Just a quick update.

Yes, I made it back to Cotonou for Thanksgiving dinner. I traveled all day by bus in time to pick the boys up from school and make it home for dinner.

Moise and Norbert made it back okay as well. I’m really impressed with their leadership and how they are handling the growth that has been occurring in Benin . We’ve taken some risks over the past few years, but God is rewarding those decisions made in a fog of uncertainty. Many times I’ve had to trust when there was every reason to doubt. That’s hard in the moment, but a blessing to look back on how God works out the craziest scenarios for His glory.

Moise and I spent a couple of hours this past week just talking—no business—just talking. He said that in the past he’s heard other pastors or leaders complain about their situation or ministries and wondered why. He’s always approached things with a positive attitude. Yet, this year, he said, has been a rough one—issues with a couple of local churches, trying to cross cultural bridges with visiting teams, recurring illnesses in his little girl, his wife’s miscarriage, etc. He still finished making his point with a smile, though it was a hard-earned one.

One of the best things about this recent conversation was that there was complete honesty there. It’s hard to get to this point in a relationship between missionary and local leadership. I’m glad we’ve come to this point, but it’s also sad. As a “catalytic leader” it means that our presence is no longer as necessary as it was once. We don’t know what this next year will bring for us, but we’re confident that God will continue to use guys like Moise to impact their country for the sake of the Gospel.

I also had the chance to talk to a couple of Beninese pastors about what “grace” means in their language. In southern Benin , in one of the languages spoken there, grace (“fenu”) is related to the word for the “first fruits” (“fe”) of the harvest. In northern Benin , one of the languages uses a word (“barika”) that means something like a grace period, kind of like catching an undeserved break. In both languages, it’s a common word used in a variety of ways, just like “grace” in English. I just finished reading a book on grace by the late Thomas Langford, a former provost at Duke University . He simply defined grace as “God present”—quite fitting for this time of year as we celebrate the advent of the Christ child.

Side note:

If you’re planning to send boxes to us for any reason, please follow these instructions:

Don’t wrap anything in the box, because we will be asked to unwrap them anyway by the customs officials at the post office. (Yes, they make us open our mail in front of them, and they rummage through it before allowing us to take it. Yes, it’s a huge invasion of privacy and very degrading when they make rude comments about the contents, but it’s their country not ours.) On the form you fill out at the post office noting the contents of the box, write “gifts” or “donation” and “$0” for the value of the items since they are gifts. If you put a dollar figure, the custom officials will expect us to pay 20% or more of the listed value for the items. In their eyes, the items in the box are automatically considered goods entering the country for resale unless they are clearly stated as only being gifts and considered to have no monetary value. It can take eight days to three months for packages to arrive with no rhythm or reason as to why they arrive sooner or later. When the box arrives, we’ll let you know. Just stick a note inside the box with your E-mail address and we’ll contact you.

Prayer items:

• Pray for the boys who are in the midst of testing this week. Payton’s teacher was evacuated for a medical condition. She seems to be doing better. Pray for the family of the teacher at their school who died a few weeks ago from malaria. She was married and had a young child.
• Pray for our friend’s father who is undergoing open heart surgery (and because of other physical problems will have a rough go of it in recovery).
• Pray for the work in Benin and West Africa , there’s a lot going on in a lot of different places—pray that we all can keep up with what God’s doing.
• We have a missionary friend who lives near Omaha , Nebraska —he travels to West Africa and/or Benin every two or three months. I’m sure he is encouraged by people’s offers to pray for his safety while traveling in foreign lands. Who knew that those same people would need the same prayers just to go Christmas shopping at their local mall.
• Pray for the families effected by the senseless violence that takes place in our world.

“Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices! O night divine! O night when Christ was born! O night divine!”

He wasn’t born in the brightness of day, but in the middle of the darkest night. That’s when He came to be with us.

Hope you have an Advent season filled with the bright hope of a blessed Child who came just when we needed Him most.

Blessings from Benin,

Matt

We’ve had an opportunity to celebrate this holiday season by singing carols and baking cookies. We are also thankful for all of the Christmas cards, boxes, and birthday cards for Sonya and I, especially from our family and LINKS churches. It has been good to read the Christmas e-mail newsletters from friends around the world. We also had the opportunity today to celebrate a Happy Tabaski.

Tabaski is for goats-sheep-rams what Thanksgiving is for turkeys. For most Beninese it is a day off from school or work. For Muslims, it is Eid ul-Adha, or Tabaski as it is called in West Africa —the “Feast of the Sacrifice.”

The Feast of the Sacrifice is one of the largest celebrations of the year in Islam. It coincides with the Hajj—where 2 million Muslims are making pilgrimage to Mecca this week. The meaning of the feast concerns Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Ishmael, according to the Qu’ran. The Hebrew Scriptures tell a different story in Genesis chapter 22:1-19.

We don’t talk much about animal sacrifices any more. In the culture of the Hebrews it was important. The idea of sacrifice gave much significance to Jesus’ death on the cross, and the meaning of His death is spelled out through the imagery of sacrifice in the New Testament book of Hebrews. For West Africans, animal sacrifice is quite common today. In fact, the appearance of avian flu in Benin this month creates a concern, according to a recent article from Reuters, among voodoo priests and priestesses that regularly sacrifice chickens as well as goats in their ceremonies. Link to the article: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL1720456620071217?sp=true

The slaughtering of a ram is a main focus of Tabaski. In Senegal a cell phone company or a bank gave away Tabaski rams for a promotion—sign up for an account and earn the chance to win a ram. So, Tabaski is why we woke up this morning to five rams in our neighbor’s garage. The garage smelled very much like a state fair, and still does this evening. We have to walk through their garage to get to stairs leading to our office-guesthouse located above their house. While an electrician worked on our generator in the guesthouse, I watched our neighbors slaughter the five rams on the street in front of the house. I didn’t stick around to see them finish the process, but some other neighbors around the corner already had three rams “dressed” and hanging in front of their house by 11:00 a.m. One significant aspect of this sacrifice is that the Muslim making the sacrifice should give a significant portion of the sacrifice to the poor. I wonder how we could incorporate the idea of sacrifice into the Advent season . . .

We’ll send out a proper Christmas newsletter, but I just wanted to paint a picture of  what the holiday season is like in this part of the world.

Happy holidays from Benin,

Matt