school boys each Monday night. Following a Senegalese tradition, Dan and the boys drink a tea called attayah [uh-TY-uh], the brewing and drinking of which is the centerpiece of evening fellowship in Senegal. It is often prepared outdoors. To make their attayah gatherings even more fun, the middle schoolers hold theirs on the roof (houses in Senegal have flat roofs).

In a letter to the boys’ parents, this week, Dan described the “incredible thing” he witnessed in the dorm Monday night. I reprint exerpts here, edited somewhat for clarity.

On a normal Monday evening, I take the boys on the roof for attayah and a devotion. Last night was no different, except that one of the boys asked if we could have an extended prayer time on the roof after the devotion. . . . As we ended our time on the roof, the rains began to come down, and WOW, did it pour, and then the power went out.

Shortly thereafter, the boys came to me and asked permission to all sleep in the living room. They cited two reasons. (1) With the power being out, it was cooler and (2) they wanted to continue their time in prayer.

By 9:00 P.M., every boy was in the living room and it was pitch black. They began to pray. They prayed for each other, for DA, for their parents, for their parents’ ministries, for the administration, for their dorm parents, for the Senegalese people, for God to crush Satan’s power in Senegal. They prayed and prayed and prayed.

Then they began to pray one-on-one with each other; each boy going to all of his dorm mates. Several of them even prayed with and for me. I was absolutely blown away. At around 10:00 P.M., the power suddenly came back on. Several of the boys got up and turned off all the lights while the others continued to pray. . . .

They prayed for the Holy Spirit to empower them to share the Gospel and to give them the courage to love each other and everyone they came in contact with. They prayed for strength, they prayed for God’s armor, they prayed for the Holy Spirit to take control of their lives. . . . They prayed for over two hours!

. . . Your children are . . . a bright light in our lives. . . . They are a testament to your loving affection and guidance. They are a testament to the power of the Holy Spirit. . . . They are a testament to what young boys can do for a world in need of God’s love. . . .

May God bless your day as your boys have blessed my night!

In His Service,

Dan

DA Wins Award

DA won an Exemplary School Program award from one of our accrediting organizations, the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), for our innovative and effective Student Outreach program. The following description (co-authored by yours truly) summarizes the program. Though the article looks long here, it's actually fills only a single published magazine page. And it's pretty inspiring.

Imagine . . .

• You pour a foundation, make 1,600 bricks by hand, lay the walls, raise the roof, and worship with local Christians in the church you just built for them.
  
• You visit several villages, presenting skits and puppet shows, and starting children’s Bible clubs.
  
• You play soccer with a high school team, then present the school with dictionaries, textbooks, and soccer uniforms.
  
• You hold two performances of mime and multi-language music, followed by an
  evangelistic film and a call to freedom in Christ by a local pastor.

Now imagine . . . you are in high school, you and fellow students did all of this, and more, in one weekend, and you financed it yourselves.

This real-life scenario gives only a taste of the varied ways that Dakar Academy DA) high school students use their diverse gifts to minis­ter to people in Sénégal through DA’s innova­tive Student Outreach Program. Other facets of the program include monthly visits to an or­phanage; soap and shoe drives for local minis­tries to street kids; and friendship evangelism at a large French high school near our campus.

What makes this program remarkable? The answers to that question fall into the following four categories.

Strategic Breadth

My Skills Count: The variety of activities staged in a single weekend—manual labor, visual arts, performing arts, healthcare, sports—enables virtually any high school student to participate meaningfully.

Multiple Sizes Fit All: This variety also broadens the impact: if one aspect of the outreach doesn’t touch a particular villager, another one probably does.

Participation Depth

Here I am Lord, Send Me: Outreach week­ends attract more students than can participate; we consistently must turn volunteers away. One recent outreach involved 87 students—over 66% of the high school student body!

Pay as You Go: The program is self-supporting. They are funded by collections taken at DA’s Sunday morning worship services, attended by dorm students, some teachers, day students, and their families.

Chips Off the Young Blocks: The program’s vision is rubbing off on elementary students! A class of fifth graders who recently took a field trip to deliver Operation Christmas Child gifts to preschool children were proud to be doing something “like the big kids.” They realized that, though young, they can serve others for Christ.

Community Impact

Christian Identity: Students and staff from DA have built five churches in Sénégal. Beyond providing shelter for worship services, churches are a “24/7” symbol of Christian presence in the community. This strengthens local Christians’ identification with the body of Christ, and provides non-Christians with a visible reminder of the call to new life in Christ.

