1 August 2005

Je pense c'est l'update #2

After an ant bite that hurt so bad and got swollen so fast I thought I
was probably going to die… a week of planting trees with Irish people…
a day of dodging crocodiles as they ran after chickens… and winning a
prize at a teen camp for always being on time to everything (me, on
time… weird)… I have returned to Ouagadougou smelly but rested.

God has been showing me so much out here, and it goes way deeper than
the obvious poverty that I say bonjour to every morning. Really,
people don't change with the landscape. Yes, there are vast
differences in culture and resources, but when you look at each person
as a person you see that we are all the same. I have been asking God
to show me His people like He sees them.

The streets here are lined with Muslim boys begging. Often times their
fathers refuse to let them go to school because they "need to learn
how to ask". I felt stupid just giving them 100CFA and walking away.
Jesus liked to hang out with the kids and wanted us to hang out with
"the least of these". Now I don't give them money, I ask their names
and sit down with them over some rice and tell them it is because
Jesus loves them. It is way more effective than giving them a coin
that will be stolen by the big kid around the corner.

Christians out here fall under the same oppression that the Western
church is facing. Tension between denominations and competition for
congregation sizes is keeping the body of Christ from working together
in any effective way. My heart has been turned back to the Western
church and has grown larger for the world wide church as a whole. That
was slightly unexpected.

And for those of you interested, I have been praying for the sick. I
haven't seen anyone healed yet, but God continues to give me awesome
visions that keep me going. Today I was reading 2 Samuel 12, when
David was praying and fasting for the life of his sick son. When his
son died he began to eat again and live like normal. His servants did
not understand why. He then explained how he fasted so hard because he
could not have known if God would heal his son or not. God is teaching
me what real faith is.

I don't know if God is going to heal the people He tells me to pray
for or not, and I will never understand why or why not. It's not my
job to worry about that, His thoughts are higher than mine. Samuel
told Saul in 1 Samuel 15, "It is better to obey Him than sacrifice…
Rebellion against Him is as bad as witchcraft, and arrogance is as
sinful as idolatry." Ouch, that got me praying. Good thing God also
loves and forgives huh?

I am half way home. Your prayers are working and your emails keep my
chin up. I love you all. See you in September.

Oh, and just to clarify, I was not in jail in Ghana. They just
wouldn't let us out of the police station. And it wasn't even for
anything cool, our driver's (yeah, his job is to be the driver)
international license was expired by over a year. The rad thing is
that they were going to take our car and detain us for a few days, but
let us go after I did a lot of praying and a little talking about
studying politics and my interest in government corruption. There was
no way I was going to stay the night there, and after the third man
asked me if I was married I had my mind made up that I was going to
walk back to Ouaga if they didn't let our driver go. I guess it's good
God makes the calls and not me.

So yeah, there wasn't even a chance of being martyred. There goes that crown.

Votre sœur en Christ,
Wend-Kouni
(The Moore name I've been given since no one can say Courtney.
It means "gift of God", which is just cool.)