Tany - Nov 27

We have the last days here in Burkina carefully planned to see as many people as we can before we leave this Friday night.  The kids and I had thought ahead to this visit, thinking of who we wanted to see and what we wanted to do, and by Friday we'll have completed the last things that were were on our list!
One of the most important things for me was to be able to visit with people from the Mennonite churches in Ouaga, Bobo and Orodara.  I already wrote about our first Sunday in Ouaga and our second Sunday in Orodara.  Last Friday we spend an afternoon and night in Bobo, and the church there planned a special supper and evening service for us which was very moving.  There was again opportunity for others to share about what Jeff and rest of our family meant to them and also for me to share about the past year and a half.  A number of young men that spent time with us in the Ouaga church and residence building are now in Bobo, as well as Pastor Siaka's family, so it was very meaningful to hear them share memories of how Jeff had touched their lives.  And then this past Sunday, the Ouaga church organized a "Question/Answer" evening.  They had many questions and concerns about how our family has adjusted since Jeff's death and about how we are doing financially and morally - again a very honest and meaningful evening with many friends.  The Burkinabe are very good at organizing opportunities for this kind of deep sharing in general, but especially the young adults with which we worked most closely are very honest and sincere in their desire to hear and learn from others' experiences and share openly of their own difficulties.  I really appreciate this about our friends here.
On a more shallow note, I have eaten all of the favorite Burkinabe dishes that I was looking forward to, with Alima and Mimi bringing us a bean and rice dish on Thursday and Brigitte bringing us one more toe dish on Friday, to eat together.  I was thinking that we'd have to get out to a Burkinabe restaurant just down the road for some toe, but we'll have been invited to people's houses more than half a dozen times to eat toe with them, so I'm fully satisfied.
And I've always loved the busy places here in Ouaga, such as markets in the morning and driving through the chaotic yet amazingly-well-organized streets and I've gotten to this many times as well.  It's been really great that we've been able to borrow Joel and Andi's car on most days to get around and see a lot more people than we would have been able to otherwise.
And lastly, I just love the relational way that the Burkinabe people have of interacting, doing daily chores (preferring to work beside the street rather than in the privacy of their own courtyard) living.  It just feels right to me to place so much value on other people and relationships and less importance on material things, time and personal schedules, and oneself.  So I have fully enjoyed just "being" here, where we've learned so much in past years.
In writing about what the kids were looking forward to during this visit, someone asked me what I was looking forward to.  So these are some of the things that we've experienced here in the last weeks, that are what I was most looking forward to.