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Ramadan Blessing
Demonstrating Christ's Love to our Fasting Friends
Every year, Muslims around the world set aside one month, during which they fast from food and water from sunrise to sunset. (The strictest even refuse to swallow their own saliva.) It's a festive time of year, where families gather to break the fast together and parties go late into the night. Ironically, it's also the month where households spend more money on food than at any other time of the year. Productivity slows significantly, as anyone who can will spend as many hours of daylight as possible sleeping. Many also believe that it's also a time of increased spiritual openness, as Muslims throughout the world devote themselves to religious matters in a special way.
When it comes to cultural integration, we draw the line at fasting all month with our neighbours. Many of us do, however, fast from time to time for our neighbours. In addition, we offer them gift baskets filled with treats to enjoy at ndogou, the moment when they break their fast. This year, our "basket" was a plastic pin that can be used for lots of household chores, and it included homemade jam, concentrated bissap juice syrup (a Senegalese specialty), Nescafé, Laughing Cow Cheese, chocolate spread, and dates. Recipients included current and former neighbours, Evangeline's teacher, our tailor, and the guy who runs our nearby "boutique" (dusty little corner store). Our prayer is that these acts of kindness will open doors for us to share the gospel. Would you join us in prayer for these friends?
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The Face of Human Trafficking in our Front Yard
Our Unexpected Ministry to Street Boys
When we arrived in Senegal nine years ago, we found ourselves instantly overwhelmed by the plight of the street boys, called talibés (TAH-lee-bays). They come from remote villages where marabous promise their parents a better life for their sons. Confronted with crippling poverty on the farm, where drought and pestilence put families at risk of starvation, their parents see no other way out. Little do they know that their boys, some as young as five, will be forced to spend most of their waking hours walking city streets, barefoot, begging for alms for their marabou. Those who don't meet their quota are beaten. In addition, many have to fend for themselves for meals. Some find homes that regularly provide them with bread or porridge for breakfast, or perhaps leftover rice for lunch.
Then comes Ramadan. Fasting families (which make up over 90% of the population) don't have bread or rice kicking around the house during the day, which means that for one month these talibés are in especially desperate circumstances. One Saturday morning just after the fast began, we heard the familiar call at our door, "Give to God." Since we live in a Catholic neighbourhood, this is rare, as talibés tend to stick to more Muslim parts of town. But they're smart kids: They know Catholics aren't fasting, so they're more likely to have food to spare.
We opened the door and found three sweet faces staring back at us. We welcomed then into our yard and sent Isabella to the store to buy some bread. In the meantime, these three boys who have had so much of their childhood taken from them laughed and cried out with excitement as they rode the girls' scooters and bikes and jumped on the trampoline. After enjoying bread and cheese with hot chocolate, they played some more, then politely took their leave.
Since that first visit, they've come in greater numbers each day, so that now we're feeding as many as 12 hungry boys a day. Babacar, a trusted brother from church, has been a much-needed source of council. Not only was he a talibé himself for 17 years, he also now runs a center for talibés from his home. He advised us to get to know the boys before letting them into our yard again, especially as their numbers grow. So, we've set them up with a mat just outside our garage door and have lent them a soccer ball to play with. We still don't know what we're doing, but we do know that we could not harden our hearts to these sweet boys. Because it is illegal to proselytize minors in Senegal without their parents' permission, we are not free to share the gospel openly with them as a group. We'd like to connect these boys with Babacar, rather than starting a new long-term ministry we won't be able to keep up with while on home assignment at the end of the year. Please pray for wisdom for us as we try to figure out our next steps.
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