Contextualization

by Katie Garrett | Dec 7, 2020 | Uncategorized

Our girls with Santa during their kindergarten program here in Kaffrine years ago

Contextualization is an important topic both in terms of how we do evangelism and also in terms of how we live as followers of Christ. Living and working among the Wolof people of Senegal for twenty years has helped me understand this better than I did before I stepped outside of my own culture. In fact, I would suggest that most of us don’t realize how much we are influenced by our own culture until we become familiar with another culture. Let’s briefly look at what contextualization is, why it is important for evangelism, and how intentionally thinking about contextualization can help us better shape our own life choices as believers.

A generation ago, the idea of contextualization was not yet widely taught to missionaries before they went to the mission field. We see the results of this lack of contextualization today in Senegal as most Wolof people believe that Christianity is a white person’s religion and that to become a Christian means to adopt Western culture. Attending church once years ago here in Senegal and hearing the African congregation sing an old French hymn called “White, whiter than snow… Jesus washed my sins away” I couldn’t help but wonder how many people in the room had ever seen snow! Did this song best express their hearts and their own experience with God? Darrell Whiteman says that “Contextualization attempts to communicate the Gospel in word and deed and to establish the church in ways that make sense to people within their local cultural context, presenting Christianity in such a way that it meets people’s deepest needs and penetrates their worldview, thus allowing them to follow Christ and remain within their own culture.” More simply, Ed Stetzer says, “Contextualization involves an attempt to present the Gospel in a culturally relevant way.”

I used to say, “I’m from Connecticut; I don’t have an accent.” And I also remember saying, “I don’t really like ethnic foods.” I am embarrassed now by both of these statements! To a Londoner, I have an incredibly strong American accent, most Senegalese people think macaroni and cheese is disgusting, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a bizarre food to the rest of the world! I did not realize how American I really am until I lived in Senegal and experienced a whole country with millions of people who share a very different way of living and thinking. It took living here for me to realize that it is my own individual culture that prioritizes punctuality over relationships and that this is not a universal value – and not necessarily a biblical one at that! And I could list countless more examples. But I am glad that I have had this awakening because now I can more clearly identify which parts of my life experience and ways of thinking and acting are White American and which are specifically Christian. This is important because I want to share Christ and invite people to know and follow him, not to become American like me. I need to hold tightly to biblical truths and be willing to let go of everything else. So I am willing to wear long skirts every day, eat different foods, learn to speak another language, sit on mats on the ground, be teased (which is the Wolof way of connecting), and prioritize relationships over punctuality in order to be able to gain a hearing with my Wolof neighbors. This is what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 9:20 when he writes, “When I was with the Jews, I lived like a Jew to bring the Jews to Christ. When I was with those who follow the Jewish law, I too lived under that law. Even though I am not subject to the law, I did this so I could bring to Christ those who are under the law.” If I am going to offend someone, I want it to be the Gospel of Christ that is offensive, not my outfit or what I am eating. I might even discover that some Senegalese customs are more aligned with biblical values than the American way of doing things!

Some years ago, for the first time in our region a Christian couple had a baby. In Wolof culture there are important traditions that take place on the eight day after a baby’s birth. With the small group of Wolof believers in our region, we had a fascinating series of conversations about how this baby’s birth should be celebrated. Should the traditional party be held with all friends and relatives invited? Should the baby’s head be shaved? Should the baby’s name be whispered in her ear? Some of the questions were easy to answer because the Wolof believers knew the meaning of the custom and that it contradicted biblical teaching. Others were gray areas that we discussed at length. Some things the group decided could be tweaked in order to be redeemed. And some customs were beautiful and could be embraced and continued by local believers as they lived out their Christian faith in fully Wolof ways.

If you are not working cross-culturally, does contextualization matter in your life? I believe it does! You can do the same exercise the Wolof believers did for each decision, tradition, or habit in your own life. We did this as a couple regarding how we wanted to celebrate Christmas as a family the year our first child was born. We talked through all our traditions surrounding the holidays and evaluated them in light of biblical teaching. We thought deeply, prayed and discussed each tradition, including whether we should teach our kids to believe in Santa Claus, decorate a tree, read the story of Jesus’ birth on Christmas Eve, exchange presents, and eat lots of pie. Some traditions we intentionally left behind, some we tweaked to align them with biblical teaching (for example, we told our kids from the very beginning, that Santa is a game Americans play at Christmas time and that it is fine to play along but that it isn’t true), and others (reading the Bible story and eating pie, of course!) we embraced as Americans and as Christians. Being aware of the influence of your own culture and knowing how to contextualize while being faithful to the Gospel allows us to intentionally pick and chose which parts of our culture we go along with, which we reject, and which we ask God to help us change in redemptive ways. It also frees us to let go of anything which may be a barrier to a neighbor who doesn’t yet know Jesus. For example, we come to understand that the style of music we sing at church, or the way we dress, is a cultural (perhaps generational) issue, not a Gospel issue, and so we can hold our own preferences loosely and we become willing to change the nonessential things in order to open the door to sharing the essentials of the Gospel with our neighbor. May the Holy Spirit help each of us, whether we are in Senegal or in the US, to intentionally contextualize well with His guidance, not compromising the truths of His Word, but willingly laying down everything else, so that nothing trivial keeps our unbelieving neighbors from hearing the Good News.    

