Bouaké, Brownies, Beads, and Amoebas

So this last week, there has been a short-term team visiting from Cedarville University, they are on a "vision trip". We picked them up in Ouagougou, and then hung out with them in Bouaké for a week during our seminars there. The week in Bouaké was great - I did a "birthday egg hunt" on my birthday, in which the girls had hidden 27 plastic eggs filled with encouraging notes and poems and paintings and candy. We also had funfetti brownies for dessert after dinner! Friday night we had a big bonfire and I had a really great talk with Stephanie about some things I think we both needed to get off our chests.

Anyways, we had a lot of fun hanging out, and were pleased to bring the CVers (cedarvillers) to our families in Korhogo! Two guys, Jake and Spencer, stayed with me Saturday through Wednesday. I'm afraid that they didn't "take in" as much as they "let out" Sunday and Monday since they had amoebas from something they ate in Burkina Faso. One of the girls on the team had it too. Fortunately the medicine I gave them helped and on Tuesday they were able to experience a bit of what my life is like here in Korhogo. The six CVers and us five Journeyers went together yesterday to the weavers village to see how they make hand-made clothing, beaded jewelry, and bags. This morning we said bye to the Cedarville team as they were leaving for their last week in Bouaké, and I'm getting back into the swing of things here. Had a great lunch with my host dad and his best friend today, which was a really fun time talking with them about soccer, Jesus, Bin Laden, basically everything! Thank you Jesus for helping me to understand French more and more! He is so gracious and good to us, and this is just one small way that I can see his hand at work in my life.

Have a great rest of the week friends! Here's a few pictures from the week:

This is a guy hand-weaving a shirt at the weavers village.

Redneck pic of the year: Me in a sleevless shirt with an unkept beard holding a pigeon I just caught bare-handed. I'm eating it tonight.

From left: Spencer, Adama, and Jake

Kate, Naomi, and their taxi driver looking very safe and happy!

Jammin at "repitition" aka worship practice Saturday

CV and JC together (from left): Liz, Spencer, Jake, CJ, Me, Chelsea

The first Senefo bible, in Tymbara

Journey Corps Family Vacation!

This has been an incredibly eventful week; it has been exhausting, frustrating and joyful, and has brought about many good stories and lessons for me. Saturday, May 7^th, we all got together in the land cruisers and drove up to Bobo in Burkina Faso where we stayed overnight. Coming into Burkina, which is much more developed than Côte d’Ivoire right now, was a culture-shock experience. Fields with irrigation systems, streets with curbs and stoplights, lanes painted on the road, people driving inside those lanes and not on the wrong side of the road, and more. We left Sunday morning for Nazinga Wildlife Park in southern Burkina Faso, just north of Ghana (it actually goes all the way to the border). There we stayed until Tuesday morning and did safari trips around the park, counting the animals we saw and when for the park records. We saw elephants, baboons, lots of different gazelle type animals from little things to water bucks the height of the land cruiser. We saw crocodiles, warthogs, monkeys, and tons of beautiful birds. There was one fun experience where an elephant was caught off-guard by us at night (in camp) and was threatening us to stay away, another when 2 elephants came into camp while we were eating and walked within 10 feet of us in the restaurant area, eating leaves off the trees over our very heads – so exciting! Anyways, Tuesday morning we left and drove to Ouagadougou to pick up a short-term missions group. On the way we stopped at Clarks place (he used to own Nazinga), where he is raising lots of wildlife. He showed us his porcupines (freaky things!), a chimpanzee, an ostrich, gazelles, HUGE warthogs up-close and ugly, giant rats things, and my personal favorite, the cute little bush babies! They are these tiny little monkey type things with HUGE beautiful eyes.

