All Church Retreat Worship Time

2007_ACR 2
Uploaded by emersonstogo

This year's All-Church Retreat was a great success! Kabiye Christians from all over the region descended on the village of Soumdina Po Wayi for 2 days of worship, teaching, and fellowship. We were blessed by their enthusiasm and passion, and we thank God that He is building up His kingdom among the Kabiye!

Welcome to Our Togo Life!

Emerson_Togo_Life
Uploaded by emersonstogo

Here's a small glimpse of our daily life in Togo...you'll have to come visit to get the big picture!

April The Chef

My kitchen skills are improving and I'm gaining confidence as the chef for our family. Yes, those are elephants on the top of my chicken potpie. Just to give you a little idea what went into this meal...here's the way it works: First, have houseworker make pie crusts. Secondly, cook entire chicken, wait for it to cook, wait for it to cool, pull the chicken off the bones and cut into bite sized pieces. Next, follow recipe from cookbook (I actually bought frozen peas and carrots in Ghana) - oh but wait, you can use the water that you boiled the chicken in for the can of chicken broth the recipe calls for so don't throw out the water when the chicken is done. In fact, put the rest of the "chicken water" in containers and freeze it for future recipes. After all that's done and you're sweating because the oven and the stove have completely taken over any cool air in your kitchen (remember, no AC in the kitchen...I'm sure some of you remember days like these), you wait for your masterpiece to become golden in color. Then you grab your bottles of pop, bottle opener, and enjoy a yummy dinner with your family.

This is the house that Brett built.

Yes, this is the petite maison (little house) that Brett built for our air conditioner that keeps our bedroom cool at night. It is a split unit and the outside part sits on the rood exposed to all sorts of weather conditions (ok, mostly just heat and rain). Now our little AC has a shady place to rest during the day and a dry place to enjoy during the rainy season. I think AC is going to be very happy here.

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you to everyone that sent us packages around Valentine's day...they all arrived this week! We were blessed in abundance with real Mac n' cheese, gatorade, cake and cookie mixes, toddler snacks, candy, lotions, magazines, and toys. The best part was they were all surprises, we didn't know anyone was sending us packages. Thanks to everyone who contributed items or helped ship the boxes to us. We are truly blessed to have people who love us like family!

Africa Moment #4

Enough said...

It's All In The House!

Sorry for the delayed post...we've been without internet for a day or so.

Here's some pictures from the unloading process that began at 7 AM Monday morning: Yes, they really carried most of the boxes on their heads like this!

This was the last item...and it was only 7:45!
Lots of work ahead of us.
Our houseworker, Antionette, was just as excited as we were.

It's Here!!!

The container is just sittin' out in front of our house, waiting to have it's treasures revealed. It's going to be hard to sleep tonight knowing that a big metal Christmas present is waiting for us in the morning...

Container Update

I'm back from Lome' after a meeting with the man who is handling the import of our container. It was a good meeting overall, and I learned that the container is going to be up here in Kara this weekend, probably on Saturday. This means that we can start getting settled in and moving towards a more normal life, and for that we are thankful!

The bad news is that we are going to have to pay alot more money for the container than we originally thought. The contents of our container have a declared value of about $6,500, and as a registered church organization, we are required to pay only a 10% import tax (it's normally 25% for household goods). HOWEVER, the Togolese government very recently passed a law declaring that all 20 foot containers like ours automatically have a value of $30,000, even if it's filled with nothing but toilet paper. Bummer for us! If you do the math, you can see that this new law changes our bill drastically. They made the change because a missions organization, which shall remain nameless, tried to claim that their container was only worth $30,000 and the Lome' Port Authority later found out that it was worth well over $100,000. Needless to say, this did not make them happy. Thanks guys!

So we are going to be very hard pressed to come up with the cash we need to pay the customs agents when they arrive in Kara this weekend, but we will begin praying that God will continue to provide, and we would ask that everyone please pray with us...

Our Container

PRAISE GOD!!! We found out today that our container has arrived in Togo. It will still be several days (maybe weeks) before we can get it out of the port up and up to us in Kara. Join us in praying for that process as it can sometimes be a difficult one. Brett will be driving down to Lome (the capital) to begin that work sometime this next week.

Nestor Revisited

In my previous post about my friend Nestor from the village of Legue Legue, I talked about how I looked forward to spending more time with him. God has provided in the form of bi-weekly teaching trips to Legue with David Reeves, one of our teammates here in Kara.

Nestor's health seems to be declining; he has a leg injury that gives him alot of pain, and he seems to be very low on energy. I took him some ibuprofen for his leg 2 weeks ago, and he was glad to receive it, but I could tell that he is discouraged by his current state of health.

