Saying Goodbye and Transitioning

I apologize that this blog is a little late. I meant to do this before I left the Ivory Coast but ran out of time there, then before the end of August at least but that didn’t happen either. My last month in Côte d’Ivoire was full of goodbyes. I left my host family (Tiepogovogo) on the 14th, Ferke on the 19th, Bouake and Côte d’Ivoire on the 28th, and Denver (along with half my team) on the 2nd. I really made an effort to visit everyone I knew well, though there were a few people unfortunately I missed. On the other side of this the last couple of weeks has been about finding new and old. I met the new Journey Corps team (only the americans) in Denver; I have seen my family again and got in touch with friends and family though I haven’t seen some of them yet. Sounds hard right? Honestly it has been very hard but very sweet at the same time. So let me tell a couple of stories from my goodbyes and hellos. I will also share what is next for me since that is the one thing everyone asks.

Two sundays before I left Tiepogovogo my host family and my neighbor dedicated their babies. Chimonga my baby sister and my neighbor’s baby boy. I was thrilled that they dedicate their babies there too and especially that they were dedicating these two babies in particular!  In Nyarafolo culture they don’t decide on a baby’s name right away, it may take between 8 days and 6 months to get the name settled. Chimonga was 9 months old by then, her name had been Chimonga Grace. That day they announced both babies’ official names, hers had changed. They named her Chimonga Erebeka. What an honor! They said they want there to always be a Rebecca in the village. The next sunday my pastor, who always preaches in Nyarafolo decided to preach in French with a Nyarafolo  translator, on top of that we had communion. I felt so loved and more apart of that church than I ever had before. It was sweet of my pastor to do that and I had been secretly wishing that we would have communion together sometime. What a blessing and what a beautiful way to say goodbye. But the most telling thing in leaving was the pain. I truly allowed myself to love these people, my brothers and sisters. It hurt to leave them and I saw the pain on their faces too. My pain was my report card. If I hadn’t loved them, it would have been a breeze to leave them. I praise God for the pain because without love I am just a “resounding gong or a clanging cymbal,” my time there would have meant nothing. He is the one who helped me to love with the kind of love he describes in 1 cor 13.  Granted I didn’t always do this perfectly, but through the power and work of the Holy Spirit I did love this way there and always will love them.

I was also able to have a few sweet goodbyes (or as they say I asked for the road) with my friends in Ferke, missionary and Ivorian alike. I wouldn’t trade those meetings for anything. Bouake was a lot more difficult because of transportation issues and the need to pack but I was still able to spend two nights with the Ivorian family I stayed with for a week there. That was really a sweet time also. I met their new daughter, caught up and visited their church. I really wanted to say goodbye in the culturally best way possible. God blessed my intentions and desires and they all were such a sweet blessing to me and I hope I was to them too.

In Denver we (Haylei, Eric and I) told story after story from Côte d’Ivoire. Debriefing there with them and our leaders in Denver was super sweet too. We all needed that. It was also amazing to spend that last bit of time together. I will miss them dearly as well as Emily (who is still in RCI) and Tabea (who left for Germany when we left). And of course our other Germans who I have been missing for a couple of months (they left in July). But I am so glad that we can all stay in touch still, even better now that we have good internet and cheaper phone service!

Also in Denver we met the new American team. 7 girls and 1 guy. They are a great punch and I look forward to hearing all about their adventures and what God does with them!

So what are my plans for the future? Well I feel strongly that I am to return to the mission field in the future. I believe I should use my skills as a Landscape Architect (LA) to help believers expand the gospel in their own country and missionaries too I suppose. The problem is my skills as a LA are at best “entry level.” So in order to reach this goal I need a career job. This is the best place to learn and develop my skills. There are no Landscape Architects in my hometown though so I will surely have to move again. In the meantime I hope to find a temporary job in my hometown to allow for readjustment into this culture and a little rest too but this will be at most three months and at least a month.

Thank you all for your amazing support in every way! God surely used you in my life and in the lives of those I had the privilege of loving and working with overseas. I plan to continue my blog after this but it is likely to be different and not as often. May the grace and peace of God be with you now and always!

