Ken and I sat alone in a coffee shop in downtown Charlotte two weeks ago, reflecting on our trip, sipping on lattes and eating quiche. Tamale would be so much different. Life would be hard. We had hoped for an overwhelming sensation of loyalty and love while we were there. We were overwhelmed. Just overwhelmed.

The extra time allowed by the cancellation of our trip to Burkina Faso had proven to be very beneficial. Within 24 hours of getting sick, my travel sins were forgiven, and I was on the mend, ready to travel again. The remainder of our time in Tamale had been spent in numerous conversations about logistics, where our kids would go to school, how I would earn the right to practice medicine in Ghana as a physician assistant, where we would live in a rapidly changing housing market, how we would focus on sustainability and dignity among the Ghanaians. We visited stores, schools, clinics to try and gain an image of what life would look like if we lived in Tamale.

We had a huge decision to make. Pros versus cons. Mourning what we would give up. Relishing what we would gain. Trying to see down the wide road, and the narrow road. For over an hour, we went back and forth. Which life should we live? It’s always been easy for me to have faith for someone else — to say, “of course you should become a missionary.” It’s much harder when the decision is mine.

Tamale was overwhelming. Uprooting the kids. Selling our house. Saying good-bye to cousins, aunts, uncles, and parents. Rehoming our dogs. Getting rid of the vast majority of our possessions. Saying goodbye to the comforts of America. Living a life completely dependent on God and His people. Moving halfway around the world.

In the end, we had to ask ourselves: What is most important to us? Which existence is worth the investment of our lives?

The American dream. A 3 bedroom house with a Jeep and a minivan. Two kids. Two dogs. An acre of manicured lawn. Plenty of clothes, toys, and expendable income. Comfortable jobs where sharing our faith would be easy, but lives changed would be infrequent. We have tasted the American dream and find it, well, lacking.

The life of missionaries. A cinderblock house at the edge of the desert. Two kids. A city mired in poverty and darkness that needs the light of God’s love. The need for investment is tremendous but rewarding. Sharing our faith would be difficult, but souls are frequently being transformed, and churches are growing in number and need the kind of mentoring we could provide. We have tasted what God is doing in Africa, and find it rewarding.

Ultimately, our lives are not our own. Ken and I want to live a life which is most glorifying to God, in a location where God is working in miraculous ways, and which best fulfills the Great Commission. At the end of our lives, we want to have no regrets about whether or not we could have done more to invest in God’s kingdom. There is no better life investment than one that gives our best to see others know God and glorify Him. We are overwhelmed that God would even ask us to be a part of such great Kingdom work.

Luke 18:22-29, NIV

“When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.””

 

We are moving to Tamale, Ghana.

I awoke with a start. I wasn’t sure if I had a bad dream or a bad dinner, but I was drenched in sweat.

“Don’t go, don’t go.” pulsed through my head as if a dream lingered that I could no longer remember.

I sat up, and drops of sweat splashed off my nose and chin onto the sheets. I felt dizzy, nauseated, achy, confused.

“Don’t go. Don’t go.” Wait, don’t go where? Where am I?

I oriented myself from the light from the balcony outside of our room as it peeked through the curtains of our air-conditioned hotel room. I remembered I was in Tamale, Ghana. The next morning, we were leaving for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

“Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go” drummed with every heartbeat.

“Well, that’s silly,” I thought. “That’s the biggest reason why we came!”

 

Burkina Faso is a brand new mission field for Global Partners, the missions department for The Wesleyan Church. A small, landlocked, and primarily Muslim nation located just north of Ghana, Burkina Faso had only months prior received three of the most recent Wesleyan missionaries from Haiti, and we were going to visit them. We have been praying for these three men for months, and have their pictures on our refrigerator at home. This is the first time The Wesleyans have sent missionaries from one developing nation to another on a completely different continent, and in a completely different culture. The only commonality was the French language. For this reason, Ken had spent months with Rosetta Stone, brushing up his French.

As I processed these thoughts, the first knife-like abdominal pain came. The list of my travel-related sins passed through my mind:

• My shoe had fallen off and I had stepped in the mud on Sunday.
• I had eaten raw or undercooked produce . . . at most meals.
• I had been bitten by all manner of mosquitoes and black flies at least a dozen times.
• I had accidentally rinsed my toothbrush with tap water instead of bottled water.
• I ate a meat of unknown origin and questionable identity for dinner the previous night.
• There was a known cholera outbreak in the city where we had stayed in southern Ghana.

As I bowed before the porcelain throne of repentance, the list of differential diagnoses was narrowed to one: E. coli.

No one likes an E. coli infection. Especially in a foreign country. Especially when you are planning on traveling back to the United States and they won’t let you on an airplane unless you’re the picture of health. Especially when any febrile complaint will be perceived as Ebola, even when you have remained hundreds of miles of African dirt roads and several borders from the nearest case, and it is only contagious by contact with infectious body fluids from a symptomatic person. I knew I didn’t have Ebola, but I knew the paranoid American public would never believe me. I was not afraid of Ebola, but I was afraid of American’s fear of Ebola and what they would do to me if I got sick while in Africa.

I scrambled through the portable pharmacy I had brought with me for Cipro, and downed my first dose of absolution before waking Ken.

I sat next to Ken, ashen and still sweating giant beads of sweat like raindrops.

“I can’t go to Burkina Faso,” I muttered. “I have to stay here.” It was all I could get out before I was exhausted and doubled over in pain. I didn’t have the energy to explain the weird dreamlike sensation to not go to Burkina Faso. It was probably just my fever anyway.

