So, living in Africa for two months and then coming back to life in America is WEIRD! The first conversation I had when I got off the plane in America was with a woman about her little dog and how it had to have its vocal chords removed!!! HOW WEIRD!!
I have been home for a few weeks now though so it no longer feels like I am trapped inside of a dream world :)
God is good, and even though I had an in sane summer filled with hard things good things weird things sad things and happy things and so much more, the only important thing is that it was for God and that He is and will use it for the good.
When I got home I had alot of confusion about my summer, because more things happened in Africa than I was able to post obviously. I didn't understand why God did or allowed some of the things to happen that happened, but I have been praying about it and He has finally given me a peace about His plan. I have so much reassurance that I was supposed to be in Africa this summer and that He used me to glorify his name.
For everyone that read my blog, prayed for the people and our team and supported us, I cannot thank you enough. Your encouragement while I was in Africa gave me incredible strength to keep serving. Just to know that what I would blog gave you all strength and gave God an opportunity to work in your lives, that was enough for me. That was some of the strongest encouragment that I have ever recieved. It was hard to see what "God was doing" in Africa sometimes, because He worked on His time, not mine. Because of this, there were many times that I asked myself "why am I pooping in a hole and living in the bush in general?" but it was so encouraging to be reminded that God was and is working, and so much of the encouragment came from the blog comments. So thank you so much, you'll never know how much you impacted my summer.
I hope to send letters out to all that supported me with a summary of the summer and the ways that I saw God work. I hope to keep in touch!!!!
(This update is very unorganized so I am sorry if it is hard to follow…pray for God to help you)
Well time is almost up and I am ready to go home, but at the same time this place has become home and the village that I am living in has become my village.My neighbors in my village and my team mates have become my family.God is really working here, but as you probably already know, at his own pace and in his own way.
Six men received Jesus since my last update!
The day after I posted my last update, men in our village (and the neighbor villages) started a stronger interest in the gospel.I am contributing this to the amount of prayer that went out for the men, so if you prayed specifically for the men, please know that the Lord answered that prayer.Lauren and I found ourselves sitting in front of the Mosque, playing the Jesus cassette for at least ten men who had just finished their Muslim prayer.They all listened, a few walked away, but several asked for cassettes to keep.
The boy on our team, Cody, led three men to Christ in the past two weeks, and a team from Kanesa’s church in Texas came into Kollo and ministered with the men also, and in total 6 men became Christians!We got to see 3 of them be baptized and two women who were already believers got baptized as well.I will try to post a video of the baptism on here.
Lauren (my partner) got an ameba and had to stay at Brandy and Kanesa’s house for a few days, but Tiffany stayed in our village with me while she was getting better.She took ameba medicine and the ameba should be dead now, we named him Buck.
The past week we have had the opportunity to work with the Texas team in our villages and it is amazing how such a big group of Christians can spread so much light here.The Holy Spirit was all over this place and in them, and they brought so much light and joy out to the Africans.We really enjoyed them and they did a wonderful job letting God use them and stretch them, and as a result 6 men came to Christ!
Dani is not feeling well so please pray for her healing.
There is a woman in out village named Faati, and she is a Christian.She is our closest friend in the village, she is also the lady who cooks for us and does our laundry.Her husband is not a Christian and he has another wife, but Faati is still a Christian and she will defend her faith.For the past few days we have been able to study the bible with Faati and it has been very good.Please pray that we can continue to have opportunities to study the Word with her, and that she will be able to take the Truth and not only live it out, but spread the good news.I think she is the only Christian in the entire village, so please pray that God would bless her and lift her up and use her to spread who He is.
Please pray for the women in our villages, that they would continue to show and interest in the gospel.Pray that they would receive salvation, and that they would not be afraid to live as Christians, even if their husbands are Muslim and disapprove.Pray that their chains would break and that God would set them free, and please pray that our last few days in Niger can be used for God’s glory, that He would use us in the fullest measure.
Yesterday we got to ride camels and our butts are really sore.Dani almost got bucked off of our camel, and three African men took the liberty of picking me up and placing me on the camel very quickly, which was very awkward and uncomfortable, especially since I was wearing a skirt.
