Elephant Fun!

We got chased by an elephant yesterday.  Yep – it felt like one of those moments in a movie where there would be a freeze frame and a caption that read.  YEP, THIS IS MY LIFE.

Steve and I had a conversation a couple days ago that I had to think about as the elephant was angerly trotting after us.  Steve asked me if I felt like I was living someone else’s life.  I agreed, but asked him to elaborate.  He started talking about how we’re living a life almost identical to his parents, who were married shortly after graduation, his mom/I worked while the other finished up school, the left after that to spend some time doing overseas missions.  All we have to do is have a few kids and we’re on our way to following in the (older) Willman’s footsteps.

I told him I’d never really thought of that.  My feeling in many of my moments here is that I’m living the life of someone WAY more adventurous then I really am.  Sometimes I step back and think “I am not the type of person who quits a perfectly good job and spends my entire life savings to move to Africa and be chased by elephants…that is NOT ME!”  I read books about these people, I watch shows on these people, but it’s not me.  I’m perfectly content (and even excited) to go to an office for 8 hours a day and recruit high schoolers.  I love it.

But then I realize that I’m not living my life.  It’s not my life, and it’s not me who gets to decide.  That’s what happens when you follow a huge God.  He takes me, someone who is not adventurous and completely content, and shakes up my world and plops me into the middle of elephants and French speakers and babies on backs and traveling on motos and eating rice and sauce with my hands, and loving every moment of it.  He takes away my comfort, my pride and my securities and replaces it with His love, His joy, and His strength. 

So for me, being chased by an elephant is just another day, I guess, following this gigantic God of mine. 

I just want to challenge you.  How is God asking you to live a life way more adventurous then you really are?  That may mean standing up for what you believe in at work or school…it may mean doing something like picking up your life, your family, and moving halfway around the world, if that’s what He’s telling you, it may mean taking that “rainy day” money that you’ve been saving and giving it up for God.  It may not seem like you, you may be someone who plays it safe or whatever…so am I…but look where He brought me, and I’m loving and learning every minute of every day more about God and what He wants from me.

Do something crazy today for God and think of me – it’s His strength, not yours, so you have plenty of it!

Love you and miss you all!

OH – PS – the elephant story is hilarious – I guess I should tell it!  We were riding on top of the landcruiser in a nature preserve.  We ended up seeing a momma elephant and two babies.  I guess momma didn’t like how close we were getting to her family, so she started walking, then running after us making some obscene gestures (or I guess they would be if I was an elephant).  Once she started running after us, we hightailed it out of there.  We have it on video, but can’t upload it here.  You’ll just have to take my word on it for now!

*There will be pictures...eventually* Internet is not good right now!

Life in a Family after 2 weeks

Front of our house (former storage room)

So we’ve been here 2 weeks now, what can I tell you about it.  We are living with the pastor in the church courtyard, we have our own little apartment around the corner from the pastors house but still in the same building.  Our apartment used to be a storage room with a metal door and window but they built a wooden wall in the middle of the room separating our bedroom from the living room.  Each side is about 6ft by 10ft (whole room is 10ft by 12ft).  They built us a nice awning right outside our door and I believe they are going to make it into a cement porch at some point but it is nice to have a shaded area in front of our house to sit (I’m sitting there right now typing this).  Our shower/peeing room is right next to our room and the pooping hole is around the corner (back side from where the pastor lives). 

Pooping hole

Shower/Peeing room

 
As soon as we got here the young adults in the church took us in and have been showing us around town, taking us to work with them, and just hanging out with us in the church courtyard most days.  The pastor is in charge of 23 other churches in this area and I’m not sure if there are other pastors for those churches or not so he is quite busy with traveling, because of this one of the guys in the church has been our guide. 

Team visiting in courtyard

Our church building

The church courtyard is a pretty busy place, people visit quite often in the evenings after work and sometimes during the morning and day as well.  People are always passing through the courtyard on foot or bike and many women come to our well to get water every day.  We have learned some greetings in one of the local languages and everyone from the church comes up to us and greets us to watch us do our trick and then laugh whether we get it right or not.  

Heating the soldering iron
over a coal fire
(super hardcore)

The president of the young adults group took me to the motorcycle garage where he works and I got to see and assist in a complete dismount, change of the camshaft, and remount of the engine, quite exciting.  I have helped with electronics around the church including repairing two megaphones( one for the sanctuary and the other a portable one for evangelizations in the villages with no power), wiring lights into our shower/peeing room and replacing the florescent light with a normal one in the pastors living room, fixing power strips, rerouting a power outlet, and fixing microphone cables.  All the soldering was done with a soldering iron heated using charcoal, pretty awesome. 

