Why are we going to Senegal again?

Sunset over the Mediterranean 

Near the beginning of 2016 I had an informative and life changing conversation with my supervisor in Lebanon, where our family and had been working for the last 2.5 years. The conversation was about the fact that my skills are more frontline, than office administrative. The feeling was that I need to be with people and not stuck in an office. We talked about various options of where I could work in the Middle East North Africa Union that would better fit to my personality style. At the same time I was talking to my supervisor, LaRae was having a season of prayer at a women's conference in a country several hours flight away. She felt impressed to pray for my work, God answered her prayer in ways that we didn’t quite understand at the time. 

You see we had to leave a little girl in Senegal when we moved to Lebanon. She had lived with us for two years after her mother had died. We tried to adopt her, but found that Senegal has a law that states that if you already have a child you are unable to adopt another one without the President's approval. At the time little B was very much alive and with us. When my job changed we were forced to leave Senegal and sadly had to leave little Lika behind with some friends. LaRae felt that we should continue to do all we could to get her to come and live with us. I on the other hand felt that she was fine with our friends and that we could go on with our lives and that she would be ok. It wasn't that I didn't love her, but I saw that God had provided another family for her to be with and that He wanted us to work in the Middle East and North Africa.

Back to the conversation with my supervisor. I explained the above problem that we were having about Lika, he saw the need for us to be with Lika and that we should do whatever we could to be reunited. Up until this time I had found that most people agreed with me that Lika was fine where she was and that we should just leave her there. So to have someone whom I have a lot of respect for state that we should try and be reunited with Lika really made an impression. The more the conversation progressed the more we both wondered if the best way for this to work would be for our family to move back to Senegal to be with Lika. As it would be difficult to adopt her and bring her to Lebanon or to another country in the Middle East.

Following the conversation I did something that is difficult for me to do, I took a one week fast from Facebook. I wanted to think about the conversation with my supervisor and to spend time praying and thinking about what we should do. When I returned to Facebook after a week away I wrote a friend who was living in a French speaking West African country. The reason for writing him was to ask him for advice on how to be a self supporting worker in West Africa. I figured he and his family would have some good advice as they have been self supporting missionaries for the last 5 years. At the same time that I wrote him, he was talking to a young man whom he wanted to send to Senegal to get some training at an Evangelical agriculture school. He asked me some questions and asked if we could talk about work in Africa later in the day. After a few hours we spoke again, he and his wife shared that they were feeling God calling them to make a change in their work, yet still wanted to work in West Africa! They were very interested in working with us and had similar ideas to ours in what we wanted to do in the Lord’s vineyard. This was a huge answer to our prayers.

You see we had wanted to go self supporting while still in Senegal. Yet we had some pretty glaring problems. One of the first ones is that we did not have team. With this conversation it looked like that problem was being taken care of, especially since our friends have three kids near the ages of our children. The other problem we had was that while still in Senegal we had not yet finished paying off our student loans. We didn’t feel that it would be right for us to ask other people to pay for our loans. By God’s grace our the last loan payment was made around the time of the General Conference meetings in 2015. With my job in Lebanon I was able to learn many skills that will be helpful to our future work in Senegal. Before working in Lebanon I didn't have much experience with health education programs, after assisting several programs throughout the Middle East that was no longer a problem. I was also able to tap into health resources that I had no idea about before working in the Middle East. In addition to new skills we were able to connect with many people whom we didn't know before and who can help to advise us in our future work. 

The conversation in that office in Beirut was like a mother eagle pushing her eaglet out of the nest. We had promised God that we would work for Him and we had wanted to still work in Senegal. We had gotten comfortable in Beirut, the job was great, lots of travel, a nice car, apartment and amazing friends. To be honest we had started to forget about our dreams and ideas for Senegal. With the comfortable life in Beirut our ideas for Senegal were put on the back burner. But then after being pushed out of the nest and told to fly all the dreams came back. Its amazing how God works through so many ways to get us to work for Him and to push us in the way He wants us to go. 

Some have asked us what we want to do in Senegal or what our plans are. Honestly our plan is to go and to pray with a family friend who has dedicated her life to serving the people of Senegal. She has been basically on her own for many years doing what she can to educate about health. Our plan is to go and pray with her, plan with her, talk with her and see where God leads. Too often we make decisions in far away offices, or committee rooms. We think that we know everything about what needs to happen and yet in reality we know nothing. We have learned this lesson the hard way. We are going back to the simple face to face conversation method. We are putting God first and laying all at His feet knowing that He will lead and provide for all that we need. 

---Written by Boaz