Also pray that Lauren and I would not let our sense of adventure consume us on these last days so that we can stay out of trouble.
The past two weeks here in Africa have been a blur of business and meshed together events that I am not really sure how to sift through but I will do my best. Also, Niger has religious freedom at the current moment so I will not be writing in code this time, that was just an extra precaution anyway.
So, living in the bush is pretty fun. I didn't think I would get used to it, there are some things that go along with "culture shock" that I didn't think I would ever get used to that have become a part of everyday life to me. Here is what a normal day in bush life consists of:
Me and Lauren sleep outside because it is too hot to sleep in our mud house. We wake up at 4 a.m. to the sound of the muslim prayer. The prayed plays through a loud speaker in our village, and every house in the village can hear it clearly when it goes off. I have struggled with being fearful of this prayer and waking up in the dark to it, but through prayer the wickedness of it has become a speck on the bottom of my shoe. When it wakes me up, if I cannot fall back asleep I use that time to pray to God and thank Him for being the King and already winning the battle. We get up out of our beds around 7 am, because that is what time our village wakes up. The morning sounds consist of goats, roosters, sheep, birds, neighbors, donkeys, and cows. We move our beds into the house, put on our skirts and go out walking. Me and Lauren walk out of our village every morning, prayer walking/exercising. On our way back into the village we purchase Labon which is yogurt in a bag, and we eat that for breakfast. We then go back to our house and read our bibles and pray until about 10 or 11. Around that time, we go out into the village with our cassettes and we go to different compounds and greet people and play cassettes with God's word on them. The cassettes are in their language, and we always give interested people a cassette to keep. We go to about 3 compounds in the morning, and we come in around 12 or 1 and eat lunch (which usually consists of a rice dish cooked by our friend Fati). We then take naps until about 3. After our naps, we go prayer walking again out of our village. We stop at another village called "Zongo" where we buy a soft drink and farimasa (which is fried bread with sugar...tastes like donuts). We sit and eat/drink in the shade and visit for a while with each other and the Africans. We then head back into our village and spend time with our neighbors, playing with their children and sitting with the women. Fati brings us dinner, we eat it, and right when it gets dark, Barbara comes on.
Barbara is a french soap opera that our neighbors play out of their tv and 50 tall ghetto antenna each week night. It is not common for bush people to own tv's, fyi. But at night, all the married women and children in our village gather around this tiny tv right next to our house and watch Barbara. They love it. They give their commentaries in Zerma and I try my best to follow, but I am unfortunatly usually always out of the loop.
After Barbara, we pull out our beds and go to sleep. Our days are very simple and we have worked into a routine, but adventure still happens, and we are lucky if we ever get a day that follows that scheduale closely. That is just a general idea of our days.
The other night as I was washing my face in the bowl in the back room, I heard a screech from our front room. I ran into the room only to find Lauren attempting to kill a GIANT scorpian with her flip flop. I screamed "You can't kill it! It's too big!!" because it was the size of a kitten (maybe a little smaller..) and so Lauren screamed for an African child to come. Along comes Ali, our 12 year old saviour. He killed the scorpian by first hitting it with a shoe. He then stabbed it through its heart with a stick, and finally he grabbed a stone and he smashed it. He looked up at us in the moonlight and said "A Bon" which means "it is finished."
Some exciting things that I have been able to experience include riding on a donkey cart, taking a bush taxi across town, riding on a boat across the Niger river, peeing outside in a dust storm, and holding a baby goat.
As far as Jesus' work is concerned, the people in our village are starving for him and flocking toward his word. People come to us asking for cassettes, asking about Jesus, and just the other night a younge girl came to our house asking for me to play the bible for her. It is obvious that God is leading these people on a path toward Him. It is obvious the people who are interested in the gospel and those who are not. We experience God rawly out here, and it is very obvious where the work of the Spirit is. I am overjoyed by the way that our love for the village people spreads among them. We love the children, and the children run off and love each other. We love our neighbors, and they leave with smiles on their faces. The most beautiful thing about the love is that it belongs only to Jesus.
