Abidjan Zoo and our Bird

We took a trip to the zoo here in Abidjan. We had a fun morning. Caleb and I got to see a snake strike and eat a small chicken, sorry no pictures of that it was too fast. Caleb shook hands with a Chimp. Karis got up close to a peacock and they both got to ride this massive turtle that was 109 years old and still going strong.
We also got to feed this elephant a bunch of leaves and pet his hairy trunk. Did you know that elephants have long hard whiskers that run down their trunks?




The last picture is of a beautiful bird that stays around our house a lot. It is very hard to get a picture of it because it is scared of people. You can click on the picture to see the picture a little larger. It is a very pretty bird. There are also a lot of crows that fly around here that are black with white on its front and strips of white that loop over the tops of its wings. It makes it look like it is wearing a muscle shirt. I just thought you might to take a look at our zoo and some of the wildlife around our house.
Mike

Name that Baby

I was able to attend my first baby naming ceremony last week. A missionary friend invited me to go with her to a Muslim friend's house for the festivities. To make a long story short I'll say, the baby got a lot of soap (customary baby gift), some cash, and a bald head! We all ate rice and then we went home.

Yesterday another missionary friend and I were back at Vridi, just to talk to the ladies there. We had to go in the afternoon this time because of some scheduling conflicts, so we didn't get to talk to all of the usual women. We did find our friend Elodie, or should I say she found us. She began to tell us more about herself and share some needs. It became obvious that she is very lonely. Although she is probably only in her early twenties, her parents are dead. She is all alone because the uncle that is supposed to take care of her has put her in a house by herself. She stopped going to school as a young teen because someone put a death curse on her. She is still afraid to this day because of that curse, but said "I'm still alive." She has no trade skills because she's had no one to teach her. Getting an apprenticeship costs money and she has none. Please continue to pray for Elodie. She is reading the New Testament we gave her. She says there is a day that she walked a church aisle, but she lives in fear every day.

Pray also for my friend Aissatou. We are to begin storying today with her.

Homeschooling is coming along. It is difficult to be Mom, missionary, French student and teacher, but we accomplish most of those tasks most of the days.

Caleb and Karis are adjusting well to life here. They miss family, friends and dogs. They are beginning to learn some French and have some kids that they play with occasionally. The missionaries on our compound are still their favorite people here.

We are still visiting around to many churches. When we don't have other invitations, we try to go to church at Vridi so that we can have some sort of normalcy. Right now we still have two church invitations that we need to get to.

Continue to pray as we pray toward figuring out how the research we did affects our ministry here.

We love you and miss you.

Heather

Love,
Heather

NOT FUNNY!!! Preach the Word anyway.

2 Tim. 4:2.
Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season;

This passage was never more clear than today. With all the time we have had trying to learn French, the last thing on my mind was to preach. We have been in Africa for almost 4 months. Everyone we meet knows that we are just trying to learn the language. Two weeks ago we visited a church when we were doing our survey work among the Mossi people. We found a church that held their service in Moore. They asked us if we would join them for worship. We were more than happy to come to their service. Pasteur Benjamin even called us during to the week to check and make sure we were coming. On our way to the service today, he called again to see if we were coming to church. We told him that we were on our way and should be there in 5 minutes.

When we arrived at the church their service had already started, yes they started early. they ushered us in and sat us in the front row. I thought hey this is great because I don't have to sit up on stage like normal. African culture says that all Pastors sit on stage. Anyway we sat there for about 2 minutes when Pasteur Benjamin came to me and told me that I have to sit on stage. I thought it was no big deal because I do that a lot here, so I went on stage. We sang, in Moore, for about an hour when the Pasteur reaches over to the man on my left who speaks a little English and tells him to tell me that I am preaching after this group finishes. Have you ever tried to prepare a sermon in two minutes? I told the man that I wasn't ready, so he said just say a small greeting and that will be fine. That seemed great and I thought I was not going to have to preach. So I got up greeted everyone (in French) and read a passage of scripture and thanked everyone for coming and sat down. Then the guy who spoke English came over and said that wasn't enough that they wanted me to preach a short sermon. My first thought was You have got to be kidding me, but after a quick prayer and very fast search of the scripture I agreed. Thankfully I remember some of my last sermon from Coker and I went at it without any notes at all. I just hope that God can use whatever I said and whatever was translated in some way to draw more Africans to Him. No it was NOT FUNNY!! So stop laughing.
Mike

Back to the Basics

After living life at full throttle for a few weeks, we are now getting back to our regular routine, whatever that is. We have completed our research and so we are back to just homeschooling, learning French and making and maintaining relationships in our community.

