Nov 27
If you see nothing else, watch this…
Give a Kid a Christmas - Day 2 from Joel Hayslip on Vimeo.
Read more about Day 2’s outreaches and see the pictures on the previous post.
Nov 27
What an exciting day of ministry!
5:45 - Time to wake up… After a long day of outreaches yesterday, we were all pretty groggy - luckily Lis made coffee.
6:30 - Everyone’s here and we started singing and praying. Our favorite song this year is “J’ai la j-o-i-e joie” in fitting with our theme this year : “Keeping our joy”.
7:00 - We head to Joseph’s house to load the truck with presents and “Book of Hope” booklets.
8:00 - We just arrived in Hamdalaye, a Fulani, muslim neighborhood where a missionary is running a school for Fulani kids. There, we did the “chair skit” - a fun skit that shows how sin enslaves and how Jesus alone can save. We also performed the Jesus skit. What really made this outreach special was that we did the outreach out on the street, and over 100 neighbors came out to watch.
As we handed out the 120 gifts to the kids, there was quite a bit of confusion as all the moms crowded in to see what their kids received. It was very exciting!! (more after the slideshow)
11:00 - Back home for a quick lunch: rice with peanut sauce.
1:00pm - Headed back to Joseph’s to load “Old Blue” with 700 gifts for the afternoon outreaches. This took a LOT longer than expected. We didn’t leave till after 2:15!
3:00pm - We arrive an hour late for the outreach in a school in North-West Ouagadougou. Oops! I hope we don’t pay for that later…
3:15pm - We perform the Social Drama, the puppets and the Jesus Skit at a very interesting public school. The school was donated by an architectural school in Kuwait. The design had won 1st prize in a contest and so it was a beautiful building, but it was in the middle of nowhere!! It looked very strange…
What was remarkable about this school was how alive, responsive and well-behaved the children were. We found out that all the teachers and the principal are Christians, and they all go above and beyond to make their school the best.
We handed out 290 gifts, and the children were OVERWHELMED! I will post a video of their reactions later.
5:30pm - We arrive at our last outreach, a private Christian school that has almost all children from Muslim families. We arrived 1:30 late! Yikes. As we setup, we watched the sun fading behind the horizon. We put up the stage right outside the school, and we get a huge crowd of kids, parents and neighbors. We quickly perform the social drama and setup for the Jesus Skit. By the time we’re ready, the sun is gone!
Ben pulls the truck closer and turns on the lights. The actors then act out the Gospel drama to the yellow headlights of an old pickup. Something new every year…
It was too late and too dark to distribute the 330 gifts so we left them with the teachers to distribute to the kids the next day. The kids were so excited!
7:00pm - Back home and very tired! Wheew!
Nov 27
We did it! We wrapped 3000 (Three THOUSAND) gifts in less than a week.
How?
We had a ton of help: Our african theatre group (about 15 people), the missionary youth group (about 30 people), Heidi’s Bible study ladies (about 5 ladies), and Joseph’s neighbors. We accumulated over 300 man hours (an average of 6 minutes per gift), and we finished just in time for the outreaches. Here is a quick video of the process:
Preparing the Gifts from Joel Hayslip on Vimeo.
Nov 20
Our Trip to Dori (and Piela) from Joel Hayslip on Vimeo.
For the details about this trip, read the previous post.
Nov 19
Well, as missionaries in training, we were always told that the most important thing to remember is to “stay flexible”, that no plans should become sacred, that in the blink of an eye, everything can change.
And so it has!
WEEK 1 OUTREACH:
Planned: Gampela - no gifts
Actual: Ouagadougou - 1000 gifts/?? schools
We had planned to go to a small suburb of Ouagadougou (capital) called Gampela, a place where Joseph had done some summer camps and been involved in training children’s pastors. However, once we started getting all the details situated, we are meeting with a lot of resistance from the regional director for the public schools. The school principals are excited, the pastors are beside themselves, but we decided to honor the regional director and not try to force anything: we always want to leave a pleasant aroma of Christ in the community. God’s time will come there.
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