Sacrifice

After making the easy decision to return to the states to pursue a degree in agriculture, we sold our possessions because we knew that we would not be returning to Cote d’Ivoire. We had been serving in the lush tropical zone of West Africa, but our hearts were directed to the rain-starved Sahel once we saw the people suffering from malnutrition.

Friends in Mississippi and South Carolina issued invitations for us to study at Mississippi State University and Clemson University. After much prayerful consideration we chose Mississippi where we had family support. First Baptist Church of Yazoo City offered their missionary residence on Easy Street. We had a short four month resettling experience in Yazoo City as I prepared to enroll at the university in Starkville.

Dr. Mary Futral, professor of nutrition at MSU offered to let us live on her 20 acre farm. We purchased a mobile home and located it on her farm. The land had been idle since her husband had passed away several years prior to our arrival. The county put in a gravel driveway, but there was no water or sewage on the farm. A new friend at First Baptist Church in Starkville offered to lend me his heavy equipment to excavate for the waterline and sewage system. This was pre-YouTube, so I did not have much help in installing these utilities, but by the grace of the Lord it worked when the job was finished.

We moved into the mobile home and used the last of our savings to buy furniture. Our income and insurance coverage ceased, and as I began classes I started working part-time for the university’s sheep farm. I had zero experience in raising sheep and goats and those are the primary livestock in the Sahel.

Speaking and leading music in churches when invited helped provide supplemental income to my minimum wage student job. We needed more income to support our family of five. There was an old Ford tractor with a bush hog, but no plow implements. We needed a garden to help with food costs, so I purchased a small horse and a couple of horse-drawn plowing implements. In addition to the garden, I planted a pea patch to sell peas at the local farmer’s market. The boys were 6 and 7 at that time. I paid them fifty cents a bushel to pick peas, and I sold them in the farmer’s market for $7.00 a bushel.

It was necessary to find other ways to generate some income for our family during this difficult time, so I purchased day-old Holstein bull calves and bottled fed them to sell to 4-H Club members to show at the fair.

The price of gasoline rose to $1 a gallon for the first time in 1979 due to an oil crisis caused by the Iranian-Iraqi War. Americans had hostile feelings towards Iraqis and Iranians. There were many Iranian and Iraqi students at the university and most of them were Muslims. I got to know some Iranians because a couple of them were mechanics for our two very used vehicles.

I decided to allow these international students to come to our little farm to purchase a goat or sheep to slaughter. I let them kill the animals on the farm and loaned them my outdoor grill to cook the head and liver of the sacrificed animal. They allowed me to remain with them during their ritual slaughter and while they ate the head and liver, so I had numerous opportunities to talk about God’s sacrifice of Jesus to atone for our sins.

It's amazing to me how primitive people from around the world who worship inanimate objects and ancestors and make sacrifices to appease their gods can fully grasp the atonement of Jesus when more educated people of the West cannot understand the meaning of the Atonement.

Praise God that we don’t have to make sacrifices to appease our God, for Jesus paid the price for our sins of the past, present and the future.