How God used your commitments!

We would like to thank you all so much for your prayer, encouragement and financial support during our time here in West Africa.  You have been such a blessing to us and those around us and we wanted to share with you what God did with the money you faithfully gave.

As our African ministry is coming to an end, we would encourage you to continue giving and actively search for the next ministry you would like to partner with.  If you are at a loss for where to give, I have linked some of the ministries we’ve partnered with over the last 1.5 years.  We would encourage you to check out giving a donation to these ministries!

Here you go:

First Year (Cote d’Ivoire)

Language and cultural training – three months of language and cultural training that helped us better serve our host families, churches and communities.

Girls Group Niakara – a weekly Girls Bible Study and formation for the young girls in Niakara.  A group that is very involved in the church and too busy serving to be fed spiritually.

Bracelet Business Niakara (right) – invested in beads and supplies to sell beads in the local market to help raise support for the Girls Group and other activities for local young women (most recently, the first Niakara Youth Girls Conference).

Josue (left) – helping to support one of our own church members, Josue, and his family during their time at Bethel Bible Institute.  The school is able to provide shelter, food, and education to both Josue, his wife and three children for only $60/month.

Bethel Bible Institute– the 500 church in Cote d’Ivoire from our association only have about 300 pastors to share amongst them.  The support that went to IBB helped to support the future pastors and take care of the daily operations.

Benkadi Building – a four room building used to house out-of-town guests, hold meetings, and store church equipment.

Niakara Church Roof (right) – your giving was able to help the Niakara church put a roof on their new building.

Youth Conference (left) – created partial scholarships for 9 youth to go to the National Youth Conference and learn about being leaders for the present and future Ivorian church.

Second Year (Benin)

Ruth Center (left)– provided supplies for training over 60 young women at the Ruth Center (a center for young girls in difficult situations).  Along with learning about giving manicures and pedicures, they participated in a bi-weekly Bible study at the same time (to give, click link above and email Brenda Roman)

Projects for Progress (right) – partnering with Project for Progress, we were able to do the same manicure and pedicure formation to 9 young orphan girls who were also able to hear the Gospel – many for the first time.

Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child distribution (left) – partnering with the Ruth Center, we were able to provide nail painting for over 400 children of  local cashew factory workers during a carnival before each child received their OCC gift.

Medical help – partnering with Projects for Progress again, we financed medication and education of widows and orphans in local villages.

“Good News” kids club (right) – invested in a neighborhood kids club near the TWR missionaries to provide curriculum, film showings and the opportunity to start a Wednesday lunch program (to give, click link above and send a message to Donna Cox).

Ruth Center (left) – the girls at the Ruth Center were asked what they are excited to eat in heaven.  Their response?  Rice and couscous.  As a parting gift, we were able to provide them with their dream foods.

Who would have known that we could use the donations (big and small) to bless so many others during our relatively short time overseas.  We would like to encourage you to keep giving to God’s work.  Thanks so much for your gifts!

Water

 

 “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, Oh God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. “ Psalm 42:1-2a

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting on our porch watching a downpour.  This is not your Minnesota depressing drizzle.  This is the heavens opening and letting sheets upon sheets of water pour down.  When we lived in Niakara, we loved rain.  You could feel the power of it on our metal roof.  Sometimes it felt like we were in a tin can rushing down a waterfall. 

Here in Benin, to get to work, we take our motorcycle and drive about 20 minutes to get to work.  During dry season, all the trees on the side of the road were brown and dead-looking.  No surprise when we haven’t seen rain for months on end.  However, if it did rain, although there would be no evidence of the rain even an hour after it stopped – being soaked into the thirsty ground – our drive would look vastly different.  The trees, so used to dry season after dry season, were not dead, just covered with dust.  The rain had washed – purified – all the dirt and grime off the leaves, leaving a lush green forest on each side of us during our ride.

For some of us, we need to let the downpour of God’s love fall on us…washing away the months and months (or years and years) of sin, regret, disappointment, and rejection.  After the rain we find that we’re still alive in Him.  During all that time, He has not given up on us, we still had life in Him, but it was weighed down by the accumulation of all the other stuff.

For others, we’re more like the ground.  Parched…dry.  When the rain falls, even for hours, because we have been so dry for so long, within an hour there’s no evidence of rain at all!  We need a rainy season.  Where the rain falls on a daily basis and the streets flood, the lakes overflow, and the drains are running full of water.  When you can’t dry your clothes out on the line because of the humidity in the air…when we don’t need to go and water the farms because God is doing it for us.  This is what God means by “overflow” in Psalms 119:171, Romans 15:13, 2 Corinthians 4:15 and 1 Thessalonians 3:12.  Because we’re already full, we can overflow with praise, hope, thanksgiving, and love for others. 

Are you in a dry season right now?  Let God purify you and quench that thirst.

 

*Photos by Kali Lovejoy*