A couple of stories

This is a special blog, I am writing it first by hand in Tiepogo. This month it was hard to find something to write about. Should I write about things that happened this month? Should I write about my on going project? Not much new to say about these things. So I think I will share a couple stories from Tiepogo and everywhere else I suppose.

When I first came to Tiepogo, my neighbor started to act more and more sickly. She would stay home more than others and just look tired- wiped out. I was starting to worry about her. Some women have very low blood counts because of multiple bouts of malaria, or untreated malaria. Her stomach got larger and larger but like she was just gaining weight. I was even more concerned when I realized this. What sort of sickness could she have? One day, not long ago, I went to say hello and she was resting like she was wiped out. I looked at her and her stomach and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, she was just pregnant. I asked but my Nyarafolo wasn’t good enough. So I thought well maybe and left. Maybe four days later I came to Maari’s house to have breakfast with her and Wokeya came to meet me instead. She said Maari went to Lafokbo (the town with the closest clinic) with our neighbor because she was having her baby. lol, Yep she had been pregnant and she wasn’t just gaining weight. I laughed at myself (when I was alone) for a little while about that. It really is something they don’t make a point about here though. Anyway she and the baby boy are just fine and she seems to have more energy now.

Another story. One time in Ferke, I went to the market as usual. I think I needed more that time than normal. Anyway I was looking for something in particular and a lady with a bowl on her head seemed to have it. I just happened to hear her speak Nyarafolo, so I greeted her in Nyarafolo and asked about her family, her health and all the normal things in the language. The lady who was talking with her before was just blown away that I could speak some Nyarafolo. She said in Nyarafolo “eh!? you know Nyarafolo!?... What’s your name.” I told her my name is Naragadeni and that I live in Tiepogovogo. I even mentioned my host mom. The other lady didn’t have what I wanted but it didn’t matter, we had had a good bit of a conversation and they were utterly impressed that I could speak their language.  As I was walking away after our good-byes, I heard her telling someone else that I spoke Nyarafolo and that my name is Naragadeni. As I continued to walk the market, after a few minutes, some venders started to ask me if I was Naragadeni. lol I was famous that day in the market. The funny thing is my Nyarafolo is only at “survival” stage.  It really gives value and worth to a mother tongue though when a foreigner, and here especially a white foreigner, learns or tries to learn the language. I can’t imagine these ladies’ reaction to Linn, who is nearly, if not, fluent in the language, when she goes through the market.

That’s it for now. Though I will say that only having two weeks left in the village is bitter sweet. People are more talkative, I finally figured some things out about living here and I myself am trying to make the most of my last few days here.  For those of you who want to know, I am planning to be back at home (I mean home home) the first week of September. That means the next blog will be my last from this country.

So What's the Point?

At every step of the way I have learned that my time here, my ministry here is not about what I do but about walking in relationship with my God, about being who I am in Christ and growing in that. I am constantly changing, but God is who he is everywhere and he is the one who makes me effective and useful, nothing I can ever do on my own can accomplish that. Gathering information and helping the Pastor with a plan for a dispensary that he has wanted to start to help his people and spread the good news, none of this makes any difference at all if it is just me doing it (or him for that matter). I can’t make anything last, I am leaving in August. Even if I weren’t, I am a flower that is withering, a passing breeze, a single moment in time here. I am a moment, He is forever. His work is what matters; I am simply privileged to take part in that work with others who he has chosen to use for their short time here too. He said, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Ecc 3:11) and “For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph 2:10) This introduction is important because I am and always will be one small, small piece in a gigantic puzzle that God himself is putting together. I can’t see all that God is doing but I am going to do what he has for me to do now. Where is my credit, my boasting? It is excluded (Rom 3:27) as it should be. So instead of telling you all about “my project” let me tell you what I have seen God doing in the Ferké area in Cote d’Ivoire.

