pizza by the river

With us getting ready to leave in January for our 6 month stateside, we realized that we did not have much time left together as a Songhai team this year. Our supervisors, Brad & Sally, are heading home for the holidays to be with their family & give their oldest daughter away in marriage to Mr Bobby Essler (a former student of ours). By the time they return, we'll already be in the States! So for our final team get-together, we packed up, headed to the river & had a wonderful evening of fellowship & brick oven pizza!


What better way to start an evening by the river than a little time in the boat trying to catch some fish?


Sally, the fabulous chef, works hard on rolling out the dough for our pizzas.


Brad has the lovely job of placing the pizzas into the burning fire. With this brick oven, the pizzas take only a few minutes to cook because the flames are so hot!


Randy got the privilege of having the first pizza out of the oven. He didn't wait on anyone to dig in!


Look at that deliciousness!


Yummy pizza, bottled cokes, great company, beautiful view, semi-cool weather, less than 10 mosquito bites ... a great evening indeed!

Ibrahim gets it

The Gospel comes with consequences. We, who have been purchased by the blood of Christ, understand this. The cost of discipleship, the dying to sin, the implications of the Gospel on everything from our speech to our attitude is countless. These consequences are realized when we truly believe the Gospel is exactly what it claims to be.

I write this because of one of these consequences that Ibrahim has come to understand. We were talking about Jesus’ words at the end of Luke when a resurrected Christ explains to his disciples that from the Mosaic Law to all of the writings of the prophets, they were all writing about Him.

This is especially important for someone with an Islamic background to understand. In their faith, each prophet has a time or period. In that time, god-fearers should follow that prophet. In other words, those living in the time of Moses should follow him. This is how they explain Jesus as a prophet, a very good one in fact, whose time has nonetheless passed. Understanding that all the prophets were pointing to Christ as the Alpha and Omega is critical in understanding Christ Biblically for the Muslim background believer.

So as Ibrahim and I were talking through this he asked a very logical question. He said, “So what about people like Abraham and Moses who lived before Christ? Are they in hell?” This showed that he understood one must have salvation in Christ to be saved. I quickly flipped to Hebrews to talk about how these faithful men looked forward and believed in Christ.

As I was sitting there ready to move on, Ibrahim’s face changed. I asked him if he didn’t understand something. Quite the opposite. He was coming face to face with a consequence of the Gospel. He looked at me and said, "All of my family and friends who have died are in hell.”

Here sat this illiterate, still relatively new, believer who understood something on a personal level that remained merely on a theological level for me. Many seasoned believers have not reached this level of maturity as they rationalize an Anti-Great Commission attitude claiming God must save those who’ve never heard or He must save those who are faithful people who just have the terminology wrong.

Ibrahim REALLY believes that no other name saves but Christ. Ibrahim REALLY believes those who don’t know Christ will spend eternity in a real place called Hell. Ibrahim REALLY believes the Gospel, no matter how hard the consequences.

After a few seconds Ibrahim looked at me and said, “But that’s changing now, isn’t it? My family is changing history.”

May we all be ready and willing to face the consequences of the Gospel message.

it's a ...

BOY!! That's right ladies & gents, we are having ourselves a little boy! His name will be Luke Cleveland Phillips. To give a little background on the name, we decided early on that we wanted our children to know where their names came from. So we agreed that we would give each child one Biblical name and one family name. Isabelle's name comes from my great-grandmother and Ruth, of course, comes from the Bible. For Luke, his first name obviously is the Biblical name and his middle name is from my great-grandfather. Mark likes to think that we named him Luke so he can say, "Luuuuke, I am your faaaaaather." Others may think that we are now "completing the Gospels," so to speak, in Mark's family with his brother & nephew being named Jon & Matthew. Nope, as cute as both of those are, those didn't factor in with the name at all.

People have also been asking us are we excited? scared? Yes & yes! Yes we are excited to have another child but we are also scared because this is another responsibility on our hands. Let me clarify that a little further ... another God given responsibility on our hands to make sure this little fella grows in the wisdom & stature of the Lord. That's a heavy responsibility & one we don't take lightly. So, naturally, it sometimes scares us to think of having not one, but two, children to raise!

