Being Accepted

I spend a lot of time in different villages visiting different people and sharing Bible stories.  This last week I though I would spend a little bit more time in the village we are actually a part of – even that can be confusing as we are kind of located on the edge of two villages… although recently the boundaries were changed so we do now know which one we are officially a part of!

At the end of last week I spent a good few hours visiting the group of blokes who are building a new mosque on the edge of the village.  We just sat in the shade of the tall grass and spoke about culture and life in different countries. I left having a sense of greater sense of place with this group of people.  Don’t get me wrong, the gap is still immense but bit by bit it’s more natural for me to hang with them and vice versa.

This morning I went for an early visit just to see what was happening down in the same village… one younger fella pointed me to the back of the village and told me all the blokes were down there and that I should go visit. I came across them all having a meeting with the chief and shehe.  I was invited to sit and listen to the discussions as they went around the circle.  The were busy discussing various points of fasting and community sharing as they all gear up for Ramadan in a few days.  They also discussed the new Mosque building and the financing and how this might happen… it was a privilege to be invited in and given the ability to sit and observe and listen – there was no special treatment, it was just real life in a Yawo village.