Week one update!

Just wanted to drop in a short update for prayer requests!

If you all could pray for the energy of our team that would be great! Our days are long and filled with many meetings with students, and much walking so we are all exhausted. More than that, the conversations we have with the students are also very mentally and spiritually draining so it seems as if we are all lacking energy to do the things we have been called to do this summer.

Pray for the students! Pray that God will send us the students He wants us to meet. We will soon be doing follow up contacts with students that came to the showing of our film “Magdalena;” there were many students who said they would like to meet with someone for CPC (Campus Pour Christ, we do not say Crusade here) so please pray that these students have an open heart and mind as we go into the meetings and that they will listen to hear the Gospel presented. Also pray for our team to be good listeners and to not just shove information down the students’ throats.

If you could pray that our team could find ways to help the students understand the Gospel better when it is read to them that would be great. For example, the Senegalese people have suffered much through life so far and sometimes they like to bring that up in conversation. I was talking with a man the other day who didn’t quite seem to understand that evil and suffering in our world are a result of our sin and the fall of man. So if you could pray for them to truly understand God’s love for us and that He doesn’t want His people to hurt, that would be very helpful.

Many of the women here seem to dislike certain things about Islam, as well as a few other things about the Senegalese culture. It is not unheard of for a man to have more than one wife and many of the women here, though they consider it very important, are fearful of marriage because they are afraid that their husbands will cheat, leave, share her with another man, or marry another woman as well. The other night we had a party and invited many of the STINT team’s contacts so we could interact with the Senegalese. One woman was telling the story of how she had been seeing a man for about 5 years now; just a little bit ago he just up and married another woman. She turned to one of my teammates to ask what she should do and how she could get him back. The women here have so much hurt in their lives that they carry around with them day to day and Allah does not offer them anything for that. Please pray that we will be able to convey the beautiful love story that the Gospel is to these women in a way that they understand that there is hope, forgiveness, grace, and FREEDOM in Jesus Christ; and that it’s not unusual to long for these relationships (though we often seek them in the wrong things/people), that is what we were created for, a relationship with Christ.

The Senegalese people are very literal; they have box minds so when confronted with the Trinity they can’t comprehend how God is only one. I have been told so many times that I am polytheistic since being here. Thought we have many examples that would definitely convince me if I were confused on this subject, the Senegalese are not satisfied with it and they just do not understand the Trinity. If you all could please pray for ways for our team to convey this more clearly to them and for them to understand this better that would be so helpful!

The men here are very argumentative and though the women are only supposed to minister to women, many of the men will start conversations with us asking why we are here (clearly, little white girls are the minority so I would probably be curious too). I have been in many conversations with men since being here and they all seem to go the same way; the mean are very argumentative. They know much more about their faith than the women do and they definitely want to defend it. But we are not here to argue, we are only here to make known the truth of the Gospel (Romans 10:14-15) so that they too can enter to Paradise (they don’t call it Heaven). So please pray for us to find ways to minister to the women without the mean flocking around and causing distractions; we have many men here who are more than capable to minister to these men with questions. Also, for the men to be less defensive so that they can actually hear the truth of the Gospel.

Throughout the summer I may be posting small updates or maybe more prayer requests. Thanks for the continued support and prayers! God bless!

First thoughts...

Hey y'all!

WE'RE HERE!! I'm finally in Senegal! We arrived on Sunday morning about 8am and started our first day of training; for many of us that was after not sleeping at all on the flight. I'm going to apologize now for any spelling/grammatical errors,this keyboard is different than those we are used to so it's taking some time for me to type. Also, we found out that our schedules don't allow for much internet time so I won't be able to blog as much as I had hoped while here. I'm going to try to post small blogs throughout the 6 weeks but I am keeping a journal that I'm planing to convert to blogs when we return to the states!

Today was our first real interaction with the students. I've found that it's very easy to turn the conversation spiritual. The Senegalese are all very friendly and open and love to talk about with Americans so that they can practice their English. After speaking with some students today, I've found that Islam is actually quite similar to Christianity. Their only problem is that they're missing out on Jesus. They are very literal thinkers here in Senegal so they have trouble comprehending the Trinity; they believe that "followers of Christ" are polytheistic, because we believe in God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Throughout these blogs, you will hear me refer to us as either followers of Christ or Protestants. Senegal is 95% Muslim, 4% Roman Catholic, and the last 1% varies. The Senegalese refer to the Catholics as Christians but there is a difference so we must make a distinction to the students here.) As you can imagine, it's difficult to explain to them how Jesus IS God when they have believed that He was nothing more than a good person/prophet all their lives. I ask that you will all pray for our team as we try to overcome the language barrier and speak the Truth to these students who ARE clearly seeking something more than what they've been given.

My time on the computer is running up so this is all for now. But if you would all continue to pray for us that would be great! I'll try to get some specific prayer requests up soon. Thanks and God bless!