How have we been affected by the coronavirus pandemic?

by Katie Garrett | May 7, 2020 | Uncategorized

The Senegalese government has been tremendously proactive in their approach towards the coronavirus pandemic. Schools, the airport, and all international borders were quickly closed in March. Since the first case was detected, whenever a patient tests positive for the virus, government health workers attempt to immediately trace and quarantine all of the patient’s possible contacts. Travel between regions inside the country is now banned and masks are required in public spaces and in places of business. A curfew is in place from 8 pm until 6 am daily. Although Senegal is roughly equivalent in both area and population to the six states of New England in the US, to date there have only been 1,433 cases in Senegal and 12 deaths. The Ministry of Health has been educating the population about hygiene measures to take to prevent the spread and they also communicate daily the numbers of those tested, infected, released, the neighborhoods involved, etc. However, there are still new cases being reported daily with no known contact traced.

Nationwide, the bulk of the economic impact of the government restrictions is still to come. Those in certain sectors, notably restaurant/hotel/tourist and travel-related jobs, have undoubtedly been hardest hit. Ten percent of Senegal’s GDP is attributed to travel/tourism so this shutdown will certainly have a large negative impact across the country.

Our region, Kaffrine, has not yet recorded any cases of the virus and is primarily a farming region so the economic consequences are less obvious here at this point. People are still able to buy and sell in shops and in the open-air market here in town. This is the lean time for subsistence farmers anyway. Next month, people will need to prepare the fields and find money for seed and fertilizer as the rainy season begins in late June. But right now teachers and taxi drivers are sitting idle at home, many receiving little or no income. Each family will certainly experience the impact of the restrictions differently.

For our family, school and church activities came to a screeching halt overnight and suddenly we had our girls home from boarding school (yay!). With no travel or meetings allowed, all seven of us are now basically home together all day every day. In that way, these seven weeks have been quite precious! The girls are doing their school online and I am doing kindergarten homeschool in English with our boys. We continue to see our neighbors and to welcome a few other people and occasional visitors to our house each day.

But we have had to pause several of our principle ministries, specifically: village visits, the new chicken project, church involvement, and English classes. The chicken project has not yet gotten off the ground and is currently on hold until the government lifts the restrictions on group gatherings. This means Corey is not working with the young Wolof believer he wanted to mentor and partner with in the village work. Missing out on this and on my Tuesday and Friday afternoon English classes with Senegalese students is disappointing.

On the other hand, these imposed limits have given us more time to pursue other ministries that had long been on our to-do list. Last month Corey was able to try something new: advertising the Wolof chronological Bible story app on Facebook. This app shows the biblical text in either Arabic- or Roman-script Wolof on your phone while playing an audio file of the excerpt being read by a Wolof speaker and highlighting each phrase in yellow as it is read. Corey ran two ads for one month, spending a total of US$100. We were pleased that during that month 240,000 Senegalese people saw the ads, and 9,000 people clicked on one! Before we ran the ads, only about 100 people had the app on their device; during the month of ads more than 750 people installed the app. Many uninstalled it before the month was up, but still there are almost 500 people now walking around with the Bible stories in their pocket! And we can see that the average user is looking at the app for about 15 minutes per day, which is about how long it takes to read/listen to one Bible story. So while we are not able to get out much and talk to people face to face, God’s Word is getting out! We plan to do another series of ads during Ramadan as soon as the iOS version of the app is ready.

