Video Tour of a Village Medical Clinic in Burkina Faso

This is a video I took on my most recent trip to Burkina Faso where I led a medical team of 4 doctors (three of them from Ecuador and one now living in Ghana), 2 nurses (one from Ecuador and one from Idaho), an Engineer (from the UK now living in Ghana) and my uncle Wally McClure (from Nevada).  We were there a little over 2 weeks and saw hundreds of patients in two villages.  A great team and an amazing trip.

The First Noel

This blog has gotten entirely too serious.  So in case you think that our life is all death and doctors and no fun...

Tali's golden retriever pup, Noel, is 7 months old now and is super social and is the darling of the ranch. She is the one that sticks her head in a boot to go to sleep when she gets stressed.

Everyone raves about her.  "She is the best addition to the ranch."  Maybe we can get our vet bills paid for. The kids are crazy in love with her.  She is constantly stealing their boots, hats, socks, you name it and the kids and the parents just LOVE it.  We're glad they love it cause we can't get her to stop taking things.  She doesn't chew them up.  She just takes them and carries them off and then abandons them.  So there are socks, gloves, hats, boots and shoes in the weirdest places all over the ranch.  After a while we just started leaving them.

She loves, loves, loves water.  It kinda clued us in this winter when she started blowing bubbles in her water bowl and then jumping in it to watch it splash all over my walls and floors.  Or she would drop a piece of food in her bowl to watch it bob around.  I had to start taking her water bowl away from her the minute she was done drinking.  Ginger, our 8 yr old mutt, finally got disgusted and stopped trying to lick her dry.

Then Noel started running across the frozen pond and fell through twice, but that didn't stop her.  Now that it's summer she is out there paddling around in the pond at least twice a day just looking around at the blue sky.  "Ahhh, this is the life!.  Got my own pond, my own pool, my own fish.  Even had my own ducks for a while, until they flew away after giving up their quest for nesting in MY pond.  What were they thinking???  They never asked.  Hmmph!  The nerve!"

She loves to go fishing with Nate or dad and when they get a fish close to shore she is out in the water waiting to walk the fish up to the bank.  She tries to retrieve them, but the wiggling freaks her out.  The other day she put her entire head under trying to see the fish and dad said you could see the bubbles coming up like she was trying to smell it.  She came up with a dirt clod instead.  The guests just think it's hilarious.  She stinks like fish 24/7.  She came trotting up with a fish one day and carried it around by the tail like she was afraid to get slimy (it was already dead).  The kids all thought she was a hero.

Her name is Noel, but we call her Noezer because her nose is constantly in things, or Snickers because when she gets wet she gets out and rolls in the dirt, of all things, and is caramel on top, chocolate dipped on the bottom and just a little bit nuts. Or Pigpen because there is a cloud of dust where-ever she walks.  My (Rachelle's) carpets will never, ever be the same. I throw a fit and won't let her in when she is black and Nate and Tali think THAT is funny until I make them wash her off. Then the joke is on them.  I told Tali she could help me vacuum every day this summer.  She said that was over the top and I said no way.  You can see the dust billow when you walk.  All thanks to Noel...or whatever her name is.

We had a group of indigenous folks here for some meetings and they would take their shoes off at the doors because it was mud season.  Yep, you guessed it.  Shoes ended up out in the snow, the mud, all over the place.  Noel is now famous all over the Amazon and known as La Ladrona, the thief.  I've never known a dog with so many names.

Nate and Tali were in the pool the other day and Noel went running up the path, under the fence and didn't slow down before plunging into the pool, chocolate and all.  The housekeeper had just been saying how some days it takes her forever to clean the pool.  Ummm, yeah, about that....

Some nights Noel gets to running circles around the couch and when she runs by Ginger, Ginger will bark each time like she is counting.  They did that 7 times one night.  I think Ginger would be glad to give you a puppy.  Anybody.  Anyone???

Mahima's Faith

(Not her real name for security—Mahima, a real Nepali name, means “glorious”)

On a recent trip to Nepal with a work team from Bethel Church in Indiana, we studied the book of Philippians during team devotions. We all keyed in on the verses from Chapter 2 where Paul admonishes us to imitate Christ’s humility. He says beginning in verse 3 “… in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Later he says that Christ “… made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” Despite the lively discussion on the passage, we had no idea of the living lesson that was in store for us.

As HCJB Global Asia Pacific Regional Director Ty Stakes strummed worship songs on a small travel guitar, we all joined in to sing praises to our God. I couldn’t help but watch Mahima who, even though she knew hardly any English, would join in 100%. Her face would light up, her hands raised in joy, and I knew her heart was pouring out praises to her Savior.

Several of the local Christians, only about eight or 10 of them total in this mostly-Hindu village, would sit with us as we read the word together each morning. We’d bounce worship songs back and forth, one in Nepali and the next in English. But Mahima most of all seemed to revel in the fellowship. Her whole posture was joyous and her smiles lit up her face and radiated into the space around her. Seeing her smile was like a strong cup of coffee on a jetlagged morning—both of which the team sorely needed.

Later in the week more of her story emerged. She had paid dearly for professing her faith in Jesus. When she became a Christian her husband and oldest son both shunned her completely. She was forced to leave home and find ways to care for her young son on her own. Fellow Christians helped her out when they could. So when our work team showed up, effectively doubling the number of Christians in the small village, Mahima was hired to help take care of us. She washed dishes, fetched wood and served our team in countless unseen ways. “Taking the very nature of a servant” with a joy that could come only as fruit from the Spirit of Christ in her. Mahima is living for something much greater than the suffering this world has brought her.

It is one thing to read stories about Christian brothers and sisters that are persecuted for their faith. It is much more powerful to see it face to face. It is yet again exponentially more humbling to have that saint wash your dishes and scrub the outhouse. I should have been washing her feet. I should have been listening to the lessons she could teach me. I should have been trumpeting her amazing faith both near and far.

But I got the sense she really wouldn’t have liked all the fuss. In all honesty, Mahima was joyful and smiling because she knows Jesus is much more valuable than anything she lost. It’s not that she doesn’t feel the struggles and pain that have come her way because of her faith, but rather that she feels the rewards that much more poignantly. When our Christian walk isn’t even a minor inconvenience to us it is less noticeable, unfocused. Faith that is challenged is stronger. And Mahima had it in bucket loads. 

Don’t we typically want big faith without paying for it? I don’t want the struggles or the persecution that wring that kind of faith out of my heart with a painful twist. But the bible shows again and again that God uses struggles and persecution to nurture strong faith. I’m a weakling in comparison to Mahima.

I can still remember her tears as the work team boarded the bus to leave the village. She wept openly and clasped the men’s hands one by one to say goodbye, hugging the women team members fiercely. Her last act of service to me is the lasting memory of her fearless faith and hunger for Christian fellowship despite the persecution. Philippians 1: 29: For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him. (NIV)