Hey friends and family! I haven’t been able to get good enough wifi to post a blog, but here you go! An update on month one back on the field in the Ivory Coast!!
First off, all of us are safe and are about to finish up our first month in Cote d’ Ivoire! It’s crazy to say that month one is pretty much over and there’s only 4 more to go before we arrive back in America, but God has been so faithful and I am LOVING alumni squad leading and getting to dive into discipleship and race life with F Squad! They all are amazing!
We arrived into Abidjan on the 17th of January and I have spent the past month with team Haven. We aren’t able to travel alone in West Africa as women so I’ve had the incredible opportunity to spend the entirety of month one with one team!
(Team Haven: Amanda, Emily, Chloe, Margaret, Krista, and Rebecca)
Our ministry this month has been preaching, teaching, and evangelizing to different villages. We have traveled to 5 different villages this month! I am super proud of team Haven for jumping up to the bat right off the get go and preaching in front of churches and crowds! We are partnering with a couple, Monika and Jonas, who are looking to plant churches and women/children’s homes in the 5 villages we visited. We truly experienced the Ivorian way of living through out the month as we ate local food, took bucket showers, used our life straw to get clean water to drink, and walked everywhere! We spent the month in remote villages and truly experienced the rougher side of Cote d’ Ivoire. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to be back in the swing of ministry and spending time with locals!
As many of you know, I contracted typhoid fever one of the first days of ministry and spent about a week out of ministry to recover. It was pretty scary to not know what was going on with my body as I felt so severely sick, but God is so good and the day that I was throwing up continuously was the day that we moved to a village that was located right next to a clinic! I passed out the first time they tried to put the IV, but after that I was able to get a blood test and meds and find out that I had Typhoid fever and begin the recovery process! HUGE shout out to Chloe for being a doctor and holding my hand every step of the way as I got my IV, she was the real MVP! Also, thanks dad for letting me call you in the early morning! It brought me so much peace after I got to talk with my dad! THANK YOU to everyone who prayed for a quick recovery! I am fully recovered and back to full speed. I truly appreciate all of the encouragement and support I received through out my recovery!
(Significantly felt better after an IV and meds! The clinic we went to was GREAT!)
During my week of recovering from typhoid, God used it as a time for me to reflect and process my time at home, the future, alumni squad leading, and ultimately get reconnected with Him on a deeper level. I will share a few of my realizations with the Lord below. It was such a sweet time of rest and even though I never want to experience typhoid again, I am grateful for the fruit that came out of it. I also learned how to humble myself and allow others to take care of me. If you know me, I HATE asking for help, but God showed me how valuable it is to allow others to walk alongside you and help you when you are too weak to help yourself. I am extremely grateful for the ways team Haven helped me and encouraged me as I recovered!
One of the biggest realizations I’ve had with the Lord this past month is that I’ve been so caught up in trying to figure out what my kingdom calling and future career should be and stressing about making the right decision that I’ve lost sight of focusing on my personal relationship with God. Somewhere in the past 4 or 5 months I’ve lost sight of God’s desire for me to just abide in His presence and spend time with Him over figuring out how I can serve Him and others. God took me back to John 15 and walked me through the realization that He just wants me to pursue Him and spend time deepening our relationship and the rest will fall into place.
With this realization came so much clarity and freedom to the extent that I felt like a literal burden was dropped from my back and I was free to live life day by day. So that is exactly what I have been doing this past month! Spending time reading God’s word, sitting in His presence, praying for my family and friends, and focusing on pouring everything into the beautiful women God placed me with to disciple. So once again, the theme of surrender has been a big part of me being back on the field and I can say that I’ve taken another step deeper in trusting God with everything and releasing any expectations of the future.
I want to dedicate a future blog to the topic of Relationship over Religion with God and what it looks like to choose an authentic relationship with Him, so be on the look out for this in the next month or two.
There is so much more I could share and hopefully will share in future blogs, but here is a short update on what God is teaching me and what ministry looked like this past month in the Ivory Coast!
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE being back on the field and getting to dive deep into community and pouring into the lovely racers God has placed me with. I realized this past month that I’m literally living out my passions and dreams and its such a sweet thing! I am truly grateful for where the Lord has led me and so extremely grateful that you all made it possible for me to be living out God’s calling for this season of my life! THANK YOU!
We are leaving for Ghana tomorrow morning and will be heading to Accra for month one debrief!! Hopefully I will have better wifi next month and will post a few more blogs on our time in Ivory Coast!
But until next time, may you all be richly blessed!
Love,
Michelle
(Experienced God’s deep love for us as I played with these sweet girls the other day! They are such cuties!!)
(ATL afternoon with the team! We got to form friendships with the owners of our favorite burger place and pray over them!)
(Our ASQL team just spent four days in Abidjan catching up, pouring into each other, and spending time preparing for next month! We got to go to the beach a few days ago and it was a blast!)
