Hello! Why yes, I am still alive and well, doing the World Race. I just finished month 4, Cote de Ivoire. My team was in a village where we had no wifi, so my blog posts have been piling up! This week I hope to be posting one a day this week to catch you up on what this last month was like for me and my team. So, this is where we began over 3 weeks ago;
We walked down the dirt roads of the village of Katadji, armed with Bibles and accompanied by 3 translators, excited for our first day of ministry, but still a little unsure of what it would involve.
So, what is our ministry this month? The short answer is this; building up the body of Christ, just as we are told to do in 1 Thessalonians.
“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you also are doing”
~1 Thessalonians 5:11
The day after we arrived here in the village, we had a meeting with the church leadership, to figure out what we would spend the month doing. We asked what some of the Church’s needs here were, and time and time again the widows and the elderly were mentioned.
There are many elderly church members here who can no longer able to come to church as their health is failing. As their health fails many are getting depressed and wondering if God still cares. They need some encouragement, so it was decided that my team would visit as many of the home bound as we could, to talk with them, pray for them, and encourage them. Thus, one morning we set out to do just that.
Here in Cote de Ivoire, the national language is French, so accompanying us we had two young men who spoke both French and English, to act as our translators. However, many people in the village only speak a language native to this region, so our first stop in the village was to pick up another translator. Amos is a member of the church elder board and he speaks both French and the native language. Once we’d greeted Amos, his wife, his brother, and a few other relatives, we set off for a house where a group of about 10 widows had congregated to meet us.
We were still a little unsure of what our ministry would look like at this point, so once we arrived we just introduced ourselves and explained that we were missionaries, here to share Christ’s love and encourage people. We then asked if there was any specific prayer requests we could pray for. No one mentioned anything specific, they just wanted prayers for health and strength for the group. Thus we prayed over the entire group. After that they understood that we really wanted to pray for them, so one by one the women spoke up and asked for prayer for specific situations. My team gathered around each women and prayed for her. As we finished praying for the last woman, our translators told us it was time to go, there was a woman waiting for us at another house.
As we walked to the next house it was mentioned that if would be nice if we could share a short Bible message at the next few places. Ok, we didn’t have anything specific planned, but we could do that.
We arrived at the next house and greeted the woman we had come to visit. As we sat down to talk with her, I felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit to share with her, but what would I share? I told my team this, and they encouraged me, saying the Holy Spirit would give me the words, so I opened my Bible.
It fell open to Luke 21, the story of the widow’s mite. That seemed somewhat applicable, so I went with it. I talked about how much Jesus valued what that woman had given. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have much materially to give, what mattered was that in what she had given she gave her heart to God.
I spoke one sentence at a time. Each sentence was translated into French by one of the young men who was with us, for Amos to understand. Then Amos translated into the native language.
After I finished speaking we prayed for the woman, and her family members, then went on our way to another house where more widows had gathered. Here my teammate felt prompted to speak about the woman who had faith that just touching Jesus’ clothes would heal her, and because of that faith, she was healed. We then asked for prayer requests. The women asked us to pray against depression and physical ailments, and for family issues.
One woman said she used to sing to God everyday, but then she got sick and since then she’d been depressed and unable to sing. So we prayed that God would return her voice to her. Before we left she and the rest of the women gathered sang a worship song in their native language for us to hear. It was beautiful.
And so our morning continued. We went to 5 houses in all, encouraging the elderly and the widows in their faith and praying for each and every one. At one home we met the oldest woman in the region! From there a woman came and asked us to come pray for her grandmother, so we went. We talked to these people, we listened to them, and we prayed for them. I believe we did hat we set out to do, encourage the body of believers.