The Nyarafolo people are officially an unreached people group. Only 0.30% of the group are evangelical Christians. 3.00% are Christian but the vast majority are considered Islamic. But the tricky thing about religion in Côte d’Ivoire is that the traditional religion of Animism is everywhere. If they aren’t Evangelical Christians, no matter what other faith they adhere to, they still practice traditional religion. That means the stats are more like this: 0.30% evangelical Christian, ~99.5% Animism, 3.00% Christian, ~70% Islam and ~0.20% no religion. There is a lot of overlap, if the individual is not Evangelical, and the overlap includes Catholics here also. This people group is pretty small with only about 62,000 people. (the solid stats are from http://www.joshuaproject.net/languages.php?rol3=sev) But let me tell you, it is an engaged people group! In my village of ~100 people, there are about 45 evangelical believers. My church has produced two of the only three Nyarafolo Pastors in the country. A good part of the translation team working on the Nyarafolo bible are either from Tiepogovogo or have spent a good amount of time there (learning the language or working in the church). God has been moving in and through Tiepogovogo. There are so many stories they tell about how God started things going there some 40 years ago, all of them amazing. And he is not finished there yet. I don’t mean that that is the only place God has been reaching Nyarafolos, nor that it all started there, don’t get me wrong. He is doing so so much in Ferké in and with the four evangelical congregations and many believers in the city. All the same, I see God moving in Tiepogovogo and it has been amazing. How could I not want to help here? Spending so much time in the village observing and listening to stories, talking with the Pastor, I have found some things I might be able to help with.

I can’t speak Nyarafolo well enough to start a bible study or help people learn to read. I can’t even do much sharing. But I am built for planning, for observation, for the design process. My idea was to start a library in the church and eventually have a community center there in Tiepogo to help in learning to read Nyarafolo, hygiene and sanitation would be taught as well. This would be a one on one thing (made for this culture) and would hopefully spread through the villages. My thought was to have low scale seminars to help keep things on track and help others learn to teach. Anyway, none of that will probably happen, or at least not the way I imagined. I’m ok with that, but I am still going to give my ideas to my Pastor and the translation team. One day I was casually mentioning that I was going to work on this plan to my Pastor and he said, what he really wants to see more is a dispensary (a medical clinic) started in the area. Turns out he has been planning and thinking about this for years. He has tons of information and lots of ideas. But he has never been trained in planning and seems to feel he is spinning his wheels right now in this. I, after praying about this quite a bit, just want to help out. I have been trained in planning and not only that but all that time I was sick, I stayed at the Baptist hospital with missionaries who have been there for most of their lives and the director herself. I heard a lot of things about running a hospital. Not that I can plan the whole thing from that, by any means, but I have seen maybe some areas that need to be investigated well before starting another medical facility, and I have become at least a little familiar with medical missions administration.

I don’t know how much my planning process will help him, but I hope it will be a good start in actually getting this off the ground. I know of a couple of amazing missions planning firms (like eMi) that can help them out too, which I intend to get them in touch with (probably the most helpful of the two). Anyway, like I said, I am a passing moment in this grand story. The third part clarinet in a grand symphony, I don’t matter much in the over-all melody. But it is a privilege to be apart of what God is doing here, to see his work, get to know his people and on some aided occasions even encourage them and help them in their walk with our amazing Father. I know they have encouraged me and taught me way more than I ever could do for them. Yet again I am writing nearly two pages, I apologize, but this is the big tamale and the whole point of God sending me here, I do believe. I am learning so much from even trying to work on this and I believe strongly that this is at least the direction of the answer to my big hairy audacious goal question: what would landscape architecture look like in a incarnational mission’s setting? It is an answer I can even do at home, as God leads of course. So there you have it. This is mostly what I was leading up to in my last two blogs and I hope my story encourages you and challenges you in your walk with Christ.

One Crazy May

         So, I will share all about my church's project next month because this month has been a very, very full month. I spent a total of 9 and a half days at home… It has been a month of working together, of seeing what others on my team have been doing and how they have been living. Next month most of the team will be traveling to visit ministries in another country and as soon has they are done with that half of the team will be saying their good-byes as they are going back to Germany on the fourth of July. So in other words I am so glad that we have been able to have all this time together this month before our friends leave.

