What do clean water, poop and lacrosse have in common?...

They were all part of training a recent team was offering. February 5-17 we led a mission in partnership with Grace Chapel to Burkina Faso. Our mission was to offer training in well pump repair (clean water), community health through hygiene (poop), and the introduction of a new sport to young people (lacrosse). I hope you are not offended by the use of the word “poop,” but when we are teaching health and hygiene, we often refer to poop. When people in villages can understand how microbes are passed by unwashed hands, or kids feet, or animal paws, or ?.... from uncovered poop to others, there can be lively discussion about how to block the passing of those microbes. So we talked a lot about poop. The training of 108 women was offered by 13 women whom Carolyn, Jay, Rachel, Eileen and Dave met with for the first two days. They did an excellent job of enculturating, adapting, passing on the information, and they are particularly excited about working toward every village in Burkina Faso learning these principles of good health.

Dick and Kyle worked with a previously trained team to train a new team in well pump repair. This is challenging work in remote locations and in the Burkina heat. They were reminded though how open people are, when they are given water again through a repaired well, to also talk about the Living Water. Then Rachel with Jay trained the first ever lacrosse teams in Burkina Faso. It was amazing with only three afternoons of practice to watch young people having an absolute blast playing a reasonable facsimile of a lacrosse game. They are even discussing building a league, and one of our partners wants us to bring lacrosse to Benin, so they can join in competition between the two nations.