The men in the village are becoming more and more interested and accepting of the gospel. The more we pray for them, the more they open up. We have one team mate who has lead a man to Christ already.
It is hard for people in this area to make a decision to follow Jesus because they are controlled by fear and oppression. When we prayerwalk to pray the God would break down strongholds and continue to lead these people toward freedom to follow him. When I first started living in the bush I was very discouraged because I did not see any fruit of God working in the people in the village. I wanted to see people become Christians. I am not worried about that anymore because God has given me a peace that His work is so much more than anything we can measure. There is so much trust that goes into following Jesus, and every day he commands us to love like he loved. I am able to do that with his strength now, and I am able to see fruit everyday.
Please pray that God would help me and Lauren work well together, and please pray for the men of the village to become hungry for Jesus and fearless to follow him.
Thank you so much everyone for supporting me. I know I say this everytime, but honestly, everytime I call home and check my email and the comments on here I am encouraged GREATLY and I cannot thank you enough for that. Also, I feel the supernatural effects of the prayers from back home, so keep praying!
If God is teaching me anything in Africa it is to not take life so seriously, to trust Him, and to love. I am learning how to REST in Jesus' peace, and even though I am living in the midst of lost people in a foreign land, God is giving me supernatural peace and joy that does not match up to the obvious circumstances, so praise God for that.
I will report back sometime between the 16th and 19th!!! Love Hailey
Living in the bush is alot like living in the middle of another dimension, a dimension where you pee on a slab of concrete that is also the area that you "shower" in, (or take a bucket bath). A dimension where you poop in a hole in the ground but you have to greet the owners of the poop hole for ten minutes before you can use it, a dimension where you eat on the floor with your hands alongside Africans as their chickens try to steal the food and the goats are eating the fence next to you. Aside from bush living, which is very different, we feel like we are being sent out like "sheep among wolves." (Read Mthw 10).
I don't have alot of time to post very much, but just know that your yarps are encouraging me greatly, and that to hear what the King is doing in the states is encouraging me enough to go back to the bush for another two weeks. It is hard to see His fruit here, but to know that He is working for the good keeps me going. Please continue to yarp because I am affected by your yarps, and thank you all so much for your support.
I am looking at each day as an adventure, and I am excited to see what He has in store. Hopefully I can type out a more detailed update next time! Know that all is well here, we are all in good health and happy, and we are being stretched every second!
Wow, the support and comments that you all have left me have given me so much strength. Thank you all so much, I can never communicate the amount of encouragement that I have received from you all. Thank you so much for your love and support and encouragement. Tomorrow our team will move out into K town, or "the bush." We are separated into teams of twos, and I will be staying with a girl from Ohio who I like very much. We get along well and I'm excited to spend the summer with her! Being here is hard because it is so foreign, but it is so good because in everything I do, I am using His strength. I mean it- from the moment I wake up, to when I take my nap, to when I go to sleep at night-- it is all by His strength that I am moving forward into what He has. Seeking Him is not hard, because He is already there. When you get to a place where you can't do anything without Him, it becomes easy and wonderful to live in the Spirit. I am thankful that I am in such stretching circumstances that I do not have to worry about myself all the time. We have been staying in the city for a week now, but tonight is our last night! We ate lunch with our hands yesterday. We sat on the floor, tucking our long skirts between our sweating legs and leaning down to scoop up soggy rice, beans, onions and peppers with our RIGHT hand (if you use your left hand then that is just not acceptable--people wipe with their left hands..and I'm left handed so changes have quickly been made). People in Africa not only eat with their hand, but they all scoop out of the same bowl! The people here are incredibly friendly, and in African culture, people are the first priority. People always have time to spend time with people--"things" just don't matter here. It's all about community and people. Things in Africa are becoming normal here, but I will try to continue to keep my updates vivid. I am getting used to the culture, but I'm sure that once we move to the bush we will experience culture shock. As a team, we have mainly just been interacting together, but as of tomorrow, we will be surrounded by a foreign people group constantly. The people group that we will be living with are very friendly, dramatic and loud. They are very excited that we are coming to stay in their village, and this eases my nerves greatly because I was afraid that they would not want us there. But they are already fighting over who gets to do our laundry! My appetite has been increasing greatly, and every night at 11 o'clock I start starving. I think my body schedule was just messed up, but I am eating well now, so no worries mom. We saw our first African roach yesterday. D woke me up screaming, and I went to kill it, but I freaked out when I saw how big it was (it was on our shower curtain), so we got K to kill it. She is so hard core... Thank you for your prayers and encouragement, they have given me supernatural strength and even joy that has uplifted myself and those around me. He has done more than just provided for me here, He is giving me extra joy!
