Burkina Faso is not somewhere you say goodbye to. It is somewhere that takes possession of a piece of your heart and begs you to simply bid ‘until next time’. At least, this is my experience.
With the inability to say goodbye I have taken to saying ‘à la prochaine’ to my Burkinabe family and friends. When I say this, often we take a moment and say ‘if we don’t see each other again here, we’ll be worshipping together there’ and point to heaven. This puts a smile on our face.
Frederich Buechener once wrote "you can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."
As I consider leaving loved ones and returning to loved ones I delight in the poetic ideas presented by Frederich Buechener. I think about the way in which those of Yako will remain an integral part of my thoughts and prayers, the memories of them I will keep in my heart and about how sometimes I will get a knot in the pit of my stomach thinking about them. And I know it is true: it has been so these past months for those I said good-bye to as I came to Yako as it was so last year when I was in Calgary, thinking of Yako.
With the inability to say goodbye I have taken to saying ‘à la prochaine’ to my Burkinabe family and friends. When I say this, often we take a moment and say ‘if we don’t see each other again here, we’ll be worshipping together there’ and point to heaven. This puts a smile on our face.
Frederich Buechener once wrote "you can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you."
As I consider leaving loved ones and returning to loved ones I delight in the poetic ideas presented by Frederich Buechener. I think about the way in which those of Yako will remain an integral part of my thoughts and prayers, the memories of them I will keep in my heart and about how sometimes I will get a knot in the pit of my stomach thinking about them. And I know it is true: it has been so these past months for those I said good-bye to as I came to Yako as it was so last year when I was in Calgary, thinking of Yako.
I will be leaving Yako Sunday afternoon. In many ways I cannot believe how fast these four months have gone.
I look forward to what these next days in Yako have to hold. And to then discovering what these next months in Calgary will bring.
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