Children's Festival

At four in the morning, we were awakened by the horn of local neighborhood members. We were embracing the main event of our preparation. After transitioning four suitcases full of costumes, candy, games lessons and lyrics we were ready to begin the children's festival. Earlier in the week we met the Compassion International representative Burkina Faso to plan how we would get 600 lunches to the children and organize them for the festival. With a strong team from all over the world we began filling water balloons, hanging decoration and fabricating bracelets for our children.

They arrived early as we were practicing a skit on the book of Esther. With a limited time schedule, we had to push through rehearsals to ensure that our french speaking actors understood the spirit of the story. By the time our program began, hundreds of lunches were being packaged unbeknownst to our young counterparts. Their joy, singing, drumming and dancing sustained us as we set the stage for an awesome program. We had our share of challenges including power outages, missing characters in the play, wrong versions of documents and general chaos in transitioning children through the various activities including an interactive program illustrating the journey of salvation!

The children left with pockets full of candy, choco pies and goodies. We taught them new songs, performed various skits and took a few breaks to just enjoy their company with pictures, dancing and singing. I gazed in awe at our translators who patiently herded children around in between conversations with facilitators and teachers. We steadily pushed the program forward until the final proclamation where children decreed their new life in Christ and responsibility to pray for their nation and leaders. i quietly bonded with team members in intervals as I dressed them for their role in the plays and communicated instructions from Christine. Overall, It was a beautiful program that can't be expressed in words as the intricacies far exceed the natural limits of human production. Our motivation was pure. Our resources limitless and our strength was renewed as we skillfully showed love to over 600 children of Burkina Faso.

I had seen these moments in movies and on the websites of friends who completed missions but rarely imagined the sheer level of joy that the children expressed as we interacted with them. Though I had been up since early and had little sleep the night before, I was able to teach dances and keep up with the needs of the program as if I had gotten a full night of sleep. it was a miracle and I was thankful to experience how wonderful are the words of Acts 20: 35.