A Few Photos!

Our family group in El Paso, Texas on June 30. Nate (teal), Sarah (black), Estella (green), and Nate (red) are serving in Mexico this summer! My teammates are Sarah (blue), Logan (white), and Jordan (plaid)!


This is the dining room of the Baptist guest house we currently live in in Abidjan!


Slums like these line the highways everywhere we drive in Abidjan.


This was our first group - Armstrong school at Trinity Church of the Nazarene!


A few of the kids we met in our first time to Abobo at the daycare.


Contrary to how this may appear... this is a road!


Visiting a church outside Abidjan last Sunday... The walk when I realized we're finally here!


The Nazarene church in Divo where we spent three days last week.


Sarah and I on a boat this Friday! We went with the NYI council members and some of the youth from the district to an island for the day! It was beautiful and relaxing. The guys swam, and we played basketball, soccer, and volleyball, and just relaxed.


Here is the group of the youth and council on Friday... We found out that "youth" in Africa are ages 15-30! Berènjè is standing on the far right, Rita is sitting in the front in white, and Parfait is directly behind her in white. We hang out with these three the most!

On Friday night, we heard English outside our home during dinner. It turns out that a missionary couple (the Sellers) from the Church of God are staying on our compound! They came in to chat and told us they've lived in Yamoussoukro for 15 years now. (Yamoussoukro is where we spend June 28 - July 11). They were very kind and invited us to dinner once we got to town... About 15 Nazarene missionaries used to live near the Sellers, but had to be removed for safety recently. The Sellers spoke highly of the missionaries and their hospitality, and said they'd love to pass it on to us. We really appreciate any time we can relax with Americans and we're excited to spend time with the Sellers in the next couple of weeks!

Saturday tested our patience once more in terms of timing... We were told we'd be picked up at 9 and they came at 2:30! I'm not sure I'll ever get used to it! We spent Saturday afternoon with the children of the district. They had a singing competition, dancing competition, a rap, a skit, and a fashion show all at once! My team led a few games, then they had the championship soccer game between two churches! The best part was Logan trying to ref the game over the youth band's extremely loud music and a man who doubled as a commentator and backup singer, however the Lord led him :)

We spent Sunday in Abobo (the church from the daycare day) with the children and then worshipping with the congregation. Sarah and I made bracelets for the kids with the salvation colors and Jordan explained what each color meant... They're a great testimony! The service was about three hours long. After singing slower songs and praying over the service, we got into the loud singing and dancing that they love so much! Everyone dances forward to put their offering in a basket, then into a separate basket, those who made money during the week put their tithe in. The pastor introduced all of the church leaders to our team, too! He preached for about an hour... I thought he would be hoarse by the end, the way he preached! He was very charismatic and the congregation loved him. We were blessed to have Berènjè translate (it can be a little difficult when he doesn't!)

Pastor Djèdjè is sick today, so no French, but we're looking forward to our last week serving in Abidjan for a while!