We will soon be saying "see you later" to our good friends and supervisors for our first 16 weeks on the field. They will be heading off to do all of the exciting things a missionary in West Africa generally does. We will miss them dearly, but already know of 2 times that we'll be back together in the next six months.

Being a missionary means saying a lot of goodbyes. We had heard that already but didn't realize that was for on the field as well as off. Most of the missionaries here on our compound will be some where else in the next 6 months. That's quite an odd feeling.

We've had many joys in the last few weeks. I've enjoyed a growing relationship with Assiatou, a Mossi lady who lives close to us. She helped us make some connections for our research and introduced us to some new African foods. Fortunately enough, she is a very good cook. Please pray that she will continue to seek after God as we see her doing now. She is a Muslim with some animistic beliefs thrown in there, but she is open to talking about our faith. Pray that we will make the most of every opportunity. I've enlisted some help to get started storying with her, as I am not quite there yet in my French.

Mike has been cultivating more deeply a friendship with Alli, a local shop owner. He had been spending some time with him reading to him from the gospel of John before we started our research. On a good note, he has felt welcome enough to visit our house, but unfortunately he seemed to be under the influence of something when he came. Pray that Mike will have discernment to deal with him gently but help him understand that he can't do that.

I've also had some opportunities to go out with a veteran missionary to an area close to the church we have been attending. The people there have been so kind and inviting and are genuinely glad to see us come. We already have more little groups to visit than we can hit in one morning and we had a group stop us on our way out last time and beg us to come visit them next time too. My colleague got to share a full gospel presentation 3 times last week. Two people said they were interested in becoming a Christian, but my colleague felt it best to do a little more storying first. Some of these people come from backgrounds so bizarre that it is hard to know for sure if they really understand. At any rate, I am glad to get to be involved. Pray that God will work in the hearts of our friends at Vridi Canal, namely Elodie and Felicite.

We've also had some frustrating moments recently. Of course the internet has been out a lot. Not really a big deal if you aren't separated from all of your family and most of your friends by an ocean. We think we've been able to remedy our problem though and now we even have internet in our home. Our computer is online most of the time so if you'd like to get a free download of SKYPE and talk with us free computer to computer. We are mike.heather.mcafee.

Also as I mentioned before, Mike tried to get arrested. We had had a long day of research and were headed back home at about 8:30 at night from a visit with some local pastors. It was then that we were pulled over for the 3rd time that day. Police stops are a part of life here. Sometimes you get hassled, sometimes not. Sometimes they accuse you of doing something wrong and demand a bribe, most of the time they just look at our papers and let us go. This time, however, the officer decided that Mike's international driver's license was no good. He wanted to see his passport but we have a residency card that we carry now and were told that we didn't need to carry our passport. So, our researcher friend was with us and we set off towards home to get Mike's passport and our business facilitator to straighten things out. In a grand comedy of errors, I realized upon arriving home that Mike's passport was in a lock box and Mike was holding the key. We set back out to try to talk Mike out of trouble with a copy of the passport which was the only thing that I had. Oddly enough, after being such a pain, the officer let us all go home. Now we carry every official document we have on the off chance someone might want to see it!!!

One last hurdle for the past few weeks was getting our Ivoirian Driver's license. Let me just say that if you have complained about the lines, the wait, or the ridiculous way your local DMV handles things, you don't want to come here. After 8 hours in the sun, standing on concrete, bodies smashed up against each other in 95 degree heat, something awfully close to a riot, no food or drink, and an hour and a half round trip car ride, we walked away with our license application done, but still no license. Thanks to God alone after two more trips there, we had our licenses. So, if I wanted to hop behind the wheel of a standard transmission and get out in the crazy traffic here, I have an official Ivoirian license to do it with!! We won't talk about the picture though. Unfortunately they took it at the end of the long, hot, no food, too many people day!! It's not exactly something to write home about. It is probably the exact look that I give the officer when he stops us to ask us for a soda("You've got to be kidding me!"), so it should work pretty well in a routine traffic stop. :)

I don't know how or why, but even with all of that craziness, we love this place. May the Lord continue to impress on us His love for these people and their need for Him.

We do have some changes headed our way and we will all have to be patient to find out what those might be. There is significant, progressing work among the people group to whom we've been assigned. In the next few months we will be sorting out what that means for us, but for now, we continue French. Pray that we will know God's direction for us now. Please keep praying for the Mossi for now. Pray that the Lord continues His work among them.

