Expecting to be a blessing

We walked to the village today, expecting to be a blessing. To greet, to
visit, to take advantage of a great cloud cover that offered us a not so
hot and not rainy afternoon. But what we got instead was a chance to be
blessed. We were happy to see friends along the way as we set out for a
regular Sunday afternoon. At our first stop we talked with Aishat (the
team from WFMC may remember her as the mama who helped with our
laundry), she gave us the grand tour of her compound, showing us all the
lovely trees, and greens she has growing. God is so creative, each green
(they somehow look very similar to me) has its own purpose, to ward off
mosquitos, to make soup taste better, to bring down a fever or to help
with digestion; all of it created for our good. She even let us sample
some limes she had growing from her citrus tree. As we continued along
we saw some members of our church and children from our school. It was
good to see familiar faces as they've been away on school holiday for a
couple of weeks now. They kept coming, more and more friends as we
walked down the road, people calling us out by name, greeting us, so
friendly. What we didn't expect is the generosity. The boys and I have
been dreaming about Costco lately, you know the Sample Ladies who make
your Saturday extra special. Our mouth waters each time we think about
it. Today the Lord gave us our very own version of Costco. We first got
to sample limes at the citrus tree, then we were offered a gift of corn
and ground nuts, our friend Halima later bought us a bag of groundnuts
and then someone gave us some sweeties. Bridget looked at me and said
"Didn't you think it would have been us to give them something?" But
today when we expected to give the blessing we received it instead. A
lesson on God's provision in greens, in generosity of others, in
friendship, in community.
Photo: Some of our very hard working friends in Emi-Woro.