Hello Everyone!
It’s been a while. I’ve been pondering a letter for many months, but the timing never seemed right. I also haven’t really known any more information than when I last sent an update. Apparently, it’s been since just before Thanksgiving of 2015 that I last wrote. Time must have boarded a jet plane. It seems like yesterday that my friend, Dave, was taking me to the airport in Niamey. I left Niger in October of 2015 with a specific plan in mind. But, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. About a year passed before I gained any real traction on a defined path.
During that year I worked with my dad on a small farm, spent my first Christmas in three years with family and friends, and edited a few projects for Pan Africa Theological Seminary. I was also able to spend May of 2016 in Niger helping establish an evangelism program for a Christian humanitarian non-profit organization called LINK. My seven weeks in Niger were wonderful, and I am thankful to Friends of Faith and the LINK for making it happen. The return rout for that trip was cheaper through Portugal, so I spent 24 hours in Lisbon, a city I’d never visited. In August, I became a part-time staff member at the church where my parents are pastors and moved to an apartment in Chickasha. I then had the opportunity last October to travel to Benin and translate for a One Hope (a missionary organization) team during their ten-day trip. In January, I participated in a short trip to Haiti with the Bridge Church from Mustang. I found Haiti to be very similar to western Africa. It was like having Togo, where I grew up… off the coast of Florida.
I tried to think of a Bible character who faced a confusing, uncertain future, but I ran into a unique problem. All Bible characters seem to meet that criteria. I thought of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers and then wrongfully imprisoned. I thought of hot-tempered, tongue-tied, discouraged Moses who felt like a failure and just wanted to watch his sheep. I thought of Jeremiah and his lonely death in Egypt after an unappreciated career of proclaiming God’s truth. I thought of John the Baptist who had begun to doubt the faith he had placed in Jesus and was then beheaded before he could resolve his issues. I thought of the terrible irony that God allowed Stephen to be stoned by a man who would later lead a massive Christian expansion.
And, of course, I thought of Jesus. We believe that Jesus was 100% God, but we also believe that he was 100% human. As such, what great confusion must have lived within him every day of his life. Mary had surely recounted to him the stories surrounding his miraculous birth. He could read the Jewish messianic prophecies and could see where they matched his own life. He certainly could see and feel the power that flowed through his hands and feet. But, as a person, how did he know who he was and how did that affect him? The degree to which the divinity of Jesus and the humanity of Jesus overlap has been, and will always be, a subject of deep theological discussion. In any case, I believe that Jesus walked the road to his execution as a man who tenaciously held to faith that God knew what he was doing. He felt every twinge of pain from the thorns in his brow to the splinters in his toes, and he perceived every emotion from humor to grief. I don’t think he hung on the cross, shrugged his shoulders and thought, “This will be over soon and then I’ll be back in heaven.” The storm of doubt, misgiving, hesitation, reservation, anxiety, discouragement, frustration, anger, hostility, rage, depression, despair, misery, uncertainty, and insecurity that whirls in our own lives during an impossible moment, assailed Jesus during his. Bound by the constraints that are common to every human being, Jesus wrestled with life.
As I mentioned, I had something specific in mind when I left Niger, but it took about a year for that to come into focus. It has been a few months now that I have been doing what I left Niger to do. For various reasons, I need to be rather vague at this point. I was given advice to not post certain things on an open website. If you would like to e-mail me at jeremyw4africa@gmail.com, I would be happy to give you more information. It is unclear if my original goal will be totally successful, but regardless of that, I have begun to make tentative plans to return to Niger either by next summer. I would appreciate your prayers as I begin to shift, maybe, back into Niger-mode. However, there are many details that I just don’t know right now that need to be known before I can do that. When the time comes, I will start raising funds again, but in the mean time, keep me in your thoughts and prayers. Thanks so much,
Jeremy
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