When morning came, Ken packed a small bag, and arranged for me to stay in the hotel room another night. He brought me extra water for the day and a half I would be spending alone, and made me promise to contact the front desk for medical help if I needed it. The Cipro had already begun its work, but I was still miserable.

Ken kissed me goodbye, walked out into the blazing heat, and I drifted back into a dehydrated sleep.

To my surprise, two hours later, Ken walked back in the door.

“There may be a small matter of a riot, so we are reevaluating if we should go. We will make the decision within the hour.” Ken explained.

What the rest of my body didn’t have energy to do, my sweaty fingers did. I began to frantically search.

No United States State Department Travel Warning.

No US Embassy alert.

Then I checked news agencies, and I was shocked with what I read. News was breaking every time I hit the refresh button.

Thousands of protesters were marching on Parliament.

Refresh.

Protesters had broken through police lines at Parliament. Police retreat.

Refresh.

Parliament is on fire and being looted by rioters.

Refresh.

The state television station has been taken over by rioters.

Refresh.

The Burkina Faso Army moves in and declares martial law, disbanding Parliament.

 

Refresh.

The airport in Ouagadougou is shut down. No flights incoming our outgoing.

Refresh.

President Campaore resigns after 27 years of power. He is looking to escape the country.

Within an hour, the situation grew dire.

The pounding of my heartbeat, “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,” began again, but not for myself. Ken had to make the decision about whether he would still travel into Burkina Faso in what looked like was going to be a complete takeover of the government by either civilians, or the Army.

Ken returned to the lobby to hear what the National Superintendent, with whom he would be traveling, had to say. And then he returned to the room.

“It looks like we’re going to have some down time in Tamale.”

I smiled, took another dose of Cipro, and collapsed in relief.

Later, we realized that the Burkina Faso borders closed that afternoon, and remained closed for days. Indeed, the government has changed hands, a temporary government has been established. The United States Embassy locked down, and staff were ordered to shelter in place. Without me, Ken could not have entered the US Embassy for protection. Had Ken traveled, he would have been trapped in Burkina Faso. I would have had to either return to America without him, or wait until the border reopened.

It’s not every day that the country you are planning to visit collapses.

The situation in Burkina Faso is currently in transition. The former president is still on the move, going from Ivory Coast to Morocco, seeking protection. Civilians are now wrestling with the military, who assumed power. But the people of Burkina Faso didn’t overthrow the government to put a military leader in power. The hope is that within a year, free elections will be held.

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize what an important time this is for Burkina Faso. As a Muslim nation, they have been a key ally for US interests in the area as they fend off Al Queda and other radical Islamic groups in the region. The next year could determine whether Christian missionaries are allowed to stay and be safe in the region, or whether they will be ousted. The next year could determine whether Burkina Faso will continue to be one of the fastest-growing areas for Christianity in the world, or whether the sharing of the gospel will be restricted.

The next year is a great time for the saints to be lifting up the nation of Burkina Faso and the missionaries there, who may have a tenuous window of time to share the steadfast message of the gospel.

II Thessalonians 2:1-3,  NIV “As for other matters, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith. But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.”

The tall green grasses of the African plains waved greetings to us as we rode into the city of Tamale in the church van. The African sun brought unrelenting dry heat to the land. Mud huts sat huddled along the roadside in small villages. Motorcycles and scooters buzzed around our van on roads that were, dare I say, smooth, for the first time since we arrived in Ghana.

As we entered the city, the contrast of centuries surrounded us. For the most part, the clock had been turned back 100 years or more. There were no supermarkets, fast food restaurants, or anything much in the way of modern conveniences. The evidence of poverty was reflected in the numerous children who worked along the roadside during school hours. The gaunt faces of hunger were dispersed through the crowds. The homes of pieced-together scraps of wood, metal, mud, and grass were scattered among the brick walled-in palaces. Mud huts sat next to modern gas stations with mini-marts. Internet cafes were hosted in ramshackle ruins. The church on every corner was replaced by a mosque in every neighborhood, and the haunting calls to prayer echoed through the air. Almost all women had their heads covered, most in a hijab.

This was definitely not the same as Accra.

My brain fought to push back the images of radical Islam in my mind, and I prayed that God would replace the thoughts put in my mind by Western media with His perspective.

I began to envision Jesus standing over the city of Tamale, just as He had stood over Jerusalem the week of His crucifixion.  Luke 19: 41-42 says,

“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.””

I began to envision the spiritual darkness that these people live in, especially the women of Tamale. They are limited in their contact with people outside their families. Their husbands often control how much health care they get, what spiritual influences that they have, and the punishment for disobedience can be severe. With one physician for every 93,000 patients in this region of Ghana, health care is already scarce. But considering that Muslim women cannot be cared for by a male physician creates a nearly impenetrable gender barrier.

The story of one woman in particular hit home with me. Her name is Lapah, and she had been sick for many years. She had sacrificed animals. Still sick. She had prayed to idols for healing, with no results. When the Jesus Film came to her village through the ministry of Global Partners, she prayed to receive Christ, and prayed for healing. And the power of Jesus Christ healed her. Not only was she saved, but her daughters were saved as well when she shared what the One True God had done for her.

In southern Ghana, Jesus is on every sign. Modern conveniences are everywhere. Life would look a whole lot like what it does here in America. Accra would be comfortable.

In northern Ghana, Islam is on most signs. Modern conveniences are hard to find. Life would be much harder — finding food, water, and relief from the desert sun would be a daily struggle. Tamale would be intimidating at best. Frightening at worst.

But which city does Jesus weep over?

For years I have said, “I would rather do something perilous for the sake of love, than nothing for the sake of fear.”

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” I John 4:18, NIV