Spiritual Harvest: Sometimes fruit appears quickly: eight villagers chose to follow Christ during one outreach. Within weeks of another outreach, eighteen people had joined their village’s church—enlarging the congregation by more than fifty percent! Prayers for an end to drought brought the largest rains in 20 years.

Clearing the Path: The novelty of our students’ presence “in the bush” naturally attracts crowds. Their joy and generosity break barriers. Sénégalese children’s pastors report that our programs have opened doors for ministry in villages where previously they were not per­mitted to work.

Passing it On: Some DA teams have helped train Sénégalese Christian workers how to minister through puppetry and drama, extending the effect of our teams’ work.

Expanding Horizons

We’re grateful God is using us—teaching and equipping us to share the gospel across cultures. We are now developing partnerships with churches and schools in the U.S. and Europe, to help their students “catch” the vision, and extend the reach of the gospel in Sénégal.

May we be faithful and may God’s kingdom grow!

Photo Request

Have I ever given you copies of photos I've taken (especially of Africa), either by email or on CD? If so, please, please, please send copies of these photos back to me.

Why?

.

Because, when my laptop crashed last spring, I lost hundreds of photos documenting my life in Senegal, pictures that I had thought were being backed up daily to my school's server. I'm trying to reconstruct some of this record of my time here.

Thanks!

Famine Relief

As my previous post makes clear, I have no problem obtaining food; but that's not true for subsistence farmers in parts of Senegal this season.

North of Dakar, the rains came so late this year that the harvest failed, and some villages ran out of food for some of their livestock, losing them to starvation. Fortunately, the rains have begun, and surviving livestock can feed on the vegetation that is now growing. Meanwhile, some of the families' own food stocks are down so low that they eat only once a day.

How to Help. WorldVenture, one of Dakar Academy’s owning missions, has organized a relief effort to help these folks hold on until the harvest of the second planting, later this fall. If you'd like to help, you can send donations to WorldVenture / 1501 W. Mineral Ave. / Littleton, CO 80120 / Attn: Special Project #6403-933 Famine Relief. (You can also give online at www.WorldVenture.com.)

How Much Does it Cost to Live in Dakar? What Do You Eat?

These are two of the most common questions people ask me. Today, I'll give you a "taste" of the answer to both questions.

Good Eats. I usually have cereal and juice for breakfast. One lunch this week I had the Senegalese version of fast food. Neighborhood Senegalese restaurants fix one meal each lunchtime. You provide your own large (mixing) bowl, and for the equivalent of 50-75 cents US, they fill it with an enormous serving of a traditional, rice-based dish. Fish and rice on Monday, chicken and rice on Tuesday, etc. On Friday, I had the beef offering--mildly spiced fried rice with chunks of beef mixed in, topped with deliciously pickled vegetables.

Otherwise, I've been alternating among several dishes my cook prepared for me (she comes every Thursday): chicken in a hot tomato-mushroom sauce, meatless chili, pizza, and meatloaf, along with rice, couscous, pasta, whole wheat rolls, and canned corn. Plus cranberry scones. Fresh fish is also plentiful here. Jealous yet?

Where's the Kroger's? As for cost of living, I just took my first trip to Le Caddie (the neighborhood market, or marché--pronounced mar-shay) since my return to Dakar. It's a mom-and-pop shop a couple of blocks from campus, owned and operated by a delightful Lebanese couple. (Many of the middle-class business owners in Dakar are Lebanese.) What I bought and how much I paid will give you a feel for the availability and cost of western foods.

• 3 boxes of breakfast cereal (including 1 Kellog's Rice Krispies, 1 Quaker Cruesli, and 1 "Temmy's Bran Flakes," from Egypt)
• 2 1-litre boxes of juice imported from France
• 3 1-litre no-refrigeration-needed plastic bottles of skimmed milk from France
• 1 litre olive oil
• 3 28-oz cans of beans (white, red, black)
• 1 medium can of mushrooms
• 3 packages of facial tissues (Kimberly-Clark)
• 1 packet (200g) of butter (French)
• 1 pkg of napkins from the United Arab Emirates
• 1 box of brown (cane) sugar (France)
• 1 bag of white sugar, locally hand-packed in unlabeled bags
• 1 pack of fresh pita bread, hand-packed in unlabeled bags

Total Cost: 30,760 cfa (West African francs), or approximately $60.00 US

The Procedure Failed, but the Patient Survived

In my post of a few minutes ago, I forgot to thank all of those who have asked after my brother. Though doctors were unable to place a stent, medications dissolved the blockage in his artery. He is home, is recovering very quickly, and is grateful for everyone's concern and well-wishes.

