Thiés

I decided early in the week that I would leave Dakar on Sunday after church and stay the night in Thiés (pronounced "chez"), which is supposed to be one hour from Dakar.
At 2 PM on Sunday, I left the church with Joél and Edouard, two United Methodist young adults, who I knew could get me to Thiés and back all in one piece. We headed for a "bus station," where a bunch of buses park and men come running at you to point you to their bus even if they aren't going to your destination. After finding a bus to our preferred location, we climbed in (which is a task by itself) and noticed that only a few people were on the bus. You see, that bus wasn't going anywhere until it was full, and even then we would stop along the way to make sure we couldn't cram more people on it. We sat on the bus until 2:30, and no one had joined the group. We decided, much to the driver's dismay, that we might try a different station. We then boarded a caripede, or speed car, which one often sees with more people on top of it than it actually seats inside. By 3 PM we were at the next bus station and making a deal with a man whose car seats seven passengers. It was just the three of us, but the driver motioned that we could go ahead to Thiés. Subsequently, we stopped at every small clump of people on the roadside to yell "Thiés! Thiés! Thiés!" out the window, in hopes that someone would decide in that moment that Thiés might be nice on a Sunday afternoon. By 4 PM we had picked up the remaining four passengers, one of which had a terrible twitch that kept hitting my arm. When we closed in on Thiés, at nearly 5 PM, everyone began to pay the driver. Because I was sitting in the middle seat of the middle row, I was in charge of passing money to the driver and the change back to the corresponding passenger. I handed some change over my shoulder and the woman took it. Little did I know that it did not belong to that woman. The remainder of the trip was spent with the man yelling at the woman to return the change. The "Welcome to Thiés" sign could have easily read "Welcome to the End of the Earth", and I would have gladly gotten out of that car.
By 6 PM, we were sitting the house of Edouard's sister, Grace, who is an active member of the United Methodist Young Women's group in Thiés. The final call to prayer rang out from the nearest mosque, and in that moment everything went still. I felt comforted, somehow, that all over Senegal millions of people were praying to the God of Abraham. And it reminded me to say a prayer myself.
After dinner, Grace said she had some problems that she wanted to discuss with me. She talked about the lack of material for children, the small churches, and the low salary of the pastors. In all that she said something stuck with me. She told me that the church members are told to evangelize, get the word out about Jesus. She said, "How do I go to my neighbor and say look what Jesus does for me, when they can see in my face that I am hungry, and see in my eyes that I am worried about the future of the children?" Grace continued on, saying that a church that doesn't take care of its people will never grow. I've never thought that the United Methodist Church didn't take care of its people. It's always taken care of me. Here in Senegal, it seems to be different. The money just isn't there, something gets lost in translation, and somehow the United Methodist Church of America and the United Methodist Church of developing countries has become two different churches. There are United Methodist churches all over the United States sitting on money because they might want a new parking lot, when our brothers and sisters in the church are hungry and can’t afford to send their children to school.
The road to Thiés was long, but it was worth it just to hear the passion in Grace’s voice, a passion I’ve yet to find in the good ol’ U S of A.