In terms of the boy factor, we are both excited & scared, too. When we found out that we were pregnant with Isabelle, Mark was terrified! He didn't know a thing about girls or girly stuff - playing with dolls, dressing up, putting bows in hair, etc, etc. It was all new territory for him. But as soon as he held her in his arms, he was in love and he now knows the wonderful gift of a Daddy/daughter relationship. So it is with me & this boy thing. I am excited, of course, but scared too. The whole cars, trucks, mud & guns thing is all new territory for me. I don't think "blue," I think "pink." But it doesn't mean that I'm not excited, as I think some people have misunderstood me. It's just new territory for me & a new adventure, but one I'm very excited to embark upon.

My sister thinks I'm weird for thinking like this but, let me just tell you, boys & girls are VERY different! VERY. Isabelle has never shot pee across the room or my face, for one. After being in student ministry for 6 years, I know, know, know there are vast differences. Us ladies liked to go have coffee or sit inside the house & chat til 4 am. We liked to get dressed up & paint our nails and our idea of being adventurous was toilet papering someone's house, all the while giggling uncontrollably about it because we were so scared of getting caught. Mark & the fellas, on the other hand, would be outside making up games with soccer balls, throwing small balls of flame or shooting pellets at each other, having pizza eating contests at Cici's or daring each other to down an entire bowl of pico de gallo at Puerto Vallarta. Fancy coffee, inside, nails, chit chatting - that's me. Flame ball, eating contests, not much on talking - this is the new adventure I'm in for!

that's my girl

I'm sure these might find their way onto Izzy's blog but they were too cute for a proud dad to pass up.

Enjoy

There have been many moments in my life I've thought "oh man, if I'd just had a video camera to capture that moment for all time!" Thankfully, I don't have to say that about this moment...




Thanks Richard and Shawn for a great week of ministry! We had a blast and the people of Ayorou will remember you forever!

Richard and Shawn

Living Hope has been such a unique partner with our ministry in Ayorou. They first came in 2007 and helped as we laid a foundation of prayer. A team then came in 2008 and was part of our mass seed-sowing effort. Now, in 2009 they've sent two teams to disciple our believers. Richard was part of the 2008 team and couldn't believe how much a village could change in one year!

The guys did an awesome job and our believers were faithful to attend the sessions. Living day to day means they literally left everything to come and hear these lessons about their new faith.

As the pictures will show, these guys got to experience Ayorou in all of its glory!

Richard and Shawn got to see and even work a little on Ibrahim's millet farm.


The guys taught 2 lessons each day. Our believers came anxious to learn. They then went out each afternoon alongside Richard and Shawn to distribute cassettes in their areas of town.


We had 7 people pray to receive Christ during the week. These were all fruit from our believers sharing with their families and friends.


On their last night, Hamsatou cooked a delicious meal for all of our believers.


"hmmm, there's probably no amoebas in there...right?"


What trip to Ayorou isn't complete without meeting Nadia, the queen of Ayorou.


The Songhai men hold hands as a sign of friendship, 3 years later and it still creeps me out but Shawn said this was his favorite part of the culture.


Richard and Shawn showing Ibrahim how they roll in the BG!


Richard and Shawn with Hamsatou


At the river with some of our male believers after a baptism.


Richard said something about how American donkeys were so much cooler than Ayorou donkeys. One thing led to another....


The trip ended with a giraffe visit.

farming

This year I've been able to go to the farm with Ibrahim multiple times each week. Our friendship has grown so much during this time as we spend 4-5 hours working and talking. Thanks to cassettes and an amazing tool called the Proclaimer, we have listened to many books of the New Testament while we worked.
Farming here looks like it did centuries ago. It is hard and slow work during the hottest months of the year. Here's some pics from the farm.


This is the before picture. One day of work would usually clear an area 3-4 times the size of this little patch.


This is the after picture. Using a 6-8 inch spade-like blade on the end of a long stick, the entire farm is plowed 2-3 times.


These are our on-the-site job inspectors. Parker brought her friend Houray (Ibrahim's wife) and their daughter Nafisa for a surprise inspection!


Ibrahim and I received a B+ for our work. This was enough for us to strike a pose!

August Newsletter

isabelle's big announcement

That's right ladies & gents ... Isabelle is going to be a big sister on or around February 25, 2010. The Phillips family is going from 3 to 4. Izzy's little bro or sis is already a very active little thing. We went to have an ultrasound done yesterday and he/she was moving around so much that the doctor couldn't get a good reading to hear the heart beat. We, however, were okay with this because we saw for ourselves that we've got a healthy baby on the way ... following in his/her sister's footsteps!