Back "Home" in Dakar

Return Trip. I arrived in Dakar last Saturday night after one of the smoothest trips I've ever taken. Ironically, no one checked for my visa upon my return. Though I had my usual pre-return blues (they begin after 4 weeks back in the States), it's good to be back "home."

Teaching. I've just completed the 1st week of my 5th year teaching at Dakar Academy. I've always enjoyed the students here, but this appears to be the nicest crop yet. This semeseter, my responsibilities include:

• Elementary School music: grades K-5, meeting 2x per week for 30 minutes each
• Middle School music: grades 6-8, meeting 2x per week for 45 minutes each
• Chamber Choir: 9 high school students selected by audition, 2x per week for 45 minutes each.
• Overseeing Elementary Chapel (speaking and leading music, and finding others to do so)

This week I invented a musical game that the 3-6th graders really enjoyed.

Campus. The picture above is an old one, but shows an area of campus largely unchanged since I took it: the elementary school building (6 classrooms, a small kitchen, two bathrooms, and in the middle, the 2-story auditorium where I teach) and elementary playground.

Weather. The weather is always noteworthy here, even if it's weather as usual. As expected at this time of year, it's hot and humid. Thankfully, the power has stayed on for a whole week, so I've had the benefit of my new (used) air conditioner at night. It's also been cloudy. We had a welcome downpour today, wiping the dust off the leaves and washing much of the the humidity out of the air (and turning High School PE class soccer games into a mudbowl).

I would not be able to take this same picture today, because a new, 3-story classroom building covers the spot where I stood to snap the shot. In addition to the badly needed additional classroom space, the bottom floor of this new structure provides a great benefit: a shady, breezy, open area for lunchtimes and other large gatherings.

Birders Alert. I awoke to what I believe was the sound of an owl in the middle of the night earlier this week. A colleague thinks she saw one on campus recently. I've never seen an African owl, but perhaps I'll be able to post a picture of one here someday.

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Still in the US, still in the US, still in the USSA

Those old enough to remember such things will be able to deduce from from the title of this entry that I've been listening to Beatles albums lately.

I'm still in Michigan. I was to have left for Senegal on Tuesday Aug 7. Visa problems (long story) prevented my boarding the plane. After several phone calls to Dakar and several days of work by an Air France representative, we got things worked out, and my departure was rescheduled for Sunday, Aug 12, but...that afternoon, my brother came home from exercising with symptoms that sounded ominously similar to ones I had 22 months ago. I called 911, and he was rushed to the hospital, treated in transit for, yes, a heart attack.

He's back home now, doing well. He received excellent treatment, delivered cheerfully and professionally by University of Michigan Health System staff, and was himself a model patient. His prognosis is very good. Family, neighbors and other friends have been very supportive (both to him and to me). And, despite some frustration at being denied entrance to my first plane, I'm grateful I was still here 5 days later to recognize the symptoms, and I'm grateful it was a "minor" heart attack.

I am now scheduled to return to Dakar tomorrow (Friday the 17th), leaving him in the good hands of his daughter, who came from out of state, and other relatives and friends in the area.

When I arrive in Senegal Saturday evening, I will have missed the first two days of school, two days of annual orientation, and several days of last-minute prep. Fortunately, I often teach best when I'm improvising. I'm not looking foward to the heat and humidity, but hope it will help me lose some of the 30 lbs I've gained in the past 9 months!

I do look forward to using this blog to keep family and friends updated more often than I have in the past. Suggestions are welcome. (Yes, I know, add more photos. I'll work on that once I get settled in again in Dakar.)

First Blog Entry: This is a test of the Sappington Broadcast System...

Welcome to my blog, where I'll be posting occasional reflections on--and pictures of--my life in Senegal. I'm new to this, so it will take a while for me to develop features my family and friends will find helpful.

The photo above is of several friends at Dakar Academy--two of our guards, and one of our former teachers holding his youngest son. (Photo courtesy of Sara Lyn Page)