Nestor's wife is a Christian, and she comes to all of the teaching times we have. Today I had David ask her in Kabiye (she doesn't speak French) if Nestor would come to the teaching times if they were closer, and she said yes. For our next visit, I hope to encourage David to move the meeting somewhere closer to Nestor's house since he doesn't have much use of his legs. He has been a nominal Christian since the beginning, but the Spirit tells me that he can be much more if he is shown more love and more attention is given to his problems.

Don't get me wrong; Nestor is a very needy person who can often be manipulative and sneaky in trying to get what he wants, but I just can't help it. My heart is full of compassion for him! I want him to know God in a way that is intimate and more than just a one way, "God what can you do for me and my problems?" relationship.

Please pray for Nestor and the rest of the village of Legue Legue. They are a struggling church, and they need God's Spirit to encourage them and bring them into deeper relationship with the Almighty. They may be hard to love at times, but that just means we need to love them that much more. Love knows no boundaries, no limits, and it does not play favorites. I commit to try and love Nestor and the people of Legue Legue just as God has loved me...

Africa Moment #3

I wonder what the going rate for Jesus is these days...probably out of our price range...

France to Africa

France to Africa
Uploaded by emersonstogo

Here is a short video of our travels from France to Togo. This is just a brief summary; a full length video would be much more eventful!

Village of Hope

Yesterday we spent the day at the Village of Hope, a Church of Christ organization about an hour outside of Accra, Ghana. It's known mostly as an orphanage, but they also have other thriving ministries, including a K-9 school (soon to be K-12) and a medical clinic. We first met Fred Asare, the director of VOH, in Montgomery last year when he and his wife Faustina were on a fundraising trip. They are wonderful people and perfect for the roles that God has called them to. We also got to finally meet Tommy Drinnen, who we had been just missing crossing paths with for some time now. He is a great guy, and that assessment was only enhanced when he loaned us the first four seasons of "24" on DVD! Caden got to spend some time with the kids in the 2 and 3 year old classes at the school. He jumped right in and started playing blocks with the 2 year olds. They were fascinated by his white skin and smiley face, and a good time was had by all.We look forward to continuing our relationship with the great people at Village of Hope. Having them down near Accra gives us more friends close by, and it makes West Africa feel just a little bit smaller...

Africa Moment #2 (We think there might be alot of these to come...)

Tonight our night guardian stormed into our bathroom (at our request) and bludgeoned a cute but intolerable mouse to death with the toilet brush. Then he laughed, accepted our thanks, and took the mouse outside. We are consciously choosing not to speculate as to what he might have done with it after that...

Africa Moment #1

Today I had to shoo away 7 head of sheep who were grazing near the front door of the post office before I could check my mail...

Just a Friendly Reminder...

...to pray for our container as it makes it's way to our new home. Brett took these pics on the mountain pass near Kara last week when he and David were heading down to Lome. Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon sight to see!

The Time Has Come

Our time in Albertville is quickly coming to an end. On January 3rd, we will board the train and head to Paris where we'll spend the night before flying to Accra, Ghana. We will be in Accra for a few days as well as Tabligbo (home of missionary friends) and Lome in Togo. We have several things to take care of in the "big" cities before traveling north to our new home in Kara. We hope to post soon after our arrival so everyone will know we made it safely. Until then, please be praying for our travels...espcially with a 14 month old. After 3 years of "traveling", our journey has finally brought us to our destination...Africa. Praise God!

We're Finished!!!

Finals. Are. OVER!!! Yep, we made it through our semester of French with flying colors. We're not fluent or anything, and we know that our time as students of the French language is far from over, but God has blessed us with what we need for right now.

Language learning is such a funny thing; different people learn in totally different ways, and we are perfect examples of that. April can tell you anything you want to know about grammar or vocabulary, but Brett can speak with a lot more fluency and confidence. The two will even out eventually, but for right now, we are the perfect complements to each other, just like always. It's not up to us anyways, because language is not a possession to be acquired by our money and hard work; it is a gift that is the Lord's to give, and we thank Him for what He has given us so far....

We'll get our grades on Friday and if they're good, we might just post them :)

The Blessings of Church Family

Yesterday we watched worhsip services at GracePointe via webcam. To "be" there really was an amazing blessing! At the end of service, our webcam video was put up on the big screen, and our church family was able to see and hear us LIVE! I think just seeing Caden sent people into tears...After the service, people could come up to the webcam and say hi to us, and we saw it and heard it in real time. This was the best Christmas present we could have received, and it filled our hearts at a time when we really needed it. Thanks to my brother, Chad, and all the other GP'ers who made it happen. We love you!

We leave for Togo on January 4th, a little over 2 weeks from today. We are sad to leave France, but beyond excited to be in with our teammates in Togo, exactly where we have wanted to be for months and years now. We love it when a plan comes together, and God's plans always do. Peace!