A Sports Day for the Talibe

We are currently hosting a team of 16 from Belgium, from a UWM-related church in Huy ("wee"). A group from their sister church in Hudson, Ohio (The Chapel in Hudson) has been delayed, but will join them tomorrow.

They came in Thursday night and yesterday we spent the morning doing an orientation to Senegal. We had them do our "scavenger hunt," going out in the neighborhood across the street and buying fruit and making a phone call back to us. It helps folks take the edge off of their irrational fears.

In the afternoon they worked a couple hours hauling rubble from the apartment work site and painting fence posts and bed frames.

Today the group helped us hold a sports day for the talibé boys. At 9 AM we were running about in a panic setting up a theater for showing the Jesus film and arranging tables for artwork and putting away all the stuff that a large group of boys might break. The panic came from the fear that instead of 80 or so boys, we might be hosting 200. We had invited one school (dara), the largest, with about 80 boys associated with it. But last night the man who runs that school called to hint that perhaps it would be better to invite all of the others connected with us, all 6. He was worried that the others might think he was excluding them from a something and that they would be angry with him! Imagine. What could Jane say?

The only problem is that we had promised breakfast and games. What if all 200 came?

So we got ready and wondered what the Lord would do.

But by 10 there were still no boys! Well, 5 to be exact.

Then I remembered. We’d covered this topic in orientation with the team the day before. This is an “event-oriented” society. It’s not a “time-oriented” one.

Silly me. 9AM doesn’t mean 9AM. It means “in the morning!”

Sure enough, boys kept trickling in. The only question that remained was how widely the invitation would be accepted. Would we be overwhelmed? By 10:30 we had around 75 kids here from 2 year old child of a teacher to some older teens. And that’s all that really came. Perfect for our resources.

Perhaps 40 watched the Jesus film. The older guys had a soccer tournament with T-shirts that the team brought. They also brought little balls and toys and flutes and other stuff. We’ve been being serenaded by shrill flute noise all morning!

A couple of the teachers came by. They were grateful for the activity for the students. We also had three kids from some neighborhood in Ouakam who were just wandering by! They got a lecture and breakfast.

A great day, all in all.