Our family consists of the pastor, his wife, their son Apolos who is about 7, daughter Syntyche around 4 or 5, and three other girls who are probably nieces or something and they are like 15, 10, and 7, Chewa, can’t pronounce her name, and Safoura respectively.  They are quite a lively bunch and Sentyche is a very typical 5 year old who hangs on you and does annoying things when she’s not being fun and cute. 

The town, Niakara, is on the large side of town but still a town where you can walk from one side to the other in 10-15min.  We are on the northern side and it takes about 5 minutes of walking before you are in the middle of the bush.  People don’t even hide the fact that they stare at us for being white, they’ll even take pictures of us walking by and thinking we don’t know, it’s fun to say “photo” to them and let them know we caught them in the act.  Oh, and while our town has 3 or 4 cyber cafes with computers, printers, fax machines and even signs saying prices for the internet, we have absolutely no internet in this town at all which hasn’t been bad, just different.

Praying for Peanuts

As many of you know, we moved in with our host families on March 7^th – we were supposed to live with a “surrogate” family for a bit while they were preparing our place with the pastor and his family.  When we got to the church, we found that our place was prepared and we could move right in with our real host family – praise God!

It’s been quite the whirlwind since then.  Living at a church is everything you would expect it to be.  People always dropping by, the youth are almost constantly here (morning, noon, and night) and you have no excuse NOT to go to all of the meetings at the church.  It’s also guaranteed that you’ll go to all the weddings, funerals, and conferences held at the church.  It’s a wonderful spot to be when you’re trying to meet people and build relationships.

Anyway, I could go on all day about our new home, new family and new friends, but I’d like to share how God has been working in my life these last few weeks.

Two people who are living at Ecole Baptist right now, Devin and Eric, stopped by to visit.  At one point Devin jokingly said “so…what’s your FAVORITE thing about your family?”  I realized at that point that I really didn’t know the family that well.  We were contently with the youth or the young adults that we haven’t really spent time with our family.

I was praying that night that God would give me an opportunity to get to know our mom a little better.  The next morning was the normal routine.  I was trying to help out and “work” and mom and one of the girls here were trying to make me stop working because I was going to “tire myself out.” (Like I’ve never done dishes before in my life J).  Anyway, one of the girls pulled out the peanut de-sheller (I’m sure there’s a better name, but that’s what I call it).  It’s a contraption that deshells peanuts much more quickly than doing it by hand. 

Chewa working on the peanuts

 Chewa (one of the helpers here) and I sat and deshelled peanuts.  She doesn’t speak French and I don’t speak Centipho, but every once and a while she would destressed-ly call out “Tante” (which is what you call your elders – like Auntie) and then she would hold out her hands, palm up.  She would look at my hands, which were getting red.  “Ca va” I would say and keep going.  We went on like that for three hours.  Well, I thought, at least I did a little work today.

The next day, we were done shelling, but now had to go through and pick out all the peanuts that weren’t “good and proper” and the shells and…well, I can’t really get into all of that.  What I can say is that God gave me about 12 uninterrupted hours over the next 3 days while we got the peanuts ready to be sold.  I was able to talk with mom about pretty much everything – her family, the JourneyCorp program, my family, the church, my interests, my ministries, school, African culture, American culture…and God even gave me the French words to say most of the time! 

Syntiche and Mom (right) and I working on peanuts

God taught me two things that week – one, He answers prayers in mysterious ways, and two, I will never eat another peanut without first praying for the hands that touched it.  It’s a long hard process – so when you eat peanuts, please think about us and pray for us and our family.

I know this is getting long, but I thought I would let you know a little about our family – the pastor and his wife a probably in their mid-late thirties (were married in 2004) and he has been pastoring in Niakara since 2001.  They have two kids and one on the way, Syntiche (4-5years old) – who runs around everywhere looking for “Tonton Steve” and Apollos (7 years old) who has had the chicken pocks since we’ve been here, but it starting to feel better and come around to us. 

Sorry it’s been a while – we don’t’ have internet in our town, so we’ll continue to write blogs and post them when we can!  Thanks so much for your prayers.

The Big Game

I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and was telling her about a seminar we just attended on the Values of Traditional West African Culture.  She made a comment that stuck with me at the end – she said “I like when you tell me this because I keep asking myself what you guys have really been doing these last three months.”

That really hit me.  I realized that many people don’t understand what we’ve been doing these last few months and I thought it would be good to let people know.  Many of you are supporting us financially and want to let you know what God has been doing with that money.

As I thought about this, the first thing that came to mind was my high school basketball season.  Two months before our first game, we would get together for captains practice, then daily regular practices to be able to learn how to work together as a team, get (back) into shape, learn our drills and plays, and prepare for the first game.  When we went into the first game and were able to successfully work together, we never thought “man, why did we practice for two months?”, we realized that it took those two months of practice to prepare for the real thing.  It’s hard, but necessary.