We will get back to the city on June 17-19 and that is when I will be able to update again. We will come to the city for two days every two weeks to take a break from the village. Thank you again for supporting me and I will continue to stay strong through Him! Also- one more thing- Today we ate lunch with a group of University African students (they were all young African men in their 20s). They spoke English, and we were able to really connect and share with them. They were all believers, but they told us that they were the only 5 believers in their university of 500. Their joy was beautiful, and even though our language prevented us from communicating flawlessly, I received life from their vivid facial expressions, their loud talking and laughter, and their joy. The people in Africa are so expressive and energetic that it's almost impossible NOT to communicate with them, even if you speak different languages. It brings me to tears to see the energy inside of these people. It's contagious and so beautiful. Please yarp for our interactions with the village people, yarp for divine appointments and for supernatural communication of His word. The people here (esp the women) are very oppressed for various reasons, so please yarp for a breaking of the chains that they live under daily.
Know that yours yarps are being heard, and that I am having an amazing time. I love all of you and will report back soon!!!
Hello to all! I am in Africa at the current moment and it is about 10 pm. This is our 3rd day in Niger and it has been amazing so far. When we got off the plane, everything was orange and brownish like a dessert (since it is), and the air was hot and dry. When I say hot, remember that I live in a hot climate and I know what hot is. I like the heat and I enjoy the weather when it is 90 degrees. Well, here is gets up to 120. It was probably about 110 or more when we stepped off the plane. The airport was interesting, there is really no way to describe anything here effectively which is frustrating because I want to share my exact experience so far. I will do my best to describe as much as I can! The airport was more like an open dusty building, and we walked off the plane into the doors to stand in a line and have our passports stamped by sweating African men in linen and cotton suits, tired and French speaking. We walked into a joining room (it was like an old abandoned department store with open windows and doors) and we waited by a multi colored ancient conveyer belt for our trunks. "Number 10" helped us with our trunks and we carried them out to meet our host ladies. They greeted us and handed us each 1.5 liter bottles of water. Many African men were friendly with us and were standing around greeting us and talking to us in French as our host ladies loaded their old trucks with our trunks. The second that I stepped off the plane was also the second that my body entered a constant state of sweating, and I have never sweated so much in my life. It is actually kind of nice, because sweat cools your body off, and everyone here is contantly glistening and glowing in the African heat. (everyone here glows and the people are so beautiful!) Every part of my body was sweating, even the skin in between my toes. I am actually enjoying this experience of sweating in this new way. I feel very clean somehow. Africa has a smell, I can't really describe it. It's strong, maybe like a strong sweaty and musty smell. Maybe it's like the way an African smells when they sweat when all they eat is corn and mangos. It's a smell that I've never smelled before, and it's overpowering, and it made me naucious at first, but I like it now. All of my things smell this way now. We arrived at our house that we are staying at for one week, and we were all able to hike up a hill to a tiny house in a closet like room where we called home through headsets connected to computers that were brought by those here. There are rainbow colored lizards here the size of iguanas. They are EVERYWHERE and they run really fast, up trees and across your feet. They fascinate me! They are like the African squirrel! So far we have had intense language training, a visit to the market, seen camels, walked over the Niger river bridge, experienced our first African rain and dust storm and met some amazing workers here who are preaching so much raw truth and supernatural mystery that I am in tears while they speak. I love it here, but every night so far I have woken up in the middle of the night very upset. The enemy is trying to discourage me, so please yarp that I can stay strong in Him. It makes it easier to be surrounded by a wonderful team who I get along with so well, they are very encouraging. I am a bit homesick but there is no time to think about that. There is no time to do anything here, only time to submit to Him. If you wallow in anything or let your thoughts run, it will kill you. ( not to be to dramatic haha..but seriously). We are going to the bush on Monday and I am ready to go. I'm getting more and more adjusted to the heat, and we all took our temperatures today and our natural body temperatures here are over 99. It heats everything up in you, it's almost to