• Pray for God to touch the hearts of those who are reading/listening to His Word and to draw them to Jesus!
• Pray too for God’s wisdom and enabling as Corey continues to work on the different Wolof Bible apps; he hopes to transcribe and release some more books of the Bible and some new versions soon.
• Also, please do pray for an end to the coronavirus and for wisdom to know how to respond to the economic hardships that we imagine are around the corner because of the current restrictions.
• All our Muslim friends and neighbors are fasting for Ramadan right now. Pray that it will be a time of increased spiritual interest.
• It is the hottest time of the year here now, with daily temperatures reaching over 110 degrees F in the shade; pray for health and stamina. Skin infections are common during these hot, humid months, especially for kids – pray for our boys, who love to play in the dirt and always seem sweaty even with three showers per day! They both have a (heat?) rash already…

Did you get a magnet?

by Katie Garrett | Jan 20, 2020 | Uncategorized

We just sent out a quarterly newsletter via mail, so those who are on our postal mail list received it along with our new magnet with a recent family photo that includes our sons, Will and Jake! Our last photo magnet was four years ago — we only had three kids then, so it is definitely time for a new one! If you receive our newsletter digitally and you would like a magnet, please email us your postal mail address. We will also bring some extra magnets when we visit the three churches (see below) in Connecticut so you can ask us for one then too. We would be honored to be on your fridge! Our hope is that the magnet will remind you to pray for us and for God’s work here among the Wolof of Senegal.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you in person soon as we prepare to travel to Connecticut to complete our boys’ American citizenship process. Our appointment is in Hartford on Jan. 27. We appreciate your prayers that they will be granted citizenship this time! Pray too that the spelling of our last name could be corrected at the same time and the boys’ US passports issued quickly.

I (Katie) also have a couple of doctor’s appointments (with a dermatologist and a rheumatologist) to check out some concerns. We are grateful for this opportunity to access higher level health care and we appreciate your prayers for our health!

While it would not have been our choice to make this trip at this time, the Lord can turn even the frustrating requirements of government bureaucracy into an encouragement and a time of blessing and refreshment. Through his people, God has provided us with a place to stay, two loaner vehicles, money for plane tickets… everything we need! He is so good and his people are so generous! We won’t be preaching on this trip but we will be visiting a few churches to say hello, and wanted to let you know when we’ll be where.

• Jan. 23 – Arrival in Connecticut
• Sun., Jan. 26 @ the Barn in Simsbury
• Sun., Feb. 2 @ Valley Brook church in Granby
• Sun., Feb. 9 @ Wintonbury church in Bloomfield
• Sun., Feb. 16 @ the Barn
• Feb. 18 – Return to Senegal

Please pray for our daughters Emma (18), Molly (16), and Wheaton (14) as they remain in Senegal at school. It is really hard to leave them behind!

Thanks, friends!

Our Sons, Almost Americans!

by Katie Garrett | Nov 14, 2019 | Uncategorized

We have seen a great deal of change in our boys, Will and Jake, since we brought them home a year and a half ago. They came to us speaking only French and now they speak mostly English (with an impressive vocabulary!), along with some Wolof and French. They have both moved about 20% higher on the height and weight charts for their age. For example, when Will came to us he measured in the 3rd percentile for his age; now he is in the 30th percentile for height! At first, Jake would only eat a few familiar foods: rice, bread, eggs, bananas. Almost everything else he put in his mouth, he would chew and then take back out. He no longer does this! Both boys now enjoy a wide variety of foods. One of their favorites is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — obviously they are ready to officially become American citizens!

Many of you have been praying for us since we started this adoption process in 2013. We never imagined it would take us this long to get this point! We had hoped our trip to the US in March 2019 would have resulted in the boys receiving their citizenship, but due to a State Department rule change and poor communication between US Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) and the US Embassy in Dakar, we are having to do this further step. But we are thankful to finally be nearing the end of this process! USCIS granted both boys an appointment for their citizenship interviews on January 27 in Hartford, CT. We have purchased plane tickets for the four of us (Corey, Katie, Will & Jake) to spend just over three weeks in Connecticut while our three girls are at boarding school. We will be in the US from January 23 to February 18.

We are overwhelmed with gratitude for how the Lord has already provided so much of what we need for this trip. Friends have generously covered the cost of our transportation from Kaffrine to Simsbury, including the plane tickets. Isn’t that amazing and wonderful!? Other friends have volunteered to let us stay with them. (We sincerely hope that they don’t regret this later!) And someone else has offered us the use of their vehicle. These sacrificial gifts have been such an encouragement to us during this stressful time and have reassured us that the Lord, and His people, love us and are close by with a helping hand.

We would love to be able to borrow a second car for when our out-of-town family comes to see us and so that Corey and I can use our time more efficiently. And we are looking to borrow three car seats as well (a booster seat for Jake, a 5-point harness car seat for Will, and a 5-point harness car seat for our 2-year old nephew just for a week). If you have a car or a car seat we can borrow, let me know via email or Facebook messenger. We will also need to borrow winter coats, boots, snow pants, and clothes for the boys. As a side note, if you have boys’ summer clothing sizes 5 – 8 in good shape that your sons have outgrown, we will happily take them back to Senegal with us for Will and Jake.

Thank you, friends! Looking forward to seeing some of you soon!

