August 11th was our first full day in Cote d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast)! Our team leaders and ministry hosts are still figuring out together what ministry will look like on a daily basis for us, but we’ve done a lot of “unofficial ministry” in the meantime.
So what do we know? We are living in a safe complex that’s used as a community center, a church, a small restuarant, a school, and a retreat center where we’re sleeping. Five teams are staying together in this retreat center, two teams are staying in the villas, and one team is staying somewhere separate with a different ministry.
This month our team (One Pulse) and Darcy’s team (Ethereal Flames) will be working together under Pastor Zacharie. This means that our two teams are living and working in the complex together, except when we have outreach days or off days.
This is what I wrote in my journal for August 11th:
Our first day of unofficial ministry was today, where we were going to give out food to widows and have a church service for them. Our job was to greet the widows with the limited French we have, “Bon Soir” for “good afternoon” and “Bienvenue” if we wanted to get fancy and say “Welcome!”
We then helped carry many bags of rice and separate bags full of basic tolietry items and Gospel tracs to a raised stage outside while the women sat under a white tent in white plastic chairs. The Church volunteers organized the food and supplies, while we made several trips back and forth carrying them from the Church to the raised stage until it was all lined up neatly.
We were then asked to sit in a side tent with the volunteers, the Pastors, and their wives, and a Church service began. A friend from our squad, Tyler, opened us up in prayer, which Pastor Zacharie translated into French for the audience. One pastor shared a message and then Pastor Zacharie shared the Gospel to the widows, while his wife translated for us. Guess what?!? All 270 widows accepted Christ into their lives and decided to become Christians!! I was overcome with emotion and tears fell silently down my face because this was the first time I’ve ever witnessed someone becoming a Christian before and it was so beautiful!
Pastor Zacharie then asked if anyone who had just become a Christian had any physical ailments, and asked those who did to put their hands on their heads so he could pray over them. About 20-30 women in the first few rows put their hands on their heads or the places where they hurt, like their knees or side. He prayed over them and asked them to try to do something they couldn’t before. Some started touching their toes, kneeling, or walking! Pastor Zacharie asked anyone who had received healing from God to raise their hands over their heads. About 20-30 women started walking around and dancing with their hands over their heads and big smiles on their faces!
The pastor then asked anyone who felt that they got healed to come up and share what God did for them. About 6 women came forward to speak. A few spoke about how coming to the event they couldn’t walk unassisted, but now they could; a few shared how their knees had been bothering them and now they didn’t feel pain; and one shared how she felt her pain was slowly going away.
Back in the U.S. there are a lot of intellectual and denomination-based arguments over whether God still performs miracles today like in the time of Acts. No one wants to offend God by assuming they know the truth either way or otherwise they will defend a certain position to death. But have you ever asked God for healing or asked God to heal someone else and truly believed that God is capable of anything? That’s what I believe happened to these women. They truly believed that God could heal them because they had no reason to doubt it. And God showed up in amazing ways in response.
Today I saw the Book of Acts come to life and it’s only Day 1 of ministry. What else can God accomplish if we allow Him to?
“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave in the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.” -James 1:5-7 (NIV)
By the way, Happy Birthday to my Mom and my Aunt Robbie!! Their birthdays were on August 9th and August 11th. I have a travel day vlog (video-log) coming up that shows what traveling from Atlanta, Georgia to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire looks like (51+ hours of travel condensed into a few minutes!) and I’m currently making a vlog of where we’re staying and what ministry looks like, but those will take a little longer since we just got Wifi at the place we’re staying this month.
Thank you to everyone who has supported me from during Launch and until now! If you’d like to keep supporting me while I’m away, I am currently fundraising $100/month for personal expenses while away (shampoo, medical expenses, paid bathrooms, meals out with the team, etc.) which you can mail as a check addressed to me to my U.S. address (my mom will be handling my finances while away and depositing this money directly to my account), as well as I am asking if anyone feels led to help cover my student loans while away, I have to make payments of $102.09/month from Aug. 2016 to June 2017 while away and $304/month from Feb. 2017 to June 2017 while away since these loans weren’t able to be deferred.
I had had some money saved up to help cover some of these expenses, but right before I left, I had a check engine light on my car come on. This meant that pretty much all of the money I had saved was used to fix my car, and I was once again in a position of total dependence on the Lord as I left the country with only $100 to cover my first month of expenses. I plan on saving as much of it as I can to use towards necessary expenses, but I quickly found that we are given a very small budget for travel days ($10 USD for 2 days), and American airports as well as some foreign airports can be very expensive, even when you split meals with squadmates and only buy water besides that.
Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me financially or prayerfully so far and if you feel led to help out with these new unexpected expenses, that would mean the world to me! Also, please subscribe if you’d like to hear more stories like this from the field!
