NOT FUNNY!!! Preach the Word anyway.

2 Tim. 4:2.
Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season;

This passage was never more clear than today. With all the time we have had trying to learn French, the last thing on my mind was to preach. We have been in Africa for almost 4 months. Everyone we meet knows that we are just trying to learn the language. Two weeks ago we visited a church when we were doing our survey work among the Mossi people. We found a church that held their service in Moore. They asked us if we would join them for worship. We were more than happy to come to their service. Pasteur Benjamin even called us during to the week to check and make sure we were coming. On our way to the service today, he called again to see if we were coming to church. We told him that we were on our way and should be there in 5 minutes.

When we arrived at the church their service had already started, yes they started early. they ushered us in and sat us in the front row. I thought hey this is great because I don't have to sit up on stage like normal. African culture says that all Pastors sit on stage. Anyway we sat there for about 2 minutes when Pasteur Benjamin came to me and told me that I have to sit on stage. I thought it was no big deal because I do that a lot here, so I went on stage. We sang, in Moore, for about an hour when the Pasteur reaches over to the man on my left who speaks a little English and tells him to tell me that I am preaching after this group finishes. Have you ever tried to prepare a sermon in two minutes? I told the man that I wasn't ready, so he said just say a small greeting and that will be fine. That seemed great and I thought I was not going to have to preach. So I got up greeted everyone (in French) and read a passage of scripture and thanked everyone for coming and sat down. Then the guy who spoke English came over and said that wasn't enough that they wanted me to preach a short sermon. My first thought was You have got to be kidding me, but after a quick prayer and very fast search of the scripture I agreed. Thankfully I remember some of my last sermon from Coker and I went at it without any notes at all. I just hope that God can use whatever I said and whatever was translated in some way to draw more Africans to Him. No it was NOT FUNNY!! So stop laughing.
Mike