Here is the short of my time in Ouaga: attended a great songwriting seminar, slept in a different bed every night, made a great contact with Mary Hendershot (an ethnomusicologist), and had the best vanilla ice cream of my life. I literally had to pass it around while I mentally prepared for the next bite of bliss that awaited me when it came back. It was that good, I could barely breathe from the pure awesomeness. On Friday I was supposed to leave for Bouaké again, but the nearest spot on a bus available was with SITO (instead TCV which I originally planned to use) on Saturday at 3:30pm. I got there at 2:30 Saturday, we left at 4 and had an 11 hour drive to the border. The man at the border didn’t believe my VISA was real, but let me in without the 1,000cfa fee that everyone else paid. Then the guy that wanted to see my immunization card (which is in CA) let me by with paying the normal 200cfa instead of the 10,000cfa penalty for not having that card. Thank you Jesus for your help at the border! Anyways, we sat at a crossroads town from 5:45am to 10:30am while they did “repairs” to the bus, and after that frustrating and hot wait we hit the road, arriving in Bouake at 5:30pm-ish, making it nearly a 26-hour journey. Oh and on the bus I sat next to a very large woman who took up have of my seat sometimes, and had 4 kids with her. She was a feisty woman who argued a lot with some other passengers, but was pretty nice to me. When I got off in Bouake, I was very tired, VERY smelly, frustrated, and was pretty sure I’d never want to sit down again or take another bus again. It still hurts to sit down lol. I had not slept or eaten (a meal) in 2 days, and had not showered in longer. I had been sitting for 25 plus hours in a cramped area on a bus ride that would never stop. But here we were! I thanked God for getting me to Bouaké, got my bags, and hopped on a moto-taxi. There was this drunk guy insisting I give him my hat, and when we tried driving away he tried stealing it. I shouted to him that it’s not polite to try stealing, and he responded by grabbing me by the throat! I just grabbed his arm, ripped his hand away from my neck and pushed it away from me. I’m just thankful that God gave me the grace in that situation to keep my cool, because I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to punch some in the nose so bad before. I was very angry that he had the gall to do that. People who steal get beaten publicly here, even stoned in places in Africa. I just shouted that he “wasn’t a very nice person” and we drove off. The moto guy said he (the crazy guy) was drunk so not to sweat it. I dunno, I don’t spend enough time around drunk people to know that I guess.

I had a great reunion, giving everyone big hugs and relaxing the rest of the day here at ICA in Bouaké. It’s good to be back to familiar territory; Ouaga was an adventure, but I was all alone and just wanted to get home.

God gave me some really cool experiences this last week. One was pouring water on a man’s heart where seeds had been planted before. This Muslim mechanic that drove me around a couple times was talking with me, and I started singing a song in Swahili and French about how there is no one like Jesus. God used that as an icebreaker for Mary to talk about Jesus with him, and it sounds like he is really interested in following Him. He needs to understand the gravity of his situation though, and I think he does and that’s what is making it hard to make that decision. Thank God for using me in such a small way to make an inroad for the gospel into that man’s life! Another cool experience was playing electric guitar with this gospel group in Ouaga, they sounded just like Israel Houghton. The drummer and bassist especially blew me away. It’s so amazing that God knew I needed a good musical jam session like that; I’m so grateful for that opportunity!

Anyways, that is a small (but verbose) look at last week. This week will see my 27^th birthday (on the 19^th), I will officially me starting my late twenties! I’m in Bouaké until Saturday, and hopefully I can take one of the short termers with me to meet my family in Korhogo.

Oh by the way I have praise, I feel like I have smashed through another wall regarding understanding and speaking French. It’s been really encouraging (and fun!) lately as I have been understanding most of what I hear, and have been a bit better able to express myself to people as well. I had no trouble finding my way around Ouaga, getting taxis, shopping, finding a bus station and getting the ticket, lodging, talking with people at the seminars, etc. Almost all of it was in French, and then today I even did some translating for the first time! Proof that God answers prayer!

Ways to pray for me this next week:

· Don’t let business get in the way of my #1 priority: loving Jesus well

· To be intentional about the way I love others this week, to be thinking about it.

