Hello Everyone!
I’ve struggled to write about the last two weeks because of how varied and inconsistent ministry has seemed. I’m pushing past that and will try to catch you all up in one way or another 😉
Our first full week of ministry in Abidjan ( the week of the 15th) was full in many senses of the word. We had a different ministry destination each day, but the intention was always the same: evangelism. From the children’s ward in a local hospital to a man and his print shop in a market stall, we continually stepped into the unknown and asked the question we know can change hearts and lives: “What do you think of Jesus?”
Honestly, I’ve been finding street evangelism quite awkward. Maybe it’s because I think I know exactly how this tactic goes in America: not well. Evangelism shouldn’t be awkward, because it’s us simply doing what we’ve been charged to do, but the ownership and authority in this task has taken some getting used to on my end. I’m growing into it. I have found sharing Jesus to be just as difficult here as it is at home; I can’t tell you how many times people have told me they’re on their way to work, “already have a religion”, or even roll their eyes and say, “Of course I know Jesus.”
These aren’t exactly traditional “success stories”. But even in my awkwardness and uncertainty during these conversations, the gospel is not powerless and the Word does not return void.
I know this because it’s not by my power that anything is being done in the hearts that hear me. Something I’ve noticed is that sometimes halfway through a conversation, I’ll start to feel a creeping disappointment— I can feel that the person is unreceptive, bored, or uncomfortable. I can feel myself start to overthink the situation, and my brain has a way of pulling my heart out of a position of faith.
In these moments of doubt or withdraw the Spirit is moving; I just fail to see it until Jesus points me, as he SO OFTEN must, to something—or rather, someone—I hadn’t noticed. These are moments in which God is using what I perceive as weakness or failure to show me just how much bigger He is.
It’s like, “Hey Brittni, look at how much more I can do.”
It happened at the hospital. The Worthy Warriors and Kaleidoscope were at the pediatric ward of a hospital, and each team took a floor. We moved room to room, finding mothers, fathers, and grandmothers gathered around cots where the sick or recovering child would be lying. We would introduce ourselves, get to know them a bit, ask if they knew Jesus, and then ask if/how we could pray for the child and family. We were met with both excitement and indifference, but we were almost always permitted to pray with them.
When we were nearing the final rooms of the floor, I thought about the pain and helplessness that I’d encountered and couldn’t heal—and hadn’t seen healed (yet), either. I thought, rather wistfully, how amazing it would have been to see someone healed before my eyes. My brain started to backpedal: do I have enough faith? Why didn’t a miracle happen?
As soon as I thought that, though, I was immediately corrected. I felt God brushing away my perception of the miraculous with His own: Your expectation of the miraculous is too narrow. The miracle here isn’t that anyone was immediately healed—it’s that the Jesus and truth were shared here. The hands and feet of Jesus came to these families. Something new was spoken into lives, something that may not have been heard—or seen—before. And the Word does not return void. Something new happened here—Light was shone into darkness. That’s a miracle!
I was immediately humbled—what I perceived as failure or ineffective was just my blindness to His still-greater power. He showed me this more fully a little later. At the end of the hallway of rooms was a room quarantined with tuberculosis. Only 2 people could enter, and JJ and a translator volunteered to go. The rest of us stood outside the room, praying.
While we were praying, a woman came up to Esther, Jon, Meagan, and I, asking us to follow her and come pray for her child. “Of course!” we said, and we grabbed a translator and went to follow her up another flight of stairs to her child’s room. We didn’t know how she’d known that we were here, because the room wasn’t on the floor we were on, but we were happy to go to her child. As we started the stairs, however, a security guard of some sort stopped us and told us we couldn’t go up there. We were baffled but not obstructed.
“We can pray for your child right here, if you’d like?” we offered.
She happily agreed. “I’m Muslim, but I want you to pray for my child.”
“That’s okay! But when we pray now for your child, we’re going to pray to Jesus, okay?”
“Yes, yes, that’s okay. Jesus, Mohammed—they’re the same to me.” She said earnestly.
“Okay. But we’re praying to Jesus because we believe they’re not the same. We believe that Jesus is not a prophet like Mohammed—we believe he is Lord, and knows you, loves you, and can heal your child. That’s why we believe in and pray to Jesus. We don’t believe that Mohammed is the same.”
“Yes, it’s okay. We can pray to Jesus.”
