What do you pray for?

The schedule has settled over the past month into a two week rotation. Of course, subject to change, but I should tentatively have every other weekend off from duties at the hospital. I am going to try to use those weekends to join different missionaries as they attend services at the various villages and house churches that have sprouted up in the area, off shoots from connections made at the hospital.

Two weeks ago I attended the small church at the village of Koumongoukan. Primary language there is Anoufo. It is about an hour Southeast of Mango although distance is roughly only 11km

Koumongoukan does have a structure dedicated for worship. It's walls have been constructed only within the past year. Multiple open and/or straw structures served previously as their gathering place.

The service that Sunday morning was a beautiful message about prayer. One of the missionaries quietly translated for me. Something I greatly appreciated as the pastor would periodically come stand by me and emphatically and rather loudly proclaim the message pointing at me for emphasis and illustration of his point. Essentially, he was pointing out, one would not go to a doctor and ask for healing unless you believed it could be delivered. You wouldn't ask me to do surgery unless you believed I could perform the surgery. What struck me the most that Sunday, as I looked around and sat among them, I realized I could not fathom what these beloved children of God would pray for.

Heading back home after church.

Do they pray for safety, for protection? What does that look like for them? What would they consider safe?

Do they pray for health? Today is Saturday and the patient's are already lining up for the hospital gates to open on Monday. They are setting up camp knowing they may not get seen for a week. What would they consider adequate health and/or healthcare?

Do they pray for love? In a village structured as a family community where the individual is the community and the community is the individual, lines between family and friends are indistinguishable all together to my perspective. What is love for them?

Playmates along the road back to Mango.

It was unsettling to realize the gulf of understanding required to span the difference between my perspective and theirs. It is simultaneously humbling to witness the love of Jesus span that vast gulf in a way far above and beyond human capability.

I knew I would not be able to understand in four months, but I thought I could at least still love them. I now wonder if I can even do that. I will at least try. I can care and love in the way I know and pray for God to translate for me. People are precious and they are loved by Jesus. He understands their wants, their needs, their hearts and their prayers.

Much Love.

1 Jean 5:14 "Nous avons aupres de LUI cette assurance, que si nous demandons quelque chose selon sa volonte, IL nous ecoute."

1 John 5:14 "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: