Home

I'm home! The last two weeks were amazing. We went hard on campus, sharing the gospel and bringing up spiritual conversations with students. Its truly amazing the way everyone on my team weas filled with the spirit and were so willing to allow God to use them. In the last two weeks on campus, God used my team to open up over 200 spiritual conversations and lead 11 people to Christ, a couple of them being Muslim.

During the last two weeks I was able to share my faith with a Muslim nearly every day. God taught me so much through this experience, both about Islam and evangelism in general. On a couple of occasions, I had Muslims that were willing to give their hearts to the LORD, but were very afraid of the repercussions from their family, as many of them were generational believers. I really wish I could have had more time to talk with them, but God knows best. Its my prayer that God can use some of the Togolese Christians to continue to keep in contact with them.

On our way back, my team stopped in Brussels, Belgium for a couple days, which was the cherry on top of an amazing summer. Also, I was able to see the conflict that caused the protesting come to a resolution. God did amazing things through my team and in my team this summer and it truly was a blessing to be in Togo this summer. Thank you to everyone that supported me this summer. Please pray that God can use the work that my team did to positively affect the university specifically, but Togo in general.

A New Form of Worship

The campus opened about two weeks ago. However, yesterday was the first day that I set foot on campus. The reason that there was such a long wait was because the protesting got worse once the campus opened. During that stretch my team and I found things to do around the city. We visited two orphanages and met with students from one of the local churches. We took two days to go to a little village on the Ghana and Togo border, tucked in the middle of a beautiful jungle. Other than that, there as been a lot of sitting around and waiting. Yesterday, on a whim, a couple of the leaders on my team went to ask the guards at the university if we could go on campus and if it was safe. They said yes, surprisingly, so we went.

Let me rewind a little to the night before. I couldn't sleep very well and stayed up praying. I felt very broken, helpless, and frustrated. Frustrated because I came all the way to Togo and hadn't done much. Helpless because, as hard as I tried, I couldn't accomplish what I felt I needed to. Broken because of the enormity of the God that I was presenting myself to. I desired so much for God to allow me to walk onto campus and spread his gospel. I remember begging God to allow me to serve him in this way. That night wasn't very different from the past two weeks. For these past two weeks this desire has been building up inside of me. It built up to the point that it was no longer something that I desired to do, but I began to see it as a form of worship that I desired to give to God. I begged God to allow me to worship him in this way. When we finally were allowed on campus my heart was full of so much joy at being able to share the gospel. It was the first time in my life that I experienced so much joy while evangelizing.

My prayer request remains the same, please pray for God to continue to provide safety for my team and I. Even today, a lot of the time that we spent on campus was time spent moving away from protestors and waiting for the military to pass. Even through this time of unrest, we've been able to share the gospel with non believers and have meaningful conversations with students about spiritual things. The hardest thing for myself and others on my team has been talking with Muslims. It's something that most of us have not done in the past. My prayer is that God would equip me with the knowledge to communicate the gospel effectively with these people.

Update

So I'm in Togo, for those of you that don't know. The second team, that was flying from Washington to Ghana, got turned around twenty minutes into their flight and delayed a day. Because of that, myself and the other guy that I was with, got to join their flight and get to Togo a little earlier than planned. A fight broke out on the initial flight to Ghana and one of the guys began threatening the flight attendants, so they decided to turn the flight around and return to Washington, which btw made national news and it turns out that the flight was escorted by fighter jets. Kyle, the guy I was with, and I had a flight to Washington, then Frankfurt, then Paris, then Togo. Our flight out of KC got delayed two hours and we missed our flight to Germany, but because the other team was still in Washington, we were able to join their flight and eventually made it to Togo.

When we all made it to Togo we found out that there had been some rioting at the university that we were supposed to work at and the military came in to shut it down. The general consensus among the Togolese is that the university should reopen soon, but we'll see. In the mean time, my group has gone through orientation and has been able to stock up on food. Yesterday our group leader went to buy clothes for the orphanage and the rest of us went to buy food for them, I was in charge of finding good rice. Other than that we've been finding things to do around town.

Tom, the missionary that prepared a lot of what we're doing, left to go to Niger, which means I am now the primary French speaker. This essentially is my first time in a Francophone country, meaning I've never really been able to use my French in a practical sense. On Sunday my group had to meet with some church/school officials to discuss a possible partnership. Only one of the officials spoke English, and it wasn't much better than my French, which meant I had to translate some of the dialogue between them and us. Even though I was nervous and a little worried that I wasn't translating it correctly, it felt awesome to finally use all the French that I've been taught.

If you fill anyone in that doesn't know about my situation that would be awesome. I'd also ask that those of you reading this continue to pray for my team and me, and that you'd specifically pray for the university to reopen so that we can begin to do more work. Thanks.

Still In Kansas City

My plan was for my first post to be in Africa, that isn't working out so well. The original plan was for my entire team of 12 to leave last Thursday and arrive in Togo on Friday. It's now Sunday night and I'm writing from Kansas City. My flight has now been canceled twice and the original team of 12 that was going to fly out together has now been reduced to 2. I'm staying in a cheap hotel by the airport and if all goes according to plan I'll be flying out tomorrow at noon. It was decided that I would be one of the two to stay behind and fly out of the U.S. last. I don't know why it worked out like that, looking back I'm glad that it did. My staying behind means that 10 people have more of a chance to rest. I guess someone has to take one for the team and it might as well be me.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I wasn't at first upset with the whole situation. However, I'm only going to be arriving six hours after the last team, I'll still have time to rest before I start orientation, and this whole process has taught me to accept things as they are and move on to the next thing. This experience has reminded me that my plan is not God's plan and that there's always something good to be found in seemingly bad situations.

Please continue to pray for my team and me. We've now been split into three. The first team is in Ethiopia, the second team is on their way to Ghana, and the third is still cooped up in a cheap hotel in Kansas City. Hopefully my next post is in Togo, but we'll see.