Cooking from Scratch

We have recently completed our cooking from scratch and no electricity weekend. It was a little hot one night but we decided to have fun with our assignment. The first morning, I instinctively turned on the light when I woke up so Autumn taped down all of our switches. We also had to take a shower with no hot water and that was probably my most tempting moment to cheat (but I didn't!) We had two "community meals" with our quad mates that we all helped prepare and the other meals we fixed together as a family. We were allowed to use our stoves because they did not want us to build a fire in our quad aparment so we made homemade biscuits with gravy for breakfast and pimento cheese spread for dinner. The purpose of the weekend was to give us a small glimpse into the time, energy, and inconvience of living in West Africa.

In our classes, we have been learning about the persecuted church around the world. Christians are suffering in many places simply because they bear the name of Christ. This is not new in our history and I have been personally encouraged to hear how God pours out His grace and presence on those who are going through trials and suffering because of the gospel. God remains faithful and that gives us great assurance.

Our prayer request for this week would be that the Lord would give our regional leadership in West Africa specific answers and wisdom concerning the many unknowns of what we will be doing in our city. We know that we are going to be part of a new team that will consist of our family and one other family already in Africa. Our task will be to look at a city of six million people and discern what God is doing among them and how to effectively reach as many as possible through church planting with the gospel. Overwhelming to us but not impossible with God. Thank you for praying for the city of Abidjan.

Blessings,

Jon