           

            First, the whole team (all 10 of us) met in Katiola for a tagbana bible dedication. It was really cool to see a celebration for a newly finished bible. I really would like to come back for the Nyarafolo bible dedication when it is finished. Katoila is really close to Niéméné, so the whole team went to  there to help with the kid’s day that Carina and Haylei had organized. This was amazing. It started right after church the day after we arrived. We started with a game similar to sharks and minos. We said “Qui as peur des blaches?” (who is afraid of white people?(many really young children are afraid of white people here)) and they responded “parson!!!!” (nobody!) The scene reminded me of those epic battle

scenes you see in movies like Lord of the Rings. Lol it was great. Then there was a message given by the Sunday school teacher (Ivoirian) and we served them food. We fed 190 children with just 2 tubs of attieké (kind of like couscous but a little more bitter), none of us can see how that was possible except that God stretched out the food for us. Everyone ate plenty. Then there was a sort of field day after a couple of hours. This was simply blessed chaos. We had 8 stations, each person on the team did something else. Balloon games, three-legged race, pange volleyball, water games, rice sack races just to name a few. There were over 300 children, most of whom didn’t speak French (only Jimminy or sometimes a few words in French). We divided them into groups for each station and sent them to another when it was time. I don’t know how it all worked, except that God made it work. It was much smoother than it should have been with 300 excited kids and only about 20 adults. Also that weekend, we all enjoyed being together and visiting our teammates in Niéméné (we were there 2 days).

            Unfortunately one of my teammates, a sister and friend, Lina had malaria at this same time. God gave her strength and she did the kid’s day, but perhaps this was a bad idea. She was taking medicine against malaria, which she finished the day we were leaving. On the bus she said, "oh I don’t want to go back, I have a fever and feel really weak." And yep she still had malaria (it should have been done with the first medicine). I thought about it, prayed a little about it and said, “why don’t you come with me to Ferke and stay at the Hospital at a missionary’s house? I will cook for you and take care of you.” (The missionary is in the States but offered her house to me to use, so sweet!). She almost cried, it meant a lot to her. She thought about it for a long while then paid the bus driver for the rest of the trip to Ferke. Her plan was to go for a couple of days to regain strength then go home. We saw the doctor the next morning and he said that the malaria hadn’t left and she needed to take another medicine. This other medicine is like the “hammer,” it is very hard for the body and completely wiped her out. I was so glad I was there with her to help and encourage her. She didn’t leave the house for three straight days. The doctor came to visit often (he lives across the road) and when our set day came he said “no, you need to stay here.” It really was best that she stayed the whole week. The doctor was needed and she really needed the un-interrupted rest. The day we left she felt much, much better, though we were both tired. I stayed with another missionary for another night to regain some energy too then went back to Tiepogo for 2 days.

            I was only there for two days because Emily and Lina (yeah she had just been sick) had organized a girl’s day in Niakara that all of the women on the team were invited to go help with. This was also very blessed by God. There were 32 girls who came (there is a girls bible study group there run by our teammates). We had just enough food (again God provided) and the message that our dear friend Leah gave was amazing and really touched their hearts, she gave it in French and Jimbara Senefoul (very few of the girls speak French well enough to have understood the whole thing). I just saw their eyes light up when Leah started teaching in Jimbara Senefoul also. Before and after the message we had 4 stations of different activities for the girls also. We had a pedicure station, bead bracelets, a photo booth type thing, and bible covering. Carina and Lina washed feet and painted

toenails; this was something that really spoke volumes. So many girls commented on how they didn’t say anything about how gross their feet were, not even a weird look. All of us ladies left Niakara the next day. Some us went to Boundaili to visit David and Eric. They are both about to leave their families for good and it was pretty much our last chance to see Boundaili and meet their families. We were all so glad that we went. On top of that, God helped us all stretch our money to go. Now we are all in Bouake for a seminar (a very good one I might add) and are catching up on emails, applications, blogs, letters ect. too.

            So there you have it. God has been so good to us all this month and I have been so blessed to see what the rest of my team is doing in Côte d’Ivoire and what’s more, to help with a few things. He gave healing and strength, grace and provision, and many lasting memories and good times together. He even blessed my nine and a half days in Tiepogo. For the first time I was able to visit neighbors with a translator and my project has a good start also. In the next blog I will write all about my project. I am super excited about it, but I will warn you, it is nothing glamorous. So now that I have almost written 2 pages and way more than I meant I will leave you with a blessing.