On an odd note, if you click on the picture above that looks like a barren tree, you will see that it is actually a tree full of bats!!! Also the picture of a bus is a common way of travel from city to city here and apparently the top is reserved for luggage and/or livestock.

We love you guys!
Heather

Life in the Fast Lane

The last three weeks have passed in a complete blur. We've been living life in the fast lane. We've had a team of 26 college kids come through who will spend a semester in West Africa to minister and see what it would be like to be a missionary out here full term. We helped as best we could with them to relieve just a little stress from the missionary family assigned to that task.

After that we met a new (to us) member of our West Africa mission family. We've had a house guest for a week and a half that has been helping us do research on the people group we have been assigned. He is fluent in their heart language and has been a tremendous asset to us.

He has brought into our life meetings with Mossi believers, worship in Moore, and a host of insights into African culture. We have now experienced tou and sauce and African beans and rice. We've eaten guinea now. I have to say there's nothing quite as amusing as eating fowl with about a dozen chicken running in and out from under your table while you do so!

We even have our first ever near arrest story, but that will be for another post. For now just rejoice with us that we walked away an hour later with laughter and thanksgiving that life is never boring here!

Please pray with us about our ministry. We will be faced soon with some decisions about direction. We want to walk solely in the path God has laid out for us.

Heather

New Year in a New Land

These are some pictures of our gathering on the 24th.
The new year is here and and we are getting back to our normal routines. We are still spending most of our time every day learning French. It is fun to actually be able to put some sentences together to make a mini conversation. Of course the listener has to be willing to do a little piecing together of incorrect structure and it helps if they are very good at playing charades too for when I get to words I don't know!
We've noticed some odd behavior already in our little MKs! As you'll see below, Koolaid has become a much cherished posession. Someone sent us some packets from the states and you've never seen two kids more excited about a packet that flavors water!
Life in Africa is life that is lived in community. The little church we've been attending wants us at all functions now. They seem to be enjoying having the white people at their church. Mike and Karis have joined the little dance group during our praise time twice now. I got invited last week to join, but they just don't know that this little Baptist white girl has two left feet!
Below also is my friend Asatou and the little girl with the drum is her daughter, Faritah. Her husband has died and she lives with her daughter with her father's family. She is a Muslim like many people here in Abidjan. She thinks that we worship the same God and how we worship him is just different. Please pray that I'll begin to know how to show her that Jesus is the only way. She came with us to church on Christmas and I visit her many times a week. She's very patient with my French and is anxious for me to finish French so that she can teach me Moore.
The new year in West Africa brings with it the necessity to bless all of our friends and acquaintances with wishes for them in the new year. Fortunately enough the same blessing can be used over and over. I can't imagine what I would have done if I needed to remember many different blessings. I wanted to bless all of you as I have our African friends. In the coming year we wish you much happiness, good health, prosperity, peace in your family, and the blessings of God on your life. Happy 2008!

New Friends

Karis has met a new little friend. Bethany is 7 years old and lives down the street from us. She only speaks French, so right now she just comes over and she and Karis play without talking. It is quite interesting.

As you can see, our Christmas tree is more complete now. Thanks to help from missionaries here, we painted ornaments, made snowflakes and tied bows on our tree to make it look more festive. I'm really going to hate to have to take it all down.

We've done all kinds of Christmas festivities this weekend. We went to a kids Christmas program at one church and a Christmas day program at another. Here you either go to church on Christmas Eve night really late or you go on Christmas day. It was quite fun to get to worship the Lord corporately on the day we celebrate Jesus' birth.

On Christmas eve we had a little yard party and invited the people that work for the mission and other neighbors and friends. We had about 60 there to eat rice and sauce, cookies and other assorted goodies. I was in charge of making cookie bags to give out as a small Christmas gift. Needless to say, I'd rather not see another cookie any time soon. Caleb, Karis, Noah and Bethany did a little skit of the first Christmas. They mostly acted out their parts while a narrator read. It took a little practice though as it was all done in French.

We had a great Christmas, but of course we missed you all. We opened gifts, took a friend to church with us and then gathered together as a mission family to eat. We got to sing carols together which is great because it's the only time we get to sing in a group in English. I don't think the Africans are big on Christmas songs as I haven't been able to pick out a Christmas theme in the songs we've heard recently.

I have lots of pictures right now, so if I am still posting Christmas pictures in the next few weeks, you'll know why.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!