Tad's Life

It was a great afternoon together. And getting our 15-year service certificate was quite out of the blue. At least for me. Perhaps Jane knew it was coming. What really shocked me were the gifts. I mean, they were wonderful gifts, not the penholders and paperweights that UWM has traditionally done! In fact, as he started to make the presentations, Rodney acknowledged the various "friends" of the Mission who were there, apologizing for doing a very insider thing with them present. He suggested that it might encourage them to join the Mission. At that, I guffawed! I laughed out loud with a kind of bark. And then I quickly covered my mouth as folks at my end of the room stared at me! Oops. I thought Rodney was being sarcastic. I confess that we’ve grumbled in the past about the gifts being so banal as to be the opposite of motivating. You know the corporate grumble, "After all these years of dedication and sacrifice for the company, they give me a gold watch and push me out the door." Well, not the "out the door" part, but we felt like the Mission leaders weren’t even really thinking about us.

But, boy, did they change that. Our gift was a portable DVD player. It is one of those little units that you can take in a car with you. It has a 7-inch screen and a rechargeable battery and a power plug for the cigarette lighter in the car. We were just blown away. What a lovely gift. We really have to write a thank-you to our leadership team, including Rodney. We really did feel honored this time.

(I’d show you a photo of the DVD player, but the digital camera just went on the fritz. It makes a nice buzzing sound when you turn it on now and can’t do the auto focus. Rats!)

And Gretchen came to the Thanksgiving feast, too! That was wonderful. We sat with "Lizzy" (Ruth Ann) Bowers and the Duttweilers. And Gretchen had on these shoes that I just had to get a shot of. She says they are quite comfortable and are very fashionable here. They are the pointiest things I’ve ever seen. And she is right. They are quite fashionable here for ladies.

The next day, the Conrad gang was gathered at Jim’s house in Monticello, Indiana. Well, Jane’s two brothers and their kids, plus Anna, Frankie, Allison and Christine were there. Beth and her family are in Alaska and we're here. Anyway, we got an urgent call from Steve on our Vonage phone. He was sending an email with a photo attached, he explained. He would call back in fifteen minutes. They were challenging Jane to a game of Boggle. "Don’t peek!"

What fun! Jane didn’t win the match. Carol did, as always. But Frankie found "goalie" and "goalies" when no one else did, even though he wasn't officially playing.

Of course, the moral of that last story is that we aren't that far away by telephone and computer! Call us. Send us your photos. Challenge Jane to Boggle, even. We love to hear from you!

// posted by Tad @ 10:26 AM 0 comments

I grew up in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. As far as I can remember, we didn’t have a taxi in town. Maybe there was someone you could call up and arrange to take you somewhere. I don’t know. My family never did. Nor did any of our friends. Later, in Canton, a small city, I know that there was such a service. I remember looking into it when as a one-car family I had to travel, or perhaps the car was in the shop. Canton also actually had (and still does) a minimal bus service. We ended up that time using Rent-a Wreck and getting a used car for $10 a day, or something. In neither town of my former life were there taxis circulating in the streets available to take you wherever you needed to go.

Dakar has taught me a different way of life.

Though it took a while. We've been here for over 13 years, but I really didn’t get comfortable with taxis until the last 3 or 4, I’d say. I think that I finally eased into the practice when parking downtown became impossible and I started to take taxis to the bank and the car insurance place regularly. Now, without hesitation, we go out and hail a taxi and discuss the price and off we go.

The clutch died on the car on Saturday. I got it to the mechanic fairly quickly, but when I talked to him at the end of the afternoon, he informed me he had just discovered a bent fork that needed replaced and he’d have to try on Sunday. Of course, in the end, on Sunday the used parts places were not open. So we’re still without a car on Monday. That meant a taxi ride to church yesterday and later one to play basketball.

I survived the game, once again, returning home tired and dehydrated, but well-exercised! But as Jonathan and I came home in that taxi, I suddenly calculated the price of my workout. I wish I hadn’t. Taxis are ubiquitous here, but they aren’t cheap. Buses and "car rapides" are cheap: great for things along the bus route. For going across town, they are not a fast option. Taxis, on the other hand, are direct and quick. But they are not inexpensive. And since I am a terrible bargainer, it cost me $10 for the round trip to play ball. Ouch! That may slow me down next time I’m without a car on a Sunday!

Looking at things from another point of view, though, taxis are a huge opportunity.