the point where you wonder how people can survive here. But actually, they don't usually come out in the hot part of the day- they nap, and so do we! We are staying in the orientation house and so we have electricity now, and american food. It's hard for me to eat because it's so hot, so please pray for my appetite to increase. I am having so much fun and I feel very alive and joyful. You don't really appreciate the way water tastes until you feel like you will die without it, you don't appreciate sleep until you feel like you will collapse in exhaustion, and you don't appreciate rain until you live 48 hours in 110+ degree heat. When it rained last night we stood in it and rejoiced in it. There will be struggles here but I am not using my own strength, but His. He has me on a crazy ride. Please yarp that we will all be prepared to live in the bush, that we will stay in good health, and that the enemy will not get into our heads. We have to stay strong and I know we will. He wants us all here for a specific purpose. We have already seen an impact in the people we have contacted, and we know that nothing goes wasted when it is aimed at His glory. I will post again as soon as I can, but I have no clue when that will be. I try hard not to think about home and my boyfriend and family, because it prevents me from being here and makes me very homesick. Contacting home and posting will be minimal so I can stay focused!
Peace be with you lovely readers, thank you for all that you give and support with :)
Well, everything is wrapping and we will be leaving from the Houston airport in one week. God has been using this trip to Africa to change alot of peoples' lives; people who I never thought would be affected by it. It's wonderful, and we aren't even there yet. But we will be there on June the 2nd, and once we are there we will have a week of language training and an orientation where they basically prepare us for the next two months in every way that they can. "They" being the missionaries who are there that will be taking care of us and guiding us. I have not stopped recieving donations and notes through mail from people who are supporting this trip. There has been so much support and I am thankful to everyone who has helped me, and to everyone who is praying. I know that God is preparing us all right this very second for the tasks that he has specifically for each one of us in Africa. We are all going to be called to work in different ways for his kingdom and I am very very certain that he is already preparing me, and he has been since March when I committed to go. What he has in store for us I cannot imagine, and I know that it will be nothing that I expect. Today my dad gave me good advice. He told me to stay stronge in my body, in my mind, and in my spirit, because the best way to serve others is to do it as someone who is healthy and stronge and in tune with what the Lord is leading you into. There is no worry existing inside of me right now. I have tried to explain this to others, describing it as a "supernatural peace" that He has given me. As a person who is usually afraid of simple social interactions, I am fearless about living in Africa for two months. That is hard to understand. But at the same time, it's not, because He has made it very clear that I am supposed to be there this summer, as well as my good friend. It has been a crazy trip for her and I but through this entire process, we are more and more convinced each day that the Lord has a plan and a purpose and He wants us specifically to be in Africa this summer. That reassurance has not always been there for me. When I first committed to going to Africa, I saw it as an opportunity that I was taking advantage of. But it has become more than that- it has become a part of His plan and a very specific plan that He is calling me for. It is easy to get stressed out about last minute things that have to be taken care of, but at the same time, there is no point. I already know that everything will be taken care of on time, even though I still don't have my Visa or my airline tickets or my passport. Ha! It's ok though, I know that everything will work out. All of these things should come in the mail before we leave. They only thing I have left to do is get a backround check run on me. I received some sporty things from my family, like some underwear that dries super fast after you wash it, within two hours! How amazing. What a great invention. I also got a hat and a cool purse that I can keep all my passport/ticket/visa stuff in for when I am in the airports. So thank you family for these practical gifts! They want us to bring enough gatorade to drink 16 oz a day. My mom and I were disturbed when we heard this, until we realized that they make those little powder packets of gatorade that you add to your water. I was wondering how we would transport that much liquid, but we don't have to- just the packets, so that's good news! I will spend the next week packing and such, and if I do not post before I leave, which I will try to, then I will post for sure before the second week in June, while I am there. Peace until then
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