Poking a hornets’ nest?

by Corey Garrett | Oct 3, 2019 | Uncategorized

With our teammates’ departure, the medical surveying and health education visits to each household in the village were no longer possible, so Corey started investigating other ways we can help the community. For several months, we were working towards a water project, but in the end the Senegalese government rejected our consultant’s suggestion to change to an electric pump from the failing diesel powered one, and ended up providing a new diesel pump, which did solve the problem of frequent water cuts. As we were considering with the chief what we could do next, he suggested we restart a community garden project that folded over a decade ago.

We do not normally try to resurrect other organizations’ failed projects, and were wary of getting involved in this one. At the same time we saw some real possibilities – much of the infrastructure is still there – so we started to consider it. Corey has taken a lot of time over several weeks discussing with people in the village what happened and found that there were many factors that contributed to the original garden project’s failure, including the main water counter to the garden malfunctioning (marking too much water which resulted in huge unpayable bills for the farmers) and the water tower falling over during the first year of the project due to faulty construction.

But in addition to the physical problems, there were also interpersonal problems within the village related to this project. As Corey spent time talking to the different people involved, he found that there are a lot of broken relationships and residual hurt and anger over things that were said and done during the original project. He has asked a lot of questions and explained that we are only interested in helping with a new community garden project if we can do it in a way that brings blessing and increased peace for all members of the village. He refers often to the four kinds of peace that Adam and Eve experienced in the Garden of Eden: 1) peace with God, 2) peace with each other, 3) peace with the land, and 4) internal peace rooted in knowing their identity and purpose. A community garden project that only brings peace, or increased blessing, in one area (for example, through increased vegetable production from the land) but which brings discord in the other areas can not be considered a success! Corey has been visiting all the stakeholders asking if there is a way to do this project that would bring blessing in all four areas.

Yesterday he was talking to five or six villagers who farmed the land before the project was organized and things got really “hot” (as they say in Wolof) with lots of angry yelling and arguing. Some men were angry at Corey and yelled at him, accusing him of favoritism – the original project was rife with divisions along family lines that go back to previous feuds. Others said things like, “If this project happens, I won’t let anyone in my household eat the produce of the garden!” and “I am going to die fighting about this!”

It is kind of crazy that wanting to help the chief rebuild a fenced enclosure for a garden to bless the whole village could incite such strong negative emotions!

We share all of this to ask you to pray with us. Pray specifically for the meeting Corey wants to have with those landowners on Friday afternoon (4 October) at 5 p.m. GMT (that’s 1 p.m. EST). Some of the men have already said they are going to boycott the meeting.

Pray for the Lord to give Corey wisdom and clear guidance. Is this an opportunity for God to show His power to heal relationships and to teach about forgiveness? Or should we abandon this idea, despite the chief’s continued prioritizing of this project? Is there another type of project we could do to help? Does the Lord even want us to keep trying to work in this village at all? Pray for God to answer these questions and for us to be faithful to obey His directives, even if we don’t like the answers or if it isn’t easy.

Disappointing adoption news

by Katie Garrett | Jul 23, 2019 | Uncategorized

We received a reply from US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) today. Unfortunately, they did not issue Will and Jake citizenship as we had hoped, citing the fact that we do not reside in the US as the reason for this refusal. They suggested we apply for the boys’ citizenship by filing an N-600K form for each of the boys, submitting $1,170 along with each form. Then we will wait for some months to hear back from USCIS with an interview date in the US a few weeks later, necessitating another costly trip for the four of us.   

This seems like a colossal waste of time and money from our perspective. We are also concerned about the timing since the boys’ US visas in their Guinean passports are only valid for one year from the date when we entered the US with them, which was Feb. 28., and we have heard that the estimated time it takes for USCIS to process this kind of application averages 9 months. It is particularly frustrating that the US Embassy in Dakar did not put us on this path in the first place.

But while we were reading USCIS’ letter and researching the process before us, the boys were giggling and wrestling on the floor with their sisters… and I was reminded that they have been part of our family for over a year. They are not orphans living in an institution, begging for someone to hold them, play with them, give them attention… They have a mom and a dad who will fly across the world for them (again!) because we love them, and because they are our sons. This is what parents do. Our heavenly Father has done a lot more for us! So, we are grateful, and we press on.

Pray with us:

• for the peace of the Lord to rule in our hearts and minds
• for His provision of the time and money needed for this process
• for this process to go quickly enough that the boys’ citizenship papers are issued before their visas expire at the end of February, or wisdom about applying for another visa if it isn’t going to happen in time. This is the part we have a lot of questions about…
• for stamina to persevere through the red tape, and joy despite this circumstance
• that this process will be completely 100% over and finished forever soon!