Patrice, the handyman for the Phare, came in to see me the other day. He is a smart young man and a hard worker. I’m not sure what the right word is to describe his nature, but he is the opposite of irresponsible and lazy. "Serious" is how the French say it. "Sober" might be what Dickens would have said.

Patrice doesn’t want to work as a gardener / fix-it guy for a career. He really wants to get to a place where he is making a decent wage: $300 per month instead of $100. He’s been considering various plans. That day he came to share with me his dream. He wants to be the owner / operator of a taxi.

He’s got a driver’s license. He’s got good health. He has a good personality for it. All he needs is $6,000-$7,000. That’s all.

This tears me up. I’d love to help him. Personally. As a mission team. In any capacity. It is the young man’s eternal problem. Without money, you can’t make money. Without capital, you can’t produce profits.

But I can’t help him. I don’t have $6,000 that I could risk on a business venture. Nor does our team. And if we did, would we choose Patrice? Aren’t there others in the churches who are in the same boat? Fodé, for instance, who has been calling me lately with his desperate situation, needs a job or capital to start a small business. And Vivate, our runner, who is beyond young now and still unemployed. He could probably drive a taxi... Well, maybe not. He probably needs a place with supervision. He’s honest, but unfocused!

Anyway, taxis in Dakar are everywhere. And in my life these past few days, they are in my thoughts as well.

// posted by Tad @ 9:32 AM 0 comments

Well, what’s on your to-do list?

I’ve just finished jotting down what comes to mind and, as usual, the list is longer than I want to face!

First on the list is to do a drawing, a layout of a proposed youth ministry center. We are making an audacious proposal to the village elders of Ouakam. They are in the midst of divvying up some of the last undeveloped land in the area. We have no money. We have no personnel. But, not wanting to miss an opportunity, we’re going to present a potential project! Clearly this is not my personality. But my teammates have vision and I’m glad to be part of it. Anyway, my role today is to try to figure out how to fit the basketball court, classroom building, office and chapel onto the lot we’re asking for. This sketch is how far I got yesterday afternoon after I volunteered to draw up something for the PowerPoint presentation next week.

Also on the list is to try to make progress on the minutes from the DA Board meeting. I haven’t gotten beyond a draft of Day 1 of the 3 yet. I also need to write up minutes from yesterday’s Long Range Planning Committee meeting. We consulted with the dorm parents about expanding our on-campus boarding facilities. That went smoothly, but I need to get down on paper what was said quickly before I forget.

Hervé and I need to sit with Balla to figure out how to schedule the Discipleship Experience School we plan to start in February. Since we don’t have a separate building for this (a dream and another drawing I need to complete soon!), we plan to house the half-dozen students in a dorm room or two during the three month session. We have to plan this around any conferences or groups that need the dorm, scheduling practicums (praticae?) in the village or short breaks when the Phare is full. That should be a challenge, eh?

Also, I need to work with Hervé and Patrice to prepare for the DA students coming tomorrow. We need to get out enough rakes and gloves and machetes and all that, so they can get to work quickly in the morning. We also need to coordinate a bit, identifying the final list of jobs that we’ll have them do. We got gravel delivered so they can spread it in front of ITES and the basketball court. And the weeds are done growing for this year, but which ones will we have them attack first?

Well, the list actually goes on, but I’m bored of recounting it and if I don’t start working on some of these things, they’ll still be there tomorrow!!

// posted by Tad @ 8:26 AM 0 comments

Saturday the various DA softball teams (adult, HS and social) had 4 games. Jonathan really wanted to watch these. So I sat at the field, working at the lap top on minutes from the three day Board meeting. I got one day’s worth done! And it was a beautiful day to watch softball. And hot dogs from the concession stand took care of lunch.

Afterwards, Corrie came over to play with Jonathan. They ended up arranging for him to stay through the night. We whipped up some pancakes and sausage and the boys had a good time together. We even went to bed at a reasonable hour.

Sunday we drove early to DA so Corrie could change into church clothes. Later Jonathan and I went out to the hotel where Jane was finishing her conference. We got to swim in the pool and hang at the beach a bit. A nice ending to a fairly relaxed weekend.

// posted by Tad @ 9:02 AM 0 comments

We have a friend named Moses. He is a missionary with the Southern Baptists and an old friend from years ago when he was in the Ouakam church as a member. We've enjoyed his return to Senegal with his wife and young son.

