The Cost

Some of you who read this blog are very close friends and family. Some of you are casual drop-ins who find an interesting post shared by someone you know. For some of you, this may be the first you’ve heard of us.

Thirty months ago, we followed Abraham’s example and decided to let God lead us to “a place that He would show us” to be used by Him. That landed us in Guinea where you’ve read about our market trips, cooking adventures, mountain climbing accidents, homesickness, discipleship experiences, and other ADVENTURES.

We developed a business curriculum for The Center, missionaries and other Christian organizations to use across West Africa, building on Luke 14:28-30

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. 

Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 

For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, 

everyone who sees it will ridicule him.”

We figured the passage applied to business even though it’s really about the same thing this blog is about: The cost of following Jesus.  

And I know someone that is taking it all the way. For some of you, this story may seem distant and need some imagination. But some of who either know who I’m talking about or someone just like them.

Having only briefly visited Dakar, Senegal over a Christmas break while we were engaged, Hannah agreed to follow God’s call to Guinea. Our colleague, David said it was “not because she loves Africa but because she loves God and trusts her husband”. That’s about right. 

Soon after WorldVenture approved us to go to Guinea, we were excited to learn that there would be three of us travelling to Guinea for the first time. We were really looking forward to showing this long-awaited baby the continent Gruddas have been following God to since 1952.

On October 22, 2012, an hour after leaving the doctor’s office with news that our baby was healthily entering his 17th week, from the basement I heard Hannah deliver our son in the bathroom of our house. Pain is not a contest-for us, this was a very traumatic and painful experience-I think more-so than some miscarriages. 

Having held our son only once, we were flooded by God’s calling of people to support us through our battle with gifts, tears, cards, hugs, prayers, company, even (and we suspect many of our readers contributed to) helping pay for our hospital bill. We quickly learned that Hannah also has an incurable blood disorder but her jaw never wavered from God’s calling-we were going to Guinea anyways.

God asked many of you to contribute financially to our trip. He lined someone up to live in our house and pay our mortgage while we went to connect with our supervisors in Guinea. He asked someone to watch our dog (Fenley), drive our cars and promise employment for our return. 

Hannah cried the first night we spent in Guinea. In her eyes, we would be basically camping for the next three months. 

April 10 came and went while we were at training in Colorado (ironically that day was about raising kids on the mission field). God put Hannah’s creativity to use to raise over $1000 for our trip through ZipAfrica. And He held Hannah’s hand as we watched person after person, friend after friend, and relative after relative announce over social media their children's births and bemoan the struggles of parenting.

It would grate a lot of people raw right down to bitterness. But the day before Halloween, Hannah squeezed Fenley one more time before handing him to God’s next provision-a friend who made a daily (you’ll see that word again soon) sacrifice to support us while we followed through with our promise to God.

During the next 6 months in Guinea we spent days broken down on the side of the road eating cold rice and wild pig (or sardines and stale bread), skipped the World Series, BCS Championship, Super Bowl, Opening Day, Champions League Final, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter and Memorial Day with our families. We showered with buckets, peed in the woods, drew water from the well, sat in the dark, slept outside and sweat by the gallon. We learned about new jobs and houses, marriages, heart attacks and family (and friends’) parties by email.

We finally left Guinea and started our journey home ready to coast back to familiar. 

But two missionary moms spent their whole Mother’s Day at a Bamako clinic with a new mother-to-be: Hannah. More good news! After a night of fear, we were glad to hear that our baby was fine. It was our first time to see a doctor-baby was 12 weeks. After a doubtful American doctor did a full reversal and said surprisingly, everything looked great, we had nothing to fear, we continued our journey. 

Ten days later, we heard, “Tsk. C’est pas bon,” from the ultrasound technician. We had bumped our way across town on a mattress in the back of a LandCruiser to get here. The bathroom had no lights, the waiting room had two broken windows, there were band aid wrappers and used kleenex under the beds, holes in the ceilings, little blood spots on the walls and no real options: Baby was gone…again. We needed a D&C. 

As mosquitoes drained my ankles, I saw a dragonfly buzzing the Operating Room. Hannah gritted her teeth and went into the OR with 3 French-speaking African men- I wasn’t allowed in. After strapping her to the table, they continued to prepare for 15 minutes before administering the anesthesia. After carrying Hannah into the recovery room, they called me in to watch her wake up before starting the IV for the pain. 

As she shivered, shook and trembled and her glazed eyes kept trying to find my face before they rolled back, I wondered:

How did God find me a woman like this?

After she finally woke up to herself and was able to let me help her back to the truck, we left with a prescription for one medication she couldn’t take because of her blood disorder, one she already had, one she was already on and 500 mg Tylenol for the pain. 