It’s the same with what we’ve been doing the last few months.  We’ve been preparing ourselves in every way for the work we’ll be doing the next year and half.  Just a few things we’ve been up to:

•    Language training – 2 hours a day with a local college student here
•    Team building – getting to know our ‘support system’ and team members.  Learning how to work together and to build off each other’s ministries and the ministries of the former journeyrs
•    Self-care- we’ve learned a LOT about culture shock and just overload and how to take care of ourselves on the mission field.  Burnout is very common, so making sure we know how to deal with stress is key
•    Relationship building – with people on the campus we live on, families that other journeyer’s have stayed with, youth group/young adult group participation, and even relationships with women in the market (I have a lady I like to buy green onions and parsley from who wants me to take her back with me to the states, or a potato guy that always tells me that potatoes are 600CFA – way too much- but that he’ll give them to ME for 500CFA – the actual price).
•    Seminars – we’ve been able to do two seminars one on “Creation Care in West Africa” and one on “Values of Traditional West African Culture” bring us into a deeper understanding of Christianity in the context of West Africa.
•    Most importantly – culture training.  We’ve realized that if we would have just dove straight into host families, not only would we not be able to communicate, but would probably be highly offensive in areas that we wouldn’t even think about.  That’s a whole other blog on its own, but seriously, we would have not well represented the name of Christ without first taking 3 months to learn about this culture (which is where the seminar that we went to fits in perfectly.

Going back to the basketball analogy – we also had “scrimmage games.”  We stayed a week in Korhogo with a family there (we’re going back to visit them tonight).  There we were able to experience firsthand what family life will be like for a shorter period of time.


For our second scrimmage game, we will be living in Niakara with a “surrogate” host family for two weeks before we move onto the big game - what we've been practicing for -  Living with the pastor and his wife right next to the church (no excuse for missing anything at the church) and getting involved in ministries through the pastor and in the church.  All of the work we’ve been putting in until now (with language, culture, and ministry) have been building up to this, but we know that we’ll never be fully prepared for these next 9 months!

God has used these last few months to build us up quite a bit.  Not just physically, in language, or in culture learning, but in trust in Him.  It’s been a roller coaster of emotions – frustration, elation, home-sick-ness, culture shock…but it’s been good that we can hold on to Him in this wild ride.

Learning to have God be in control

Hello from the warmer parts of the world this is Steve.

It is time for a “what have we learned lately” blog. So here goes. Pretty much for the last 6 months I (we but in different ways) have been learning how to let God take control of my life. I guess it goes back even further than 6 months because when God switched us from France to Cote d’Iviore a year ago we had pretty much decided God didn’t want us to go overseas and when we prayed specifically for double the support we had and didn’t expect it, God provided. Even then for a moment we questioned because our minds were set on staying where we were, but when God gives you the sign you ask for, you should not complain. So we had to continue support raising which we had been doing for over 2 years at that point and were not excited about, but God provided and everything came together as he wanted it to.


For the year and a half before left both Jess and I worked, paid off all our student loans and started saving because that is the responsible thing to do. About a month before my job ended and in the middle of some uncertainty of when we would actually get to leave I felt God calling us to give the money we had been saving. It took me about a week to come to terms with this because without really thinking about it both Jess and I had made plans with this money and it was our security. So God, wanting us to depend on him for everything (like doing support raising wasn’t enough…), wanted us to give almost all of our savings to our future ministry. So then I had to tell Jess that God was telling me this, it took me another week to do that because it sounds completely crazy, right? But I did and at first she thought I was crazy, but then got on board since it was God not me. And after we did this there was more discussion about not leaving when we thought we would and maybe having to stay in the States longer, but we only had God to rely on so we knew it was his timing when we made it to Africa.

Another lesson I had to learn in the process of letting God have control of my life was with letting God have my appearance. So most people know (and some have very strong opinions) that I have my ears pierced and have gauges. I really like them and they are unique. So God starts picking on my earrings and telling me to take them out to fit into this culture and not be a stumbling block to others and just generally listen to him. So as usual, I put it off because I don’t want to change. At about the same time, Jess has a similar thing going on with her nose ring and when she felt herself getting an attitude about it with God she just went and took it out because she knew that is what she needed to do. The very next day she went and visited Centre Providence where Stephanie works and the girls there had an hour long lecture on nose rings (in this culture mostly prostitutes wear them), she was quite thankful she had listened to God when she did. As for me, I waited longer because I’m stubborn, but I finally took them out and they are closing up nicely (you were wrong about them never closing mom). I haven’t seen anything come from me taking them out, but I followed what God wanted which is what is important.

I am quite sure God will continue to show me areas of my life where I am still trying to keep control and really just need to let God have it because he has better plans. So I will leave you with Jess’ motto: “if I don’t want to, I know I should.”

The Rest of our Team

And here is the rest of our team! Also, check back to the last blog post – I’ve attached each member’s blog, so if you’re interested in their ministry and what God has been teaching them here, you can check it out for yourself:

Kelly - Read Her Blog

Kelly is a business major from Indiana. She came at the same time as Tricia (see below) in August 2011. She has an amazing servant spirit and is interested in using business as missions here in Cote d’Ivoire. She started living with a host family in late November in Korhogo (3 hours north of where we are now) and is LOVING her family (seriously, she can’t wait to get back “home” when she’s visiting us here). She’s partnering with a church in Korhogo to study business practices of women in the church. She is currently sick with malaria, so please keep her in your prayers. She is planning on being here for two years.

Tricia  - Read Her Blog

Tricia is our little firecracker from California. She came in August 2011 and, like Kelly, was placed in host families in November. Cool story with Tricia: She came here to do sports ministry and didn’t know what that looked like (being a woman in this culture). She decided to volunteer at a school for mentally handicapped children. Steve and I went with her to tour it one day and they decided to figure out her schedule. Without her telling them that she was interested in sports ministry, they asked if she would want to help out with the physical therapy with the children, being an encouragement for them. I loved how her face lit up when she found that out. God is so good! Tricia is halfway through her year here in Cote d’Ivoire.

Almut

Almut came after Tricia and Kelly in September and is planning on staying until June/July of this year. She’s from Germany. Funny Almut story – Almut knew that God was calling her to missions, but didn’t know where. Her only prayer was that she wouldn’t have to go to an English speaking country because she didn’t really like English. When God called her to Cote d’Ivoire, she was relieved, but then came to find out that she was going to have to learn English anyway, because most of the people she was working with are American. She’s amazing at both English and French and a wonderful, hilarious person. She’s in a host family in Korhogo also, working with the church to develop a program for handicap children at the church. Pray for her as this is a big job for one person and she’s learning as she goes.

That’s our team! You can also be praying for Phil and Mimi, a couple who should be coming this year, and also two other team members (one from America coming for three months, and one from Germany coming for 3-4 months). The next “team” coming out is coming in October 2012 (Lord Willing). We’ll keep you updated as we know more!

Thanks so much for your prayers for our team. Much like anything else, there’s struggles and conflict when you throw 10 VERY different people together, but our prayer has been that “if it is possible, as far as it depends on [us], live at peace with everyone.” (Romans 12:18)

Thanks for praying for our team.

Well – we asked you guys what you wanted to know about living in Cote d’Ivoire and one of things you wanted to know was about our team – it’s a pretty sweet team, so it makes sense that you would want that information. I thought I’d start with our leaders – Rod and Angelika and then Stephanie, Alyssa, and Devin…

Rod and Angelika

Rod and Angelika are our fearless leaders – seriously!  Who takes on a bunch of young kids who think they may want to live in Africa for two years.  Fearless I say.  Rod grew up in Cote d’Ivoire with his parents being the ones who directed the campus we live on when it was a MK school.  He’s been doing missions forever and is probably more Ivorian then some Ivorians we know.  He’s sarcastic and crazy and wonderful.  Angelika is German, soft-spoken, and puts up with Rod – really what more can I say?  They have a passion for people and have been ministering to us since we dropped down in Africa. 

Steph - Read Her Blog

Stephanie is a Painting and Art Therapy major from Pennsylvania.  She came here in October 2010, spent the first year learning French and living with her host family here in Bouake and started working with Centre Providence, a ministry to young women (ages 12-18) who have a hard time with authority or have been involved in prostitution.  She’s now doing Art Therapy with the girls each week.  She’s planning on staying in Cote d’Ivoire through the end of the year (Lord willing) and then see where God directs her.

Alyssa - Read Her Blog

Alyssa has been our culture guide and schedule organizer since we got here.  She’s from California and came to Cote d’Ivoire in 2010.  She lived with a family in Korhogo (about 3 hours north of here) and worked at the Bible Institute there.  She went back in November and flew back with us in December to get us acquainted with Africa and everything here.  She just left for the States on Thursday and we miss her SO much!

Devin - Read His Blog

Devin is Steve’s nerd buddy (as you can see in the picture).  He is a mechanical engineer from Pensylvania and came in October 2010.  He works with the young people at his church here in Bouake (where he was in a host family), went to Mali to set up some solar…um…something, works in the shop here on campus and even tried to make a solar oven so that his host mom could make cupcakes (I think that was actually a selfish endeavor).  He’s planning on sticking around for the next year (maybe doing some work with Trans World Radio or working with solar power projects and really being the BEST culture guide after Alyssa leaves us).

We'll tell you about the rest of our team - Tricia, Kelly, and Almut - in another post!  Have a blessed day!

Steve and Jessica