I suggested some spyware cleanup programs and he went on his way.

A day later he was back. Things were still bad. We found some advertisement software that was on his machine uninvited. Then we ran a spyware program and I saw a number of names that made me nervous. As we talked, I asked what virus protection software he ran. Norton? AVG? McAfee? He didn't know. "Beth takes care of that stuff normally," he said. She is due to give birth any day. Lately she hasn't had the energy to deal with the computer, so he was trying to fix things. But certainly the computer came with virus software.

We searched for it.

No Norton. No McAfee. No AVG. No nothing.

Bummer.

We downloaded AVG. It's free. It's good. We started a scan.

We deleted a few files, needless to say, and set the antivirus software back to work.

Moses reports that all is well.

Oh, except that two nights back the power supply died and the computer won't even turn on!

I've got to get my buddy a staff and robe.

// posted by Tad @ 5:42 PM 0 comments

I've learned something fundamental recently. Well, perhaps that is not the right word. Yet, an idea has caused a paradigm shift in my understanding of the Pentateuch. It is a way of looking at what Moses wrote that is new for me. For several weeks now, this idea has continued to disturb my thinking, declaring that it will change how I understand a large piece of Scripture and challenging me to take the time to think through its implications.

I don't remember why, but I found myself reading Genesis and pulled out Volume 2 of the Expositor's Bible Commentary (Zondervan). I've really appreciated this series over the years and am glad I took my pastor's advice before coming to Africa and invested in a copy. The section concerning Genesis is by John Salihamer. He was at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School 20 years ago when the book was written. Like all the guys' in this series, he's a serious evangelical scholar.

OK, and so I am the kind of guy who reads commentaries!! I admit it. Well, I don’t read commentaries constantly, and some I find to be just awful, but I do like to understand the background of what I’m reading or studying. And I also appreciate having another perspective on a passage. I don’t claim to be a scholar, though, even if I enjoy theology. In fact, it is one of my regrets that the life God has given me hasn’t yet included the luxury of an extended period of seminary classes or even a degree.

Anyway, Salihamer rocked my world with a thought. It wasn’t a large thought, really. It was a simple perspective on when and why Moses wrote.

Perhaps someone had expressed this thought to me before and I wasn’t yet able to hear it. Ideas are like that, often. You need to have a base of other information and experience to be able to see why a particular idea is so important or profound. After all these years of studying and teaching the great stories of Genesis and Exodus, I do have a good working knowledge of the Pentateuch. After hearing so many sermons and discussing so many theological issues, after receiving so much teaching about the implications of the Old Testament, especially the writings of Moses, on understanding Jesus and the Gospel, this little idea in the right place and in the right time made my jaw drop.

Here it is. Moses didn’t write to record or teach the Law. Moses wrote after the Law had already failed to bring peace with God. His goal was to explain why. His books are the teaching of a prophet, not the records of the court stenographer.

Moses didn’t write those five scrolls on the far shore of the Red Sea in the triumph of escape from Egypt. He didn’t write at Mount Sinai in the glow of God’s glory filling the Tabernacle. He wrote during the 40 years of wandering in the desert, a curse brought on the people for rebellion, for their rejection of God and His covenant. He didn’t write for those who escaped tyranny and suffering. He addressed their children. Moses wrote to explain all that failure and pain and death that we tend to skip over. He needed to interpret the events that had happened, not just record them, so that those who followed could understand what it all meant.

So, Moses addressed a certain generation: the children of the wilderness wanderings. They had questions, certainly. What did it all mean? Who is this God that our parents say brought them out of slavery in Egypt with power and came to dwell with us, but who, in anger, has us in the wilderness now? Why did He bother to save us? Why is He still with us? What is His goal? What can we expect? Can we trust Him? Can we trust ourselves? Won’t we just mess up, too?

Well, I don’t know all the questions they might have asked. What this new thought is challenging me to do is to try to understand which questions Moses did answer and how. I have read Exodus as history and theology. I have not read it as history theologically interpreted for the next generation after Joshua. I haven’t ever thought to put myself in that time frame.

But I’ve begun to. And it is exciting, because Moses foresaw human failure repeating the pattern, but he also promised that God’s faithfulness to His plan would bring a return to the intimacy of Eden. The Gospel will be even clearer, I expect, when I hear Moses more clearly.

// posted by Tad @ 3:18 PM 0 comments