I applied a year ago, we spent months planning, then weeks training, and went through 51 hours of travel until we finally made it to Cote d’Ivoire.
I want to start this blog off by just saying thank you. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me so that I have been able to embark on this journey. The bit of anxiety I felt in the days leading up to leaving home was put out when I thought of how many people are praying for me, my team, and my squad. Your prayers mean so much to me.
This month so far has been incredible! I am staying on a church property in a house with 5 other teams. We run out of water every day, but we have beds so that is a huge blessing! We are being hosted on a church ground that a few teams are working at this month.
Me and my team are working with a man named Pastor Matthew at his church in the middle of the city of Abidjan. Pastor Matthew and his wife (Mamanik) are so incredibly kind. They have taken us in as their daughters and been blessing us more than I could ever possibly hope to return. Its hard to come into a culture and think that I am going to do all this good and help these people, and then they shower me with love and kindness. I’ve realized that even though I am going into this year with the intention of serving others, I think I will always have this feeling that they are doing more for me than I could for them.
The church services here have been very different than what I am used to back at home. The first service we went to was an all night long prayer vigil, it lasted from 9:00 pm until 7:00 am. That was a great way to dive right into the culture here. The service consisted a lot of healings, dancing, speaking in tongues, and prophetic prayers. The entire service was also in French, and I took Spanish in school, so I was at a complete loss. I was asked to preach at another church service we have attended and I think it went pretty well, but to say I was nervous would be an understatement. The Lord definitely gave me to words to say and made me feel completely comfortable speaking.
There is so much more I could say about these first two weeks but I know that if I start telling stories I just wont stop and then this will be a really really long blog post! But the basic important things that I know a lot of people want to know are:
-I made it here safe and sound
-My team is doing ministry in a church to help grow their youth program and just bless the pastor and his family
-We are eating like the local people, trying a bunch of local foods
-I get to have a cup of coffee every day
-I get to spend atlas 2 hours with the Lord every day
-I miss you all a lot
Thank you all so much for reading and of your support! I am not fully funded yet so if you have any questions about my fundraising please feel free to email me at [email protected]
I’ll be posting another blog soon with a story about Pastor Matthew soon, so look out for that because it is a great story!
