David

One of the frustrations of trying to live out a Christ-like example here is that most people assume that whatever weird thing we do is a result of our “white-ness” or “American-ness”. If I wash the dishes for Hannah, it’s because I’m American. If we love our neighbors, it’s because we’re American. If we give someone a gift, it’s because we’re rich, white Americans. 

During the time we’ve been in Guinea, we’ve been encouraged to see passionate people from here doing God’s work. It’s great to not feel like the success of any project depends on us because it really depends on God. And God has some pretty good people on his team. Here’s a selective bio on our closest colleague, David Foromo Guilavogui.

David being Guinean (married to a Swiss lady) takes away the “white American” excuse and people have to ask “Why?”. During our trip to… well, everywhere, we spent a few days in Labe where David offered to chase down a lead that one of our American colleagues had there In a couple hours, David got himself invited over for dinner, convinced the man to show him his handicapped hand (which he normally hides from everyone), asked him what he thought about Jesus, told him that he didn’t care if the guy called himself a Muslim or a Christian because the name isn’t as important as whether you have a reserved seat in Heaven, prayed for the guy and gave his family a gift of about 2-3 days wages. 

Even if we could do some of those things, it would be rather empty coming from us because we’re outsiders. But in this man’s eyes, David jumped several notches. He suddenly told David, “You seem to have things together. I’d like to learn to follow your example.” David replied, “Don’t do that. I wake up and spend my whole day trying to be as much like Jesus as possible. Every good thing you see is where I get it right and the rest is me. If you want to follow an example, skip me, follow Jesus.”

The next night as he explained this story to our American colleagues he said, “I woke up at 3am this morning to pray for this guy and really felt that we can help him. I think he needs a loan to help recover some of his business but it can’t come from me. It has to be you, his friends, that supports him.” He woke up at 3 am to pray for the guy.

During one of our numerous breakdowns (you can see photos HERE), we coasted into a “garage”. David turned off the car, greeted everyone and handed some money to the nearest kid to go buy water for everyone. THEN he proceeded to explain what he needed. To the guy who actually did the work on the car, he gave money to go buy himself lunch.

David is widely known for his availability. He spends roughly the amount of the average annual Guinean salary each year on his (3) cell phone bill(s) so that he can check on people, find out who needs help and arrange solutions. He has repeatedly responded to late night calls to advise couples with marriage problems. In fact, as I write this, he is retracing the steps we just took to Conakry to offer some marriage counseling to a troubled couple there.

The past two times he lent out his car to men he had taught to drive, he had trouble. Once the rear window was shattered while moving furniture, and the other time the gate to his house was broken and the whole side of the car dented. But he paid for the repairs himself and merely teased the guys about it. Like a father paying for the window his son’s baseball busted through.

People have given David a hard time for only having one child. I heard him reply once, “Come to my house or ride in my car with me anytime you wait and see if I only have one child. I have people all around this country who call me ‘Uncle.’ ”

When he heard we were planning to take a taxi to Bamako he said, “No. You’ll take my car. Hannah is very courageous. You need to respect that and not go looking for ways to add stress to her life. She is here because she loves God and trusts you. Take my car.”

David is also a man of vision. His goal is to disciple University students to become Christian leaders who can make a difference here. When one lone girl showed up to a meeting of 30 men on “Christianity and Tradition”, be bought her a Bible to encourage her. She’s been to every meeting or seminar since. I saw him give $20 to a group of Christian University students to have a New Years party saying, “You’re my kids. When there’s money, I’ll share it with you.” I don’t think we made a single visiting stop during our trip to Conakry in which David didn’t leave some encouragement money behind. Brings new meaning to “pay someone a visit”.

When we took a touristy trip to a nearby village, he heard there was no physics teacher at the high school. Within a month he found a physics and history teacher and arranged for them to ride two hours out on a moto every Friday to teach 8 hours of classes (for free, after a week of work) to help the students prepare for the end of the year exams. David is paying the gas for the trips. The two teachers are Christian men we work with that he has been investing in for several years. Of course they agreed to give up the rest of their weekends to be away from their wives and make no money. They agreed to do all of this because they respect David and love Christ and want to serve Him.

During the first round of classes, David went to discuss Jesus with an agnostic French couple doing humanitarian work in the village. When the French couple told David that he should stay in their nice house and didn’t have to spend the night with his underlings, he replied, “I came with colleagues, not underlings. We’re here to help the village, we sleep in the village.”

I should mention that only the President of InterVarsity in Guinea ranks higher in the organization than David.

After the limitless power of our God, David Foromo Guilavogui is the number one reason we have faith in what God’s doing in the youth of Guinea.

I have been greatly challenged by:

David’s dedication to ministry

His generosity

His deep prayer life

His commitment to discipleship

His discretion and sensitivity

His availability to help anyone with anything

His honesty and courage when confronting people

His hospitality

And his humility

Maybe it’s bold, but feel free to look for these things in my life. Maybe that’s a pledge you can make to other people too. And if you don't have someone in your life that you regularly see Jesus in, you should really try to find someone.

The Center

This has been a long time coming but we have pictures and updates on The Center we work at.

In December we sort of took over some of the work being done at The Center while most people went away for the Holidays. This included helping with the painting of the building inside and out, including all the trim and security bars. We did a lot of cleaning and consolidating of materials as well as a lot of yard work to clean up construction mess, old bricks, etc.

So here’s where we now stand:

The entire compound now has a solid, new wall around it. The old one had been slowly tipping over into the street so it was knocked down and put back up correctly. 

One week ago we had wi-fi installed at The Center. We will be helping equip youth by offering very fast, cheap internet. In fact, it is with this internet connection that we plan to post these pictures!

We’re beginning to work more earnestly on our Business curriculum. This past Monday was the first half of a two part presentation on Business Evangelism: How to Integrate Faith in the Workplace. It’s great to have qualified, motivated professionals give feedback we can use to develop this training to offer through The Center.

An additional 10x10 apartment was developed from an old cooking area. Two university students now live there.

The interior was painted a sky blue color to kind of push the idea of it being cool. It turned out looking more like an empty swimming pool. We learned a lot about colors while working with the painters. Paint is only purchased in white and you are in charge of buying your own dye bottles and mixing it yourself. So where we wanted a dusty, orange-ish, brown color outside, we had to settle for Pepto Bismol. It looks like a cotton candy salesman. But it’s clean and fresh and definitely a neighborhood landmark.

In order to organize and control the moto traffic in the yard, a moto parking hangar was built to provide out-of-the-way shade for people’s motos. 

The library/book store is almost fully unpacked and organized with 9 different types of Bibles for sale in French (and a few copies in 3 or 4 other languages) from $1.50-$8. We actually just bought one for our guard—every good Muslim is supposed to read the Bible so we figured we could strengthen his Muslim faith if it meant him reading through the Bible. It’s already sparked a few discussions.

A small outdoor kitchen area was constructed for the couple who lives in the newly refreshed 10x10 apartment. 

Two weeks ago we hosted a 3 day seminar with a guest speaker from Labe (which was one of our favorite stops on our voyage to Conakry) on the topic of “Christianity and Tradition”. It was encouraging to see dozens of young people wanting to learn what the Bible had to say about some African traditions. There was a lot of discussion about the difference between practicality, superstition and strong values on topics from female circumcision to night time hut-sweeping, to tattoos, to funerals, to eating kola nuts.

We are thrilled to get to be a part of the ongoing vision of the GBU/Intervarsity staff that runs The Center. It will be a great venue for God to work through the lives of the students in Kankan.