And so we did. She happily thanked us and returned to her child.
This conversation was interesting to me, because it had been Muslim families in the hospital that had not wanted us to pray with them. But this woman had come to a different floor and sought us out to ask us to pray for her child. I wasn’t convinced that she still thought of Jesus and Mohammed as being the same; why would she have come to us, even when we told her we would be praying to Jesus? Logically, I didn’t see how she could truly okay with both stances and believe in both prayers’ power. After we prayed with her, I truly felt that Jesus had a foothold there. I believe that the conversation was a confirmation of what I’d just been taught: Jesus was shown there and, as always, people were attracted to him. I mean, isn’t that all there is to it? No human effort can advance the gospel. I think that’s what I had missed in my narrow picture of what God would accomplish at the hospital; a healing hadn’t taken place, but God used it to show me His power even in what I perceived as a disappointment.
Something similar happened the next day, too.
We were at a market to do more street evangelism. Our translator pointed out a man sitting outside of his print shop. Jon, Esther, and I approached him and struck up a conversation. We learned that he was Catholic and he said that he already knew Jesus. As we talked, thought, he opened up more about his relationship with Jesus, telling us that he wanted to have more faith and know Jesus better.
“What do you think that means? How do you think you better your relationship with Jesus and have more faith?” Esther asked.
“I can go to mass, pray more, read the Bible…” he answered.
We told him (via the translator) that while those are all good things to do, he can also just get to know Jesus by spending time with him—that he doesn’t need to do anything “right” first, that he can come to Jesus whenever and talk to him just as he’s talking to us.
He nodded in agreement. I wondered if he understood fully what this meant for him. Lord, is he getting this? Is he listening? I looked up for a moment, behind the man and into the print shop stall—and locked eyes with a young employee who was listening with rapt attention, leaning forward in his seat. I was caught off guard, so I quickly smiled and hurried my focus back to the owner and the conversation at hand. But a few minutes later, I looked back up and the employee was still listening. My eyes swept the rest of the stall—there were two other employees listening to us from their position “behind the scenes.”
Oh! God was doing so much more than what I could actually see in front of me. We prayed for the man, and as we said our goodbyes to him I felt a strong push to reach out to those curious employees. I moved and made introductions with them. I asked our translator to ask the employees if we could pray with and for them, too, and if they had any questions about what they’d heard. They said they didn’t, so we simply prayed for them and whatever they’d been drawn to by our conversation. But before we left, the owner and his employees gave their numbers to our translator so that they could be contacted with more information about the church we’re partnering with this month, La Maison de la Destinee.
As we stepped out of the stall, I once again felt a nudge to give the owner encouragement, so I acted; I grabbed our translator and with his help, told the owner that already, his faith in allowing us to interrupt his business day and talk to him about Jesus has been used by God to reach others. He considered this fact and smiled, thanking us once again.
God was powerful in this conversation that I had thought was going to be a dead-end.
In our first week of ministry, I was continually shown that what I perceive to be weakness, failure, or disappointment is not reality; that Jesus’ power to transform is active in more ways than I can see at a given moment. Conversations can bless eavesdroppers and unexpected passersby, and with that hope in mind, I can’t let perceptions stand in the way of speaking the truth; I never know who Jesus is going to draw to himself.
The risky, awkward, and testy conversations that have taken place all over Abidjan in the streets, markets, university, and even in our neighborhood over the last two weeks are simply opportunities for not only God’s grace with me to be shown, but for Jesus’ overcoming power to prove greater than what my human eyes and silly human brain second-guess.
I truly cannot boast in anything that has been accomplished here; I don’t have a way to see the fruit of the seeds we’ve planted. I’ve doubted and fumbled and fumed. I don’t feel like I look like a classic “success story”. But Jesus has been so much more powerful and magnetic than my perceptions of success. His ability to be made known in (and all around) my weakness or doubt is the only true success story, and none of my shortcomings will take anything from what God is purposefully and powerfully accomplishing in and through me.
Thanks for reading!
We have just one week left in Abidjan—THAT IS CRAZY. My goal is to update you all one more time before we head to Ghana. After this Wednesday, though, I have NO IDEA what our wifi situation will look like as we move locations in Abidjan (joining the rest of K-Squad—YAY!) and how updating will go from Ghana. Stay tuned!
Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouragement from near and far!
