Brenda Rodgers

Category: Burkina Faso

  • My Disguise of Serving in Africa

    In less than two weeks I leave for Burkina Faso, West Africa. 
    I am told the experience is going to change my life.  Or at least my perspective on life.
    That scares me. 
    Several months ago I sat in church and saw the video clip inviting people to join the team going back to Burkina Faso.  My heart started beating fast.  I knew right then the invitation was for me, and it wasn’t from the church.  It was from God himself. 
    I cried and I ignored.  Then I cried some more.  I didn’t want to go to Africa.  But God told me it was the Way – the way he wanted to answer my prayer.  That prayer that I ask so often for him to make me like himself. 
    So I am going to Africa to be like Jesus.  Jesus was a servant.  So I am going to serve.  To bring hope. To give life. To show relief.  To be a savior. 
    Or am I?
    The people I will meet have no running water.  They sleep in huts.  They cook in a pot outside.  They have never seen themselves in a mirror.  They have never seen a mirror. 

    Compared to me they are beyond poverty. 
    “Tell me they don’t know.  Tell me they’re oblivious.  Tell me they’re happy”, I said as I looked at picture after picture of the people there.
    “They are happier than you are or ever will be”, was the response.
    And yet they have joy.  And I sit hear in my warm house, in perfect health, with food busting from the refrigerator.  Consumed. Worried. Tired. Stressed. Miserable. 
    In a podcast I listened to this past weekend from Craig Groeschel he said this, “You want to know that you’re in need? Go to a third world country.  You feel good about yourself for a while.  For a couple of days you hurt with them, hurt for them, and then something switches along the way.  And suddenly you realize the more I do for them, the more they’re doing for me.  The more I give to them, the more I’m receiving in some crazy way I didn’t expect. Then one day you wake up and say, wait just a second.  They’re financially broke and empty, but they have something I don’t have.  You see the strangest joy in the middle of nowhere.  They have nothing and seem to have everything.  And you realize I’m in need, too.  We’re mutually in need, and we both need God.” summarized from Craig Groeschel’s sermon “Those People Part 1: Those Overly Needy People”
    God is sending me to help the needy as a disguise.  A mask shows a needless woman’s face going to the other side of the world to share her needlessness with the needy.    
    God’s intention is to strip back that mask and reveal that I am the needy.  I am the broken.  I am the impoverished.  I need the Savior.
    My culture puts the world at my disposal.  But joy is still lost in the abundance. 
    I am not going to serve the needy.  I am the needy going to relish in a joy I do not know.    

    “But as for me, I am poor and needy; please hurry to my aid, O God. You are my helper and my savior; O LORD, do not delay.” Psalm 70:5



  • Are the people in Burkina Faso happy?

    So. . . I am going to Burkina Faso, West Africa the day after Thanksgiving.  It will be my first mission trip.

    After seeing the word on the screen and then much rationalizing, fretting, crying, and fasting, God told me to apply for the trip, and my teenage prayer went unanswered.

    The only way I have grown to be o.k. with it is through the realization that my unanswered teenage prayer is my answered adult prayer, which leaves me amazed at God’s workings and His good in all things.
    __________________________________________________________________________________________

    A few weeks ago I walked into our first meeting about the trip with my eyes just as big as when I read the email that I was a part of the team going and with a heart just as full with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.  I was fighting back tears.

    I immediately began to learn about the logistics of the trip – what we’ll wear, where we’ll sleep, what we’ll eat. 

    Then, I heard about the people in Burkina Faso along with their culture and their needs. 

    • The people are known as the Burkinabe. 
    • Their primary language is French (which I found interesting). 
    • Burkina Faso is one of the poorest countries in the world and has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world. 
    • And one in three children die before the age of ten.

    For one or two nights we will sleep out in the bush.  We will sleep outside, and we will eat the meals that the Burkinabe women make for their family.  This is where we will help build a hanger to be used as a church, and this is also where wells are built so that there can be fresh water close to where the Burkinabe live.

    As the meeting wrapped up I began to hear about what it feels to be in a third world country, as an American, who in comparison has the world right here in my hands.  I watched a slide show with pictures of children and women and outdoor kitchens and huts.

    My mind was full.  “Please, just please tell me they’re happy.  Tell me they don’t know.  Tell me they don’t know the difference”, I thought as I sat there seeing slide after slide.

    So I asked, “Are the people in Burkina Faso happy?”

    The answer . . . “They are happier than anyone in this room.”

    If they are happier than I am, then what kind of happiness is mine?

    Is my happiness a facade covered up by convenience and objects and security and health?


    Is it possible for me to ever have their happiness – a happiness where every day you wake up and go about your daily tasks just to feed yourself – just to stay alive?


