A Day #3

"Donkey men" are the Gambian equivalent of van drivers in the UK.

Every now and again I blog “a day in the life” from here in the Gambia. Here was a recent Sunday:

06.00

Up a bit earlier than usual to do a final read-through and pray-through of my sermon for church. I like to highlight different ingredients (big points / illustrations / applications) with different colours, as it helps me see clearly where I’m going whilst preaching, without needing to be glued to the script.

08.30 

Fi, the female leader of next-door’s gap team, pops round to print off some material for the children in Sunday school.

09.30 

Beth and I head to church, taking Mama with us in the car like usual. As always, Mama is dressed in an amazingly fun and colourful outfit, putting us to shame!

10.00 

Church service begins. Amusingly, the guy ‘leading’ the meeting is wearing the red bow-tie that he and I both had to wear at the Christmas carol service last year…

During the gathering I am preaching the opening sermon of a series going through Paul’s letter to the Galatians. It’s been hard work doing a lot of reading and study to figure out the context of the book - its provenance and purpose and so on. I was excited to preach the opening section (1:1-5), introducing two of the big themes of the letter - Paul’s authentic apostolic authority (meaning we must listen to him), and his message of grace, centred on Christ crucified. My prayer was that we would all seriously listen to his message of grace. By God’s help I felt upheld and that it went well.

For once, Beth is not with the children, but stays in the main church building to hear me preach, by which I’m encouraged.

11.30 

After church the men have a “men’s meeting”, to discuss contributions to an upcoming wedding. One brother is marrying next month and so everyone needs to chip in to help. Meanwhile Beth catches up with people and fills the children with joy.

The car fills up as a church bus, like always, and after dropping people off we get home and enjoy a cold drink. Beth begins to prepare a yummy Spanish omelette.

12.30 

A student from SOW (Servants of the Word Bible School) comes round, having asked to come and go through a talk outline with me. He was inspired by a class the day before, in which we were studying part of Philippians 3, to teach on that at his church meeting this evening. He’s done a really good job of putting a clear outline together, communicating God’s word well. We spend a few minutes sharpening up some application. He’s a lovely humble Gambian man who works in construction. He actually enrolled at SOW quite a few years ago but has struggled to keep up attendance, so is re-sitting some classes. I love how his face lights up as he enthusiastically grasps God’s word.

13.30 

We devour Beth's delicious omelette followed by some tasty local mangoes.

14.00 

Fi comes back, with Simon (her co-leader). The four of us had arranged to meet as their team’s four-month trip is about to end. We discuss the team’s different activities (school placements, campus ministry, church, etc) and ways in which we might be able to suggest tweaks for the future to Crosslinks in the UK (which organises the trip) and GAMFES here (the local hosts), to make the trip even more effective. Beth and I have found ourselves in quite a useful go-between kind of position. With my previous experience on gap teams, and now our longer-term relationships with people here, including GAMFES staff, we thank God for being able to do what we can to facilitate making the most of the opportunity of these teams coming each year. There’s so much potential for good, both here and in the team members, but the more I’m here the more I also see what a complicated minefield ‘short term mission’ is!

15.00 

Time for a nap…

16.00 

You can take the people out of England, but you can’t take England out of them. Time for a cup of tea! And a chat to discuss ongoing plans for an upcoming SOW fundraiser, to be held in England during our summer trip.

18.30 

The gap team are on TV! GRTS, the national station, have a Christian programme on each Sunday evening, and the team are sharing about what they have been doing in the Gambia, singing some songs with some children they’ve spent time with, and one of the guys is giving a short gospel talk. We rig up a TV that Mama keeps buried in her room next-door and have a giggle watching the team together (doing a great job, but looking hilariously awkward at times!).

19.00 

We host a small Bible study group each Sunday evening. They come round - husband, wife, toddler, another brother, and Mama from next-door. We’ve been using a discipleship course put together by Navigators, which includes Bible studies, memory verses, and other ongoing disciplines like personal Bible reading, and learning a gospel outline. It’s the penultimate session of the course, a Bible study on serving like Christ (Mark 10 / Philippians 2 / John 13) - hugely radical and challenging stuff.

20.30 

Usually at this point on a Sunday evening a brother comes to see me for a one-to-one session for an hour or so on preaching, whilst Beth finishes off her school assembly for Monday morning. He’s a SOW student and really hungry and keen to learn, particularly eager to develop his Bible handling and preaching skills. We might go over something we’ve done in class but go into a bit more depth or detail. Other times we’ll work on a Bible passage together, or I might share some work I’ve been doing preparing something and discuss it with him. Sadly today he texts to say he’s unwell and won’t be coming.

So, instead, after Beth makes sure that she’s all set for her school assembly in the morning, we watch an episode of Call the Midwife on DVD and call it a night. Beth assured me that “It’s full of nice things!” - there’s rather too much screaming for my liking…