International Bazaar

“That one, Mom. Beads and Braids. Buy that one!”

Friday night we held a bazaar in the fellowship hall of Faith Missionary Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Various booths were set up with goods we missionaries had brought from around the world. Participants had to get a ‘passport’ and insert ‘stamps’ from the various countries represented. They exchanged U.S. dollars for GICC (Global Impact Conference Cents) at the ‘bank’ with good-looking teens in suits and ties. The ‘customs official’ even pulled a few people out of line for searches, and I heard an alarm go at one point and the intercom announce a ‘code red’. A dog wandered in and out among the shoppers and sniffed the live chickens in one corner. My Mozambican colleague and I in the Africa booth pinned up a sign that read, “We are speeking English” and chased away a couple pesky beggars.

Peg jiggled the baby doll tied to her back and bargained freely with her customers, arguing that their initial offers wouldn’t feed her family. I spread my books on a cloth on the ground and sold only in foreign currency (U.S. dollars.) It wasn’t really black market. It was more like our days in Mozambique when the government ran a store with imported goods sold only in dollars or South African rand. I told all the children how smart they would be and how well they would do in school if they practiced English by reading my books.

The fun part for me was the children who had been to Vacation Bible School and contributed for the books I left at Arebaokeng and Thembisa Baptist Church. The children recognized the cover of Beads and Braids from the VBS promotion and wanted their own copy. Last Sunday I spoke in their Sunday School class and told them about the children whose mothers and fathers had died. Some of those children live with grandparents like the ones in Our Gran. Some of them live on their own like Toto and his brothers in Toto in Trouble. That story was told in detail to at least one mother in the car on the way home from church. “Mrs. Hardy wants to write stories that will make the children say, ‘That’s just like me,’” her son told her, echoing my exact words.

Whenever a child at the bazaar bought a copy of Beads and Braids, I signed it and wrote on the title page, “Pray for the children of Africa.” I hope they will.