    Or the kind of happiness that you have despite knowing that your child may very likely die before the age of ten?

    Or the kind of happiness that when you ask a Burkinabe child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, he replies, “I want to be a doctor so that I can come back home to Burkina Faso and help my people.”

    I suspect that their source of their happiness comes from a deep appreciation for things that give life and receive life. I don’t seek happiness in these things.  I seek happiness in things that don’t give life – in things that prevent me from experiencing the abundant life.

    This is why God is sending me to Burkina Faso.  

    My mind cannot wrap itself around this kind of happiness.  And until I get a glimpse of it, I will never understand all that God has in store for me.  I will never understand His heart.

    You may enjoy reading my story to Burkina Faso from the beginning:


    Please join me in praying for the people in Burkina Faso, West Africa and read more about Engage Burkina here.

    Do you think you have the same kind of happiness as the people in Burkina Faso?


  • The {Un}Answered Teenage Prayer

    The application for the Africa mission trip was due on Tuesday. It was Friday, and I still had not looked at it. I was driving with both hands on the steering wheel and my heart was beating so fast it felt like I could just reach in and grab it. I knew the deadline was close. I knew I had to make a decision.

    When I first saw the Word on the screen at church several Sundays before, God took me back to my teenage self. I remembered a prayer that I prayed as a seventeen year old girl. I don’t know what made me pray this prayer exactly except that back then I wanted nothing more than to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to be different, even though I knew I was, and I tried really, really hard to live both lives – the Jesus life and the world life. So I prayed this prayer in these words:

    “God, whatever you do, please don’t make me a missionary. I do not want to go to Africa.”

    I never thought any more about it.

    Eighteen years later I still want to be like everyone else. I don’t enjoy being different. But my heart falls more in love with Jesus the more time I spend with Him, and about five years ago I began praying another prayer that I have continued to pray up until now.

    “God, do whatever you have to do. Break me however you need to. But please use my life for something big to bring You glory.”

    So the Friday before the application was due I sat in my car and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

    I did not want to go to Africa.

    What would I eat? Where would I sleep? What if I get hurt? What if I die?

    Then the real question slowly poked up through all of the surface words.

    What if I’m changed? What if I come back different?

    Putting the superficial fears aside, it came down to this. I am afraid of being changed. I am afraid of being different. And I know that there is no way of escaping it. I cannot go to a country and see God’s world, His people, people He loves, through His eyes, and not be changed. I still want to be like everyone else.

    Later that day I went home, sat down, and began writing my application. The words came up out of me and my heart poured onto the pages. This is what came out:

    “I do not know how I can help people who are in need of so much. But I do know that I ask God continually to fully sanctify me so that I can serve Him wholly and completely. I want to see the world and people the way He sees them. I want perspective like His. I ask for this so that I can fully love people in my every day life like He has called me to love them, so I can serve people like He wants me to serve them, and so that I can continue to have an eternal focus.”

    God is sending me to Africa to answer my prayer.

    Has God ever allowed something to happen in your live that you didn’t expect in order to answer a deep,  heart prayer?

  • The Word . . . A Revelation

    All I wanted that morning was to go to church, sing to the band jamming out, hear once again how much God loves me, and go home happy . . . and peaceful . . . and satisfied.

    Sitting there, waiting to get my feel good tune-up for the week, the word flashed on the screen.

    I looked at it, and then my heart started. No, no God! Not now! I’m not in the mood to be stretched. I’m not in the mood to be obedient. But the thumping continued. I knew what that meant.

    Over the next few weeks the word continued a subtle persistence – creeping into my mind as I brushed my teeth, tied my shoes, and walked to the mailbox.  Like a good Christian I rationalized it away and tried to convince myself that it probably wasn’t God’s voice. It was probably some subconscious desire to prove something or just to say I have been on a mission trip.

    But I know His voice. I knew what was coming.

    So I prayed. O.k., o.k, so I’ll send an email to get some more information. That’s all. Just an email. Then it will go away.

    Except that the word didn’t go away.

    A few weeks later I was running and listening to a sermon on my IPod. My husband was following along behind me on his bike. The words I was listening to were about fear and stepping out in faith and obeying God. As I went around the curve in the cul-de-sac my husband caught up next to me. Barely able to get the words out of my mouth I said to him, “God wants me to go to Africa.”

    I said it, and it hurt. I didn’t want to go. I wanted to stay here and be safe. Safe in my little neighborhood where every fourth house is the same and our problems are disguised as what new car we’re buying next or where we’re going on vacation.

    As I tried to keep the rhythm of my runner’s breath tears rolled down my cheeks. I was revealed – this heart that is still so far away from God’s heart.

    Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23-24

    When has God given you a word that you didn’t want to hear?