It has been quite a journey already to get to Côte d'Ivoire. This week I was in Denver for Partner Development training called PDX. World Venture has training for their members for Partner Development. They put on a special one for the Fall 2012 Journey Corps team, mostly because there weren't enough people signed up from outside Journey Corps to have a full one... Anyway, it was amazing! All of us Journeyers met and got to know each other (except Shasta, who we all missed dearly). So many prayers were answered. I saw God move in many ways, some of them were subtle and others not easily missed. We all had a blast and I now have a couple of brothers and several sisters. One of my prayers was that He would help us all be ourselves and bind us together. We saw that! A ton of questions were answered too.
Specific Stories:
For me, a long standing problem was resolved, so let me brag about the Lord for a minute... My computer has been in trouble several times since I returned from Kenya a couple of years ago, the logic board was replaced a couple of times and I had to redo the whole thing one other time. I have talked to Apple so many times I could be an Apple repare person myself. Anyway my computer stopped working on Tuesday at PDX. I mean it wasn't even turning on most of the time. So at the leader's insistance, Chazz took me and my computer to the Apple store down the road. They ran a test, said it was amazing that I was using it at all in the last month and kept it to replace the hard drive. I got it back the next morning. Everything worked out so well, it could have only been God, he is literally the only explanation! There is no Apple store for miles around were I live. So what did he do? Made it last until I was just down the street from one. I was going to miss work time for my presentation in PDX, so what did he do? He had me start on it months ago, so it only needed to be refined. The repair would have cost me money I don't have to spend now, so what did he do? He had me extend the warranty a year ago. I was going to loose everything on my computer, so what did he do? He had me back up my hard drive May 2, something I rarely do. It is about the only time I have been so happy to see my computer go out, because God is so good and now the problem is fixed! Yay! All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. Anyway enough about that.
We all met an Ivorian living in Denver. His wife made us an Ivorian dinner. As we ate and talked with him he told us a lot about Côte d'Ivoire: the politics, about life there, the food. Between he and Chazz (a journeyer from the first team) I learned a ton about the country and culture. He was so blessed by our visit too, I was so glad we got to go!
Oh and an important detail, we are shooting for a departure date of Sept 14th. It is all so much more like reality now and I am excited to see God work and move through the work he has set for us all to do from now until we leave Côte d'Ivoire in particular.
Prayer Requests:
That the team would continue to grow together over the summer
That we all would bless our friends and family with our stories as we share what God is doing in our lives and what He has called us to in Côte d'Ivoire
That we would have the time and motivation to work on partner development
Thanks for reading! Blessings!
praise God! What a great introduction to the trip! I hope you'll share more photos on the blog? And what's Ivorian food like?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Ginger!
ReplyDeleteThe Ivorian food was amazing. There was something that reminded me of couscous, but it wasn't, they said it was a ground root. I can't remember the names of the food, but I'm sure I will learn them eventually. There was fried plantain which reminded me of banana chips, but soft. There was tons of baked chicken. I understand that in the Ivory Coast, this is used much more sparingly. It was baked in some sort of sauce, which was very good and was intended to be put over the ground root stuff. Then there was fish, it had a sort of breading on it. In the Ivory Coast though they eat a lot of rice or that ground root with a special sauce over it (most of them are unique to the cook, I think).
I will definitely have to start putting pictures in the blog also! Thanks for the reminder! This time I think I will try to get them up on facebook.