Young Brownwood woman adopts African lifestyle to share Christian faith_110804

Posted: 11/05/04

Young Brownwood woman adopts
African lifestyle to share Christian faith

By Gloria Douglas

Special to the Baptist Standard

Faith Scarbrough of Brownwood has “gone African.”

For almost two years, the Texas Baptist woman from Brownwood has lived in Torodi, Niger, in West Africa. She has worked with the Zerma people as a journeyman missionary with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board.

When Scarbrough's missionary friends in Niger describe her as having “gone African,” they mean she lives like her Zerma friends.

She has no electricity except from 4 p.m. until midnight and on market day. Her friend, Lobe, who lives within her walled yard, cooks for her, so she eats native food. She speaks the language and dresses as the Zerma do. She endures the heat and sleeps outside under the stars and mosquito netting on a stick bed, enduring termite migrations, frog choruses and the numerous calls to prayer from the local mosque.

“Going African” is actually a good thing, Scarbrough believes.

In adopting the lifestyle, she is more comfortable in the arid, desert environment. It has allowed her to develop a relationship with her neighbors. When walking through Torodi, many call out to her.

People know she is virtually the only white American in town. But more than that, they know she is a Christian. After two years, her faith is widely known.

This fall, Scarbrough returns to her home in Brownwood. She is not sure what she will do, but she's not worried. She says God will reveal his will for her.

Scarbrough and the rest of the Zerma team–three career couples and one journeyman–say that even though the results are slow to occur from their efforts, God is at work among the Muslims of Niger.