April News brings May Clues

April has been a month of travel for my team and I. The first week of the month we went to Burkina Faso for the week to visit a game park then most of us stopped to see waterfalls also. This was the first vacation really that the team has taken. We traveled a long way but it was good to see the animals and be together. We went to Nzanga Wildlife Park on the eastern side of Burkina Faso. At the park we saw monkeys, elephants, wart hogs, various African antelope and even a crocodile or two. Unfortunately there are no known wild elephants in Côte d’Ivoire (RCI) and very few of any other large wild animal for that matter. Wildlife conservation has not really been on the radar at all in this country and as a result practically nothing is left here. This was pretty much the case at one time in our own country. Someday perhaps Côte d’Ivoire will began to protect animals more just as we finally realized we should in the past. It isn’t too late, there are animals in neighboring countries that if protected here can migrate and start a new population in RCI.

We also said goodbye to a good friend this past week. One of the Journeyers from the last team had stayed to help us learn French and the culture, to help us adjust. She is headed back to the States now (by way of Germany). We will all miss her so much! She needs to go back to do school but plans to come back in the future to work in Côte d’Ivoire (long after we all leave though). We all went to Bouaké last week to say goodbye. Most of the Germans in our team are leaving in just a couple of months too; so all the time we can spend together now is precious. Some logistical things were also taken care of there, especially by the Germans who are planning what they will be doing when they leave.

When I came to Côte d’Ivoire, I was planning on staying here for two years. The reasoning was that the first year is for learning and the second year is when journeyers really are able to use what was learned. I wanted to use what I learned, do ministry with it. But God has closed the doors for staying here for a second year so precisely that it cannot be mistaken. I will be leaving in September this year now. I have 87% of my monthly support and I have student loans that I saved up for, both turned out to be enough for just one year. At 87% I only need about $200 more a month to be fully funded. At this point if I were to be fully funded I would be able to use the money for a project in Tiepogovogo. It has been amazing how God has been providing for me though. If someone can’t help one month He has someone else give a one-time gift, always the amount or more to make up for the missed money. I am learning that it is truly God who supplies, he just likes to use people to do that. So if you are partnering with me here in Côte d’Ivoire, thank you for being apart of what God is doing here. He is working to make himself known and it is a joy and privilege to be apart of that, I hope it is for you also!

I have an idea for a project in Tiepogovogo. It stems from what the church is already beginning to do there. Unfortunately I can’t announce it yet. Though I would like to, it hasn’t been approved by any party yet. So just to give you a teaser, I will tell you that I intend to use my training in regional planning a little to help make it happen. If it all works out, it will be absolutely something souly in the hands of the church there in Tiepogovogo and in RCI, and I want to make sure they can keep it up on their own. So there is your big teaser and something to pray about if you will. Oh and I am still teaching and I absolutely love it! I want to keep that up until I leave for sure!

Things to Do in Tiepogo

This month I have been thinking a lot about what to share in my blog. A lot of things have happened this month and I think most people wouldn’t want to read that much all at once. But how can I just pick one thing and leave out all the rest? I would be cheating you. I thought about writing 2 blogs, but I haven’t the time. So I will give you the brief and maybe sometime in the future I can expand on them some.

Since my last blog I have been feeling much better. I was put on a, no oil, no acid diet and it has done wonders for me. It looks like I will have to stay on the diet for at least the rest of my time here though. Because I have been feeling so much better, I have spent 25 days in Tiepogovogo this month instead of 13 and a half (January). I thank God for his mercy and guidance through it all.

