Teaching ESL

      In September, I began teaching an ESL course. It's a special curriculum designed for Muslim students who want to learn English, and about American customs. On Saturdays, I teach in a courtyard at a missionary's home. She has been doing ESL as her ministry for the past eight years in Ouaga. Classes are not advertised. Information about the classes are done by word of mouth. Many of the students are economy students and their professors recommend they attend these English classes because so many past students have done so well. On Mondays, I have eight 20-30 year olds that attend the class. On those days, I drive out with three other teachers to a church in Pad D'oie. All my students are Muslim and I've enjoyed getting to know them. We close each class with prayer request and then prayer. They all pray with me and are always requesting things like, help with a test, protection, and healing from disease (we've had a tough malaria season). I am teaching level three and four so their English is pretty good. The questions I get sometimes stay with me and I think about them often. One that I've gotten repeatedly goes something like this.

  "How long do Americans live?"
I reply, "The average life span of an American man is 77."
   "Burkinabe men only live to 47."

Then there is silence.
The question that hangs in the air that no one is asking me is, "Why?" They would never say these things to me but I cannot help but think that, they think, "this seems so unfair. Just because you are born on the other side of the world, you get to live so much longer than I. Are you better than me, how is this just?"
Each time I get this question, it's always a young man in his 20's asking, he is already concerned about dying.
    It seems that everyday I hear about someone dying, a neighbor, a church member, a staff member at the school, it happens here to often. I do not have the answers how to fix this problem. Yes, Africans, need better living conditions, better governments, better nutrition, better education and it all feeds into one another. A circle of life, that produces a better quality of life. How does one missionary help? We do what we can, we are light, where we are able to be light. It hardly seems enough. Yet I know, God is not overwhelmed by the problems in Africa. I have to trust in Him. I have to trust that He is enough.