Working at WATI

We had a full day at WATI today (West Africa Theological Institute).  We took a 45 minute bus ride through the villages to Djilas, where WATI is located.  Mamadou had the vision to start WATI several years after he became a Christian because he saw many men were eager to become pastors, but they had little knowledge of the Bible.  He says the Lord is capturing the hearts of many Muslim men, but they need to be trained in the Word of God in order to make disciples of their villages.  So he says they pour into Pauls, and each Paul has a Timothy in his village with him.  The Timothy learns under the Paul for about 3 years, and then the Paul moves on to another village and the Timothy becomes the new Paul.  Each set of Paul and Timothy’s have  three other Christians from the village who serve alongside them, and when a Timothy becomes a Paul, one of those three becomes a new Timothy…and the discipleship process continues as they all serve the entire community.  WATI holds classes for all five of those men, along with women who want to learn to disciple women and children.  Mamadou is an incredible leader and man of God.  As he shared how his vision for WATI has come to fruition, I couldn’t help but feel like we have several Pauls and Timothy’s (and Lydia’s!) on this trip.  

We started the day by sanding the buildings we will be painting for the rest of the week.  You would have thought we were in a contest to see who could sand the most territory because everyone was working so diligently and so fast.  I had to force T.O. and Adrienne to stop and pose for this picture on the left….okay that might have been a stretch, you know those two love to pose!  In all honesty though, the students and leaders each jumped to do every job with ZERO grumbling or complaining.  I’m blown away by the team’s work ethic and so proud to work alongside them.

The daily customs of the Senegalese people are new to all of us.  We were fascinated by their well and wanted to take turns drawing buckets of water.  They had to cut us off whenever we gathered water for projects cause we got a little too excited with the activity!

The women endure a grueling process to make coucous.  They take the millet gathered from the fields and place it in this large bucket, then vigorously pound away until its ground into powder.  We watched in wonder and Sharmonique said, “And we get mad when the microwave takes too long!”  Wisdom is pouring from the students left and right.  As we chatted over a break, I overheard Carmen and T.O. discussing how lazy we are in the states.  They aren’t bashing the States; they’re just recognizing the need to be resourceful like the Africans and to take advantage of all the opportunities available to them.  I hear them using that word time and again as they observe the people in the village, “Man, they’re so resourceful.” 

We took a break for lunch, and everyone ate with such grateful spirits.  Today’s lunch consisted of bread and jelly, and you would have thought we’d been served jelly prepared for royalty.  They ate it with such joy and didn’t say a single word about wanting anything else in the world.  I couldn’t be more proud of our students.  Everyone's noted the way Mamadou has prepared the very best for us at every point, and the team couldn’t be more appreciative.  We eat the jelly with an understanding that something like jelly is definitely a delicacy in the village, and we’re utterly grateful.

 A few of us wandered into another part of the village during a break and we found the most adorable baby in the whole wide world.  We used broken (very broken) French to tell the family how precious their baby was, and they used less broken English to say how fascinating they thought my camera was.  They didn’t know about the automatic flash, however, and were noticeably frightened when they found out by taking a close up of the baby’s face. 

After lunch we shoveled dirt and raked leaves.  Our team made the shoveling experience into wheel barrel races and spent some time in heated competition.  I’m hearing a lot of laughter and seeing smiles at every turn.  As the students are reflecting, they seem to recognize that we’re unbelievably blessed, that we’re far too ungrateful, and that it’s time to begin considering how we can use our resources to serve the world around us.  The overarching theme in all the feedback is that we can’t allow all our blessings to simply terminate on us.  They aren’t feeling guilty over the fact that we’re blessed, but guilt over the fact that we don’t acknowledge it more and honor God by using our gifts to bless others.  We’re all learning so much from the men and women here in Senegal and from incredible conversation with one another.  The Lord is clearly working through every moment and He’s hearing our cries (and yours) to open the eyes of our hearts so that we might see Christ more clearly than ever before.