We’re hoping to be back in Indiana within a week. Of all our friends, we have the oldest cars, the smallest house and the smallest salaries, but we’re looking forward to getting back.

Hopefully, if you know us or have kept up with our blog, you’ll see that this isn’t about complaining. We want to live openly with people. We recognize that so many of our “struggles” would be considered blessings by most of our neighbors in Kankan. “Someone is praying for the things you’re taking for granted.”

If you’ll take Hannah’s example, there’s one important difference: 

She chose this. 

Maybe not all of it, but she chose to follow God to an uncomfortably place where small obstacles become big deals very quickly.

Just like other servants of God have chosen worse situations for even longer periods of time.

God asked, and Hannah said ok even though it meant giving up a whole lot of things that were really important to her. She’s happy to be heading back to America, but that is what God asked Hannah to do next. And based on our experiences, it doesn’t mean that will be easy either. But she’s going to do it anyways. And when a new obstacle comes up for the next thing God wants us to do, her eyes may fill with tears, but there’s determination behind those tears.

God must be so proud. I know I am.

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”

What cross are you choosing to take up to follow him?

Education

A while ago someone asked me what I thought Africa’s biggest need was. After a day of thinking about it, I decided that in Guinea, at least, the greatest deficit is in education. 

When Guinea was given their independence from France, the new president, Sekou Toure kicked all the foreigners out and adopted Communist policies as a way to protect Guinean culture. 

(In Guinea, development often battles culture and tradition. Consider wells-a great cause that Matt Damon is big on. A neighborhood well is a huge social asset. As development progresses, more people have wells and a small part of communal life fractures. The same goes sometimes for phone service, internet, electricity, etc. This is not a criticism of Damon’s critical project-just a suggestion that solutions to today’s problems aren’t as simple as the sales pitch makes them sound. Ask me what I’ve learned about mosquito nets, sometime.)

One of the things Sekou Toure did to preserve Guinean identity was to do away with French as a national language. If you lived in Kankan, you would attend school in Maninka. If your family moved to Macenta when you were in 3rd grade, you would be expected to start school in Toma. If they moved again to Labe when you were in 7th grade, you would be trying to enter 8th grade in another foreign language—Pular. A shaky foundation for a country to rely on for education.

French has been re-instated as the national language but new problems have arisen. Teachers are not very well paid (and sometimes go months without receiving their salaries). One of our young leader friends, Jonas, is an adjunct History Professor at the U of KK. He and his wife are one of those statistics you hear about living on his $60/month salary. $2/day for 2 people. 

In addition, another friend of ours tells us that they have had as many as 300 third graders in a class. He says when it’s time to change classes, kids will throw their backpack into the classroom so they can sit where it lands and be guaranteed a spot. Imagine trying to control 300 eight year olds! And imagine, statistically speaking, how many of them would have learning disabilities and behavior problems. Furthermore, teachers are expected to give monthly exams, both written and oral for each student.

So the reality is that to control the students, teachers often resort to a “repeat after me” teaching approach. Students can often quote pages of information verbatim and recite their times tables but not know how many mangoes they will have if you took 2 of their 5.

But would you really hold back 50 of your students if you know you have another 300 coming in next year and you haven’t been paid (your tiny salary) in 2 months? Teachers sometimes end up selling grades. The final exam is at 4pm: at 3pm students may start showing up and paying $1 or $2 for passing grades. The teacher gets paid, doesn’t have to grade 300 exams, and the students pass.

As a result, some university graduates can’t construct a well-written sentence. Last week I saw a professor get out his calculator to figure out how much it would cost to photocopy 40 pages at $0.25 per page. He owns the photocopy business.

BUT, every skill and piece of knowledge that sticks in these students’ brains, is often more than their parents ever got. So maybe it’s still progress.

Last week we went to visit Katie and Kelsey’s classes at The American Reading Room at the University of Kankan. The US Embassy runs the program. Although a lot of the content is vocabulary, there is also a heavy focus on American culture. 

We also attended David Moriba’s (Hannah’s French teacher) English class where we saw an excellent lecture (in English!) on Lesson Planning for future English teachers.

I’ll close with some hope: When David Guilavogui mentioned that the nearby village of Sabadou-Baranama had no physics teacher, Jonas (mentioned above) said, “That’s unacceptable. How will they pass their exams? Tomorrow I will rearrange my schedule and talk to Soumou, who teaches Physics. These kids must have a teacher.”

We’ve mentioned this before, but now Soumu rides to Sabadou-Baranama with Jonas every Friday to teach two 4 hour sessions for free while Jonas arranges sports events and some history lessons. Remember, Jonas makes $60 a month. What's holding you back from serving?

*Other photos: One of our favorite breakfasts, the garage where we changed our moto oil, clearing the new WorldVenture property for sand/gravel delivery.