Power Struggle

The struggle for power in Côte d’Ivoire is not merely a political problem. The electricity is literally a tug-of-war here. Gbagbo turned off our electricity yet again for a few days, and just yesterday during church it came back on. Now as I’m writing this, it’s off again…no telling it it’s Gbagbo or just a temporary power outage that will last a few hours. (update: it’s back on again after about 30 minutes, thankfully). Without power people without wells have to find water elsewhere, often at neighbors’ wells, sometimes families just go without for a day or more. Hospitals and dispensaries that don’t have generators can’t preform surgeries, life support machines can’t work – patients die. People have a hard time finding a place to charge cell phones, businesses suffer, city night life all but stops, etc. The economy suffers greatly and people dependant on electricity to live die. Also TV and internet don’t work so people can’t see what’s happening currently in the country/world. Here, the generator at my house is broken, so my brother Zachary bought a car battery and and 500W converter and plugged that into the house to power a couple room so we could charge phones and my computer. Also since I’ve been doing work for Radio Sinai, I have gone over there a couple times to charge my computer and work (they had a generator running in the mornings). I get by ok, but I can’t say the same for everyone. While the power was on (until just a moment ago) I was reading online the BBC Africa site, people’s opinions about the situation here in CI - most of the people are from within the country. It’s interesting to see how decieved some people are because of the propaganda that they are fed. Then again, isn’t all news biased? It’s also startling to be reminded how hopeless this ever elusive idea of “peace” is in this world. If everyone could learn to love each other, like Christ loves everyone, things would be better no doubt. But Jesus said himself that we will “hear of wars and rumors of wars”, and that these things have to take place until the end comes. The human condition is sinful – prideful to the core, greedy, and incapable of genuine love for others. People seem to think that different political solutions (including war) will fix the problem here in C.I. and in Africa. I think today Rwanda is a good example of what they are thinking of – after more than 800,000 people massacared there because of tribal conflict, peace reigns; there are no Hutus and Tutsis today, just the people of Rwanda. Yet this did not happen through human effort, only because God has been on the move turning lots of people towards him in Rwanda has the nation become a shining example of peace and reconciliation in Africa today. Only through Christ can things get better in Côte d’Ivoire. Christ, the King of Kings, is the only politican with a good solution, the transformation of our hearts from the inside out. While it seems that civil war is inevitable, and that tribal divisions will ever plague this once “prosperous” country with violence and self-hatred, I will be praying that God will win over the hearts of Ivorians (and Africans in general) so that more lasting change can be achieved, as in Rwanda. It would be a great testimony of God’s power and man’s utter lack of an ability to fix itself if that happened.

Moving on from that, we had another join service Sunday. Joint meaning the Senefo and French services combined, so there was about 600 people, and the translation made things take twice as long; it ended up being a 4 hour service. Since I wasn’t able to make music team practice during the week (because there was no power) I figured I wasn’t playing electric guitar this week, so I came at 8am and sat in the audience. My buddy Joel was playing guitar – sweet – but wait he isn’t very good. Then he sends someone over to me, and next things I know I’m playing guitar, and there isn’t piano since it’s broken, so I’m the only one playing chords. Awesome. I don’t know any of the songs, and the women singing and nearly tone-deaf so I can barely make out a key for the song in my head. Also the bass player (the only other one playing notes), is looking to me to tell him what key we are in. No worries, God is good and he has given me an ear and years of studying at CSUF to figure this all out, so I was able to improvise sufficent chord progressions, and sometimes make the songs go pretty smoothly. The pride in me would love to pat myself of the back for a job semi-well done, but I know that “every good thing coes from God”, which includes any abilities I have, so I can only applaud God for a job well done on Sunday.

In the night yesterday my brother took me “out on the town” which was my first seeing Korhogo at night (while the power was on). I discovered a restaurant where I can buy yoplait in a few flavors, and things kind of like burritos aka sweet manna from heaven! I also was encouraged in my improvement with French when we visited a couple different courtyards where I had some lively discussions in French (and not talking at a snails pace either like usual) and understood just about every word, and rather impressed them when they learned that I understood almost nothing just 2 months ago. Again, God is good, and I think he brought me outside last night ot encourage me, and show me how he has been answering my prayers (and yours)!

Every Saturday the JC girls and I meet to debrief with each other and pray. This is already proving to be really, really healthy for us. We share weekly goals, struggles, prayer requests, etc. There has been a lot of spiritual attack lately within the group, but God is working through it and refining Journey Corps more and more.

Ok so I think that’s a sufficient update for this week. Things are going fine concerning everyday life here, in spite of spiritual attacks and political turmoil. Next blog, I am going to post a bunch of pictures of people in my life here, and places I frequent. Hopefully you can get a better visual of my surroundings then, but for now I need to work on taking those pictures!

In the meantime here is a few pictures:

Here is me on top of "Mount Korhogo"

This is "downtown" from Mount Korhogo, yummy smog! That Mosque by the way is about 1/2 of a mile in each direction to give reference.

I don't know their names, but when i was in a different village a couple Sundays ago these kids were a lot of fun :)

This is CJ (aka Julia aka Nibontena), we were at the village together for church with our pastor.