Our initial plan was to walk 40 villages this week. The list has narrowed to 36 as 4 in a northern area are virtually inaccessible due to road conditions. We have just entered the rainy season and some areas are difficult to reach. Most are still accessible by moto, but that really isn’t an option for us… I don’t mind jumping on the back of a motorcycle and bumping along a footpath, but it is a big ask for most of our crew – Laura and I are the youngest hear by at least 10 years in most cases (yes, there is one other 50-something – just in case she reads this blog)!
I went on a men’s retreat about 15 years ago. We drove east on State Road 64 for a little over an hour. We had seen nothing but telephone poles and fenceposts for about 20 minutes when we turned right onto a dirt road. There was nothing but fenced pasture land to the right and left as we drove for another 20 minutes and then we stopped and opened the gate to our left and drove down a barely visible track of tire ruts for 15 minutes or so until we arrived at a hunting lodge. It was a lot like that only the paths we traveled weren’t as good. We did a lot of stopping and slowly creeping our way down through potholes and across ravine like ruts and miniature mud lakes.
Our prayer team consists of 12 people from all over the US (I’ll tell you about them in another post). For the walks we were split into 4 groups that consist of 3 prayer team members, one of the 6 Degree Initiative missionaries and a local pastor or church planter, with the hopes of walking 2 or 3 villages each.
The 2 villages Laura and I walked in this first session had a couple of Christians present, but no reasonable access to a church. The first was almost deserted as most were out in the fields or off working in one of the nearby towns. We encountered one woman who was a believer and we prayed for the village as we walked through.
We use a specific prayer model call the 3 circle prayer based on the Lord’s Prayer. The first circle is Listening Prayer as we recognize God’s sovereign role in evangelism and look for where He is at work – “Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be The Name”. The second is Missional Prayer where we ask specifically for the spiritual restoration of the people and community. Finally is Practical Prayer. We try to ask for specific prayer request from the people of the village when possible.
In the first village, which was actually quite large, consisting of 3 clusters of 16 to 20 huts (I never knew small African villages could be composed of multiple subdivisions), we prayed our Listening Prayer before we entered the village and the Missional Prayer as we walked through. Since we had very few encounters with people (nothing other than polite greetings really) when passed through very quickly and prayed on the far side of the village.
The second village, a short 6 or 8 minute walk away was much different. We encountered and spoke to many people along the way – especially children who were continually calling out “Yo vo!”, which is the Ewe equivalent to “gringo”. The Ewe (pronounced eh-vay) is the predominant tribe in this area of Togo. “Yo vo” means “white man”.
On the walk through the village we encountered a young girl in a wheelchair. Generally, we don’t directly interact with children unless a parent is present to give permission, so we passed by with just a “Bon jour”. But as we walked along Laura and Jan (another member of the team) both said, “I really felt compelled to pray with her.” Just then, the girl’s mother comes from the other direction and asks if we will pray for her daughter. She had gotten sick when she was a few months old and was never able to walk. Her father had left and mom had been struggling to provide for them. So we went back and prayed with Nadesh.
On the way out, we encountered an old man sitting at the entrance of the village who asked us what we were doing there. When we said we were there to pray and share the Gospel, he asked why we didn’t share the Gospel with him. So I did. We continue to pray for Luedimo(?). He could not get past the history of the slave trade and colonization. This was the “yo vo” gospel and Americans think they are above Africans…