Welcome to the June 1st edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
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The Story of My Week.
Today, we said goodbye to our church in Senegal.
It was emotional for our family. This was our community. We had become friends and in some cases, family to each other.
We cried, smiled, and everything in between.
It doesn’t get easier, no matter how much you know it’s going to happen.
These are people that we have shared life with over the past few years.
One thing with living within an international community is that people quickly try to engage with each other.
Why?
It’s no use playing hard-to-get if you might be together for a short time.
You don't have to wait for too long before making connections or asking for help.
Yesterday, someone in the church was remarking that she didn't know us closely but she decided to ask us if we could watch over her two kids as she was going for delivery of another one.
The kids were with us for about 10 days. She said someone asked her, "How could you leave your kids with people you don't know very well".
They were from Uganda and our family had only arrived in Dakar for about a year or so.
She and her husband felt at peace with us to do that.
Such acts deepen the relationships that we built over the time we have lived here.
We are grateful to God for this season.
And grateful to everyone else for the great memories.
Things I Learnt
1 - Blessing a Nation: One of the decisions we made as we were moving out of Senegal was not to move our furniture to our next port of call.
And so over the past few weeks, we have been selling them off. These are mostly stuff that we bought when we lived in Spain.
In selling, we went for easy-to-buy prices. No, it's not a desperate sale. It's part of our investment in the country.
Some of the people who saw the prices of what we were selling wanted to know why we were selling at so low prices.
Selling off things is common here as people leave the country. And in some cases, people offer their furniture at close to the original prices in some cases.
We priced ours so that regular Senegalese could buy them.
One lady literally refurnished her home with most of our furniture.
We were happy when a teacher from one of our kid's schools picked up one of the bunk beds that our kids used. Quality at a price she would not have thought possible.
The other bunk bed was picked up by a missionary couple who had been in Senegal for about 7 years.
According to the husband, his wife had been on the lookout for this bed - it was always too expensive when the embassies and other international agencies staff leaving the country would list.
Our price was just right for them.
I loved this. We were blessing a country by blessing the people.
God knows we could also do with the extra cash using a market-determined price.
But the joy of leaving the country as a blessing to others is greater.
Blessing a country by blessing its people.
2 - Optimizing for Different Things: Someone during the week refused a request I had made.
It was without excuse. I honestly felt this was a request they could say "yes" to.
But I got a no.
At some point, due to the initial challenges we experienced, I told my wife, "Because of God, I choose to see this refusal as a blessing"
Well, it turned out as so.
I was solving for a different problem while God was solving for something else.
After the refusal, God gave us an alternative option that solved what God was aiming for.
Yep, I now see. I was solving for a different problem.
Postscript
May your confidence be in a God who works all things out for good and not in good things happening to you. Amen
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Tola - The Everyday Disciple
I help Christians like you who want to live intentional lives incorporate their faith into everyday life so they can make Christ-focused decisions in all areas of life and truly live to make an impact and make God happy.
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