Since I have been spending so much more time in the village I have stumbled across things to do there. At the beginning, before I came, I said that I was going to live like they live, be apart of their lives and through relationships share the love of Christ. This past month I have seen this start to take shape. Not only have I been helping with more of the daily chores, I have been able to visit more people, and even help some people learn how to read or work on their French. I could probably write a whole blog about just these things, but in short I can now pound little things for sauce like peanuts, squash seeds and vegetables. I have even made my own sauce several times (remember my special diet). I do things like carry my own bucket for bathing, do my laundry, sit with the women and shell peanuts or seeds. As I heal and build more strength I am living more and more like they do, and proving more and more that I view them as equals not as lower than I am (they tend to hold me in too high regard as a white woman). I get so many comments when people talk to me and I respond in Nyarafolo (still only simple things) or they see me doing a village chore for the first time. They say “eh!? You are becoming Nyarafolo!” I love it! I see God working through it and I am so happy to be able to help in daily life too. These things make it fun and oh so worth while!

The last thing I have found to do here is teach in a very small school. My pastor started a school (like an elementary school) in a neighboring village some time ago. It only has three teachers for about 120 students (from all of the villages around it) and 6 classes. Everything is taught in French, which makes it difficult for the students especially because most of them, when they start, don’t know a single word of French. The eldest class, when they graduate, will go on to another school where they will start learning English. My pastor asked me to teach English to these older children so that they will have an easier time when they get to that point. I will admit, I don’t really know what I am doing as far as teaching goes, but even just hearing and seeing English will give them a better shot for success when they actually start English classes. It is also an awesome opportunity to get to know these children better and the three teachers as well. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” comes to mind here. :)

I guess none of these things are jaw dropping amazing, or even all that amazing at all actually, but I am excited because I see my God moving here, in and through me and in and through the Nyarafolo I have had the privilege to get to know. God has a lot to do in this little village and I am overjoyed to be a part of that even if it is in a small way. Oh and I didn’t even get to share about the conference we had in Tiepogovogo! Maybe next time...

Short month, lots of news :)

This month has been a good one. There hasn’t been a ton going on yet and this month was full of progress and fun with friends. This is the first time in three weeks that I have been online for one reason or another, which is strange for me. So instead of boring you with general statements I will move on to the news.

Tabea, the newest Journeyer from Germany, arrived at the end of January. She has spent all of February learning about Ivorian culture in Bouaké and moved into her family Saturday (2-23). This, as you know is much sooner than we moved into our families, but she was the only journeyer in Bouake on campus and she is leaving a month before most of the Americans are. She is very excited to move in with her family, who was actually the same family that Drew had while he was a Journeyer. We see him every once in a while but other than that he is not in the program anymore. He is now finished with his short stay and is going ahead with his video production which was the reason he has been a short termer with World Venture and his main goal.

The whole team has been in Bouaké this past week. We all had a chance to meet Tabea, take a break from the stress of immersion, learn a little more about mission philosophy and share with each other what God has been teaching us. It has been a restful and fun week.

But the real news that I would like to share is a new-found vision for my time in Tiepogovogo. I am not dead set on these ideas, and am open to God’s leading in, through or other than them. In Tiepogovogo right now they only have church meetings on Sunday morning. Many of the Christian women don’t attend on a regular basis because they have other things to do in the morning (all the time really). Many of the women in the village don’t speak French. On top of that, Nyarafolo has just become a written language relatively recently and only a few books of the bible have been translated into Nyarafolo and published at this point. They are working on translation and in just a few years, with God’s help, hopefully they will be done. I have had a heart for women for a long time and there seem to be less women who follow Christ than men and they have less of a chance to learn God’s word.

They tell me that just being in the village has made such an impact, even still it will be a long time (it seems) before I can speak Nyarafolo well enough to have an indepth spiritual conversation with people in Nyarafolo. So all things considered I decided to ask someone who speaks French to translate for me officially. I asked my friend Wayagafoli. Her French is at about the same level as mine, which is not very high. Sometimes it takes a while to communicate because we each know different words than the other. Nonetheless we have already been working together in translation and the more we talk the better it will be, as we learn French together and encourage each other in that. My idea for the near future is to get to know the women of the village through my friend and them me. Many challenges lie ahead in this but as I get to know them, visit them, help with chores ect, I will ask them why they believe in Christ if they are Christian and if they’re not share with them over time why I am and what it means to me, what difference it has made in my life. We will see what God does with all of this and I know he is faithful guide and help me in all of this.