Where the devil is not white

A friend from Togo wrote to me today, "we sincerely need you to pray along with us that God will establish and lay a solid and firm foundation for the work in Togo". We first met last November when I was in northern Nigeria. This determined and brave single Nigerian lady has been a missionary for some years. When she first went to Togo she was horrified to discover that in the north of the country local folklore taught that albino children were possessed by evil spirits. Many were killed, often by their own families. My friend offered to care for these children instead of letting them die and began to teach the people that an albino child, like any child, is a gift from God. This care for albino children was the trigger that began to release whole communities from their captivity to fear and superstition.

Christian churches are growing rapidly in many parts of this west African country. Amazingly some local land owners are offering to give land so a church can be built - in fact they are pleading with the Nigerian missionaries to build a church. They see the real benefits that faith in Jesus is bringing to their local communities.

Join me, if you will, in prayer for Togo and its people - and thank God for his albino children.

Kenyan insight into Genesis

Gerald Mwangi, a colleague from Mission Together Africa, based in Nairobi, staying at my house this week, joined us for tonight's home group meeting. We had lined up a study of Genesis 1 and frankly I was not anticipating any revolutionary new thoughts. ('Oh man of little faith'?) We were a smaller group today (you know, that 'buying a wife and marrying a cow' stuff) but we had a great discussion. The highlight for me however was Gerald's thoughts on 'Why did God rest on the seventh day?'

Kenyan synthetic thinking drew a fascinating parallel between God's resting on the seventh day of creation, after He had seen that everything He had created was 'very good', and Jesus 'resting' on the cross after he uttered those powerful words, 'it is finished, complete'. Both creation and salvation are, for God, complete and also 'very good' - even if they do still take some working out by us mere mortals. But there's more! Just before God rests in Genesis he commissions human beings to care for creation, to manage it, to bring it to completion. In a very similar way, just before salvation is completed on the cross, Jesus commissions his disciples (us!) for mission - to share in God's salvific as well as His creative work. Good thinking, Gerald - thanks!

Male-female power imballance fuels HIV/AIDS

The latest rumour from Tear Fund UK, sadly, is that there are more redundancies on the way as they, like lots of us, seek to 'restructure' and survive in a challenging global market. But looking on the bright side, I just discovered a great resource they released this month. Their case study of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe and Burkina Faso Gender, HIV and the Church, has some provocative things to say about the power equation between African (only African?) men and women and the role of traditional belief structures, even in churches, in fostering the spread of HIV. Not a long read and there's plenty of pictures, so worth downloading.