Throughout Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, women in beautiful dresses and shiny high heeled shoes ride motorcycles for transportation. Many times they ride double with a friend or family member and additional cargo or children.
Dresses and high heels may not be the ideal clothing for motorcycling, but it works. Three-inch heels locked over the pegs on a motorbike don’t tend to slip, and somehow the women gracefully straddle the bikes without hiking up their skirts.
This, I think, may be a great metaphor for ministry in Africa. My cultural eyes look and see an unlikely mix of dress clothes and motorcycles. But Africans, in this case the Burkinabe (the name for the people of Burkina Faso), make it work with grace and ease.
This is just like ministry partnership at its finest. Our HCJB Global Hands team wanders in jet- lagged and in a cultural daze, yet with hearts to help and serve. Surely, we stick out like high heels on a motorcycle. Yet our African partner steers us in the right direction, connects us with the right helpers and surrounds us with great people and puts us in great places. All of this is done with the same grace and ease and surprising agility that allows the women here to climb on a motorcycle with a dress on.
And away we go…
1 comment:
Thanx Nate!
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