Assafou. The village that was our home for the last three weeks. No electricity, no running water. We camped in our tents in the middle of the village, took bucket showers, used the designated bathroom ( which was a hole in the ground) half the time, and the “bush” the other times. Waved and said Bon Jour and Bon Swasse, those are the only French words I know, and most likely the only ones some villagers knew. The village spoke a native tongue, and when we left I still didn’t know how to greet them in their language, I tried, but people were always correcting me and it got confusing.
It is hard to describe an African village or even Africa all together. If you have been to Africa, it could and most likely is a completely different experience than mine. The closest thing to a town was five miles down a very long and hot dirt road.
We were in Assafou with another team from Cote d’Ivoire. They were here to help plant a church in the village. In Assafou, missionaries had come in before and tried to bring the Gospel with them, but the people heard the message, but stayed in their ways. There is a huge dark presence here, they worship idols and go to witch doctors. So when i mentioned “no light” in the village, I mean it is literally dark and spiritually dark. We have felt that there are people that did not want us here at the village. There was a lot we battled while we were here. We were getting weird rashes, my lips swelled pretty bad then blistered the first week. We all were miserable with no escape from the heat, bugs, and it being so overwhelming with all the kids and people around all the time and in your “personal space”. There is no personal space here in their culture.
Things also move very slowly, so what we could get done in American time, lets say a week, we did in three weeks. We built relationships with these people, we spent time with each family in the village, going around to pray over them. We preached and lead worship most nights. We weren’t as focused on constructing a building for a “church”, which we did finish, but we were building up people to be the church. We saw around forty people come to Christ!
We also had a lot of down time. We needed those hot afternoons to catch up on sleepless nights from roosters waking us up around 3 a.m., to people shouting as early as 5 a.m. And when I mean rest, we escaped to our hammocks and kids would gather and sometime even adults to peek in. We felt a little overwhelmed that there was no escape from people at the village. Kids constantly wanted your attention and adults did not understand personal space.
Instead of waiting around one day, to hear what else we could do, the girls and I decided to go around to the women and paint their nails. One of my team mates started praying over the first one we did, and we ended up praying over all the women we painted nails with. Even though we had no translator, or they understood, there is still power! Power in the God we serve, power in lowering ourselves to their feet to paint them. We weren’t able to do much at the village, the women cooked and cleaned and fetched water for us. The kids would carry our chairs or water any chance they could. I wanted to help so much, but also had to be mindful of their culture and how they treat guests. So doing their nails and putting time into that, I wanted to show my thankfulness for them welcoming us into their village, but also to show them the love of Jesus.
Our time in Assafou was very hard, but also very sweet. Village life is like living back in the day. Simple living, living in community and sharing much. I ended up getting pretty sick at the very end of our time and had the chance to leave a few day early. If you didn’t hear I got Malaria. Austin and I decided that would be the best idea to be near a village just in case things got worse and I needed further attention. Not expecting to leave as soon got me quite emotional to leave my team, leave our hosts, ministry partners and all the people in the village. As Austin and I both got into an African taxi crammed with another five people, tears were coming down our cheeks. After three weeks of spending time with these people, we were emotional leaving. Saying goodbye has never been easy each month, it’s the kingdom mindset we have to love these people like Jesus.
We brought impact, but we also left being impacted.
