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!