· To take things in the right spirit, keeping the Spirit as a filter for everything I take into my mind, and everything that comes out of my mouth.

Love you all, have a great week!

Au Revoir Mes Copains

As of the 28^th of April it’s been 6 months since I came to the Ivory Coast! I need to take an inventory of how I’m doing in every faculty. That will take a bit of time to process. Ok so this week….

This past week has been difficult for me to be honest. First off, I had to say goodbye to both Beckie and Jamie, as they headed back to the States. I do ok with goodbyes, though it is still hard to see them go. On top of that I have been dealing with a terrible case of acid-reflux, which has seen in me the shedding of a few pounds I’m pretty sure. I could barely swallow anything for several days because my throat had become so inflamed. Finally I visited a doctor friend of mine up north an hour and she gave me some medication that “makes Tums obselete” which I will be taking twice a day for a month. Already my throat is better and I can eat well again, though my stomach is pretty sensitive so I cannot have caffeine or hot spices until I’m done with the medication at the end of May.

Other difficult things this week has been due mainly to cultural and and laguage differences. For example, in Senefo culture men are supposed to eat a LOT of food at meal times. Last night I ate 5 baked potatoes, and as I was cooking them they asked if I’d need some rice & sauce too, and maybe some spaghetti also. I said no thanks to the extra food, 5 potatoes is plenty (already a lot!). So right after I finished those, my sister Martine brings in a HUGE plate of spaghetti and hard boiled eggs and insists I eat it all. I’m talking like enough for 3 people who are hungry. I made it clear that it was a physical impossibility for me to finish that, but when I realized I was going to make a big deal out of it and start an argument (I had afterall said no thanks to more food), I just started eating it. I finished most of it suprisingly, but unfortunately it had a lot of piment (a hot spice similar to jalapenos) in it so my already sensitive stomach gave me some pain last night. This was a leson in patience I think.

One big difficulty for me has been working with Ivorians at the studio, in that they don’t know how to plan in advance. This makes is next to impossible for me to be able to be there when I need to be, and one time I got called 20 minutes before they wanted me there and I couldn’t come due to a prior commitment. This is a problem that happens a lot. I had a meeting with one of the JourneyCorps leaders Saturday, Bakary, and he is going to talk to the radio guy about this issue for me; it would be inappropriate for me to do so since he is older than me.

I’m trying to get involved at church more, so Bakary is also going to talk to the Pastors at my church for me. I want to encourage the church body to be more active in reaching out to the people in their community with the gospel. Ivorians seem very content to live-and-let-live religilously speaking, and other than the pastoral students I haven’t seen much effort to share the gospel with something more than only “lifestyle.” I want to organize a community outreach to encourage the church body in service evangelism. Maybe we together can identify a community need and meet it. We’ll find out!

Spiritually, this month has been all about putting things on the altar – as I mentioned in my last blog. It has been especially difficult doing this, and has been very much an emotional roller-coaster for me. I’ve struggled with feelings of lonliness, frustration, homesickness, jealousy, etc…a whole range of negative emotions. On the flipside, there have been times where I reveled in God with joy, thanksgiving, contentedness, and so on. I promise I’m not bipolar, I’m just a normal person, if that exists! Ok maybe a bit crazy, but thank God for his gracefulness in dealing with us crazy people. I’m just glad that I have discovered the joy of keeping a journal, because I am able to vent things that I just can’t say to anyone here. God is my councelor in much more meaningful and real ways to me these past months; He is my thread of sanity amidst an enviornment that would otherwise make me literally crazy. I don’t think I’ve ever had it on my mind to thank God for my very sanity before, but I do now…so thank you Jesus!

Oh! Before I forget, Sunday was the annual baptisim day at my church, and 54 people were baptized! It was a fun day of dancing and celebrating at the church….here’s a few photos:

CJ and I before the baptism

Balophones are a central part of celebrations here

Rockin' CJ's sunglasses (so awesome!)

Love it! Just Baptized!