Day 1 & 2 Sunday-Monday – We left for Washington Dulles Airport at 2pm. We drove 4 hours there and waited a while for our plane to France. It took us 8 hours to get to France and we arrived in the middle of the day. All of us were pooped, so we found an area with lounge couch type things and konked out for about 3 hours until our next flight to Dakar. 
That flight was 5 hours, which wasn’t too bad hour wise, but for those of you who have read my previous blogs or have heard my airplane horror stories from my own lips know that I absolutely H-A-T-E traveling via airplane. We arrived in Dakar around 10 or 10:30 at night where Kwashi, the missionary we were going to be working with, was waiting for us. The airport was packed and ridiculously hot. One of our team members lost his luggage, but we wandered around the airport for a while before finally concluding that it was not there. Coming out of the airport was a little scary. There were a lot of people around and they were all pressing us to help carry our luggage so that they could get a tip. We finally all packed into a van with our luggage, preparing for the hour and a half ride to Thies. We stopped and picked up two more people, Dan and Angie. They were young missionaries who have lived in Dakar for 8 months. 
They are in the process of getting their ministry going and are currently learning the language and observing the culture. We got to Thies very late and had dinner waiting for us prepared by the Kwashi’s wife, Davi. It was delicious! After dinner we all got to go to bed, thankfully!
Day 2 Tuesday– We met after breakfast for devotions and orientation. During orientation we talked about our plans for the next 2 weeks and went over our schedules. The first week we were going to do TESL, and we had bought books and picked out topics for discussion such as American holidays, health, environment, etc. to use while we interacted with the kids. During orientation we met several of the people we were going to be working with throughout our 2 weeks. After orientation, we girls had some more in depth conversations with Angie and Coreen about the proper conduct for women in the culture, so that was really helpful. Later that afternoon we split up into 2 groups and headed to our first school. We had a plan to read an ABC [A is for Africa, B is for bird, C is for canoe, that kind of thing] book out loud to the kids and then discuss the letters and what they stood for and whatever, but that went out the window when they asked us to go 2 by 2 to visit practically all of the classrooms in the school and introduce ourselves and do a sort of question-answer thing. That went well – I guess, and we then returned to one classroom where they did a couple skits for us and then asked us to do the same… which we totally weren’t expecting. So we somehow were able to make up a skit on the spot to perform and it turned out pretty ok. Little did we know that this sort of thing was going to be happening to us all week…
I can’t really remember the specifics of the following days, but we visited several schools never once opening a book or discussing the topics we had picked out with the missionaries. I think it really taught us a big lesson on flexibility and learning the value of quality time instead of structured schedules. We mostly kind of hung out in the classrooms and observed or told a little about ourselves and did some question-answer kind of stuff. They were really interested in what we thought about our government and always wanted us to sing songs for them.
… Whatever day this is… Saturday – This was the day of the English Festival. We had prepared a skit to do [Lifehouse – Everything] and some songs to sing. All of the schools involved worked really hard on their skits and they were all really creative on the different ways to address their topic: KIDS HAVING KIDS.
Yeah. We totally didn’t know that was the topic, so to them our skit was going to be completely random and nonrelated. It was a really powerful skit that I’m not sure any of them understood, but at the end of it a woman yelled “Jesus is Alive!”, which was really awesome so if they didn’t get the point while we were performing, they got it then.
Sunday – We attended and English speaking international church in Dakar, and they were very welcoming. They had all of us stand up and give our names and where we were from, and afterwards offered us drinks [I’ll clarify here that the beverages were non-alcoholic, as I hope many of you assumed] and gathered us in a circle to tell us more about their ministry and to learn more about us. After church we took a ferry to Goree Island [I have no idea if I’m spelling that correctly], to see the fort where slaves had been deported. The island was absolutely gorgeous, though the time there was bittersweet considering the horrible things that had occurred on the island.
During the course of the week Angie had taken us girls to the market where we picked out fabric and had a tailor come and measure us and make wrap skirts and head coverings. The skirts turned out beautifully!
The following week we did a basketball camp, and those of us who were not athletically inclined felt a bit useless. We mostly played with the kids or took naps… and some of us even got a little discouraged because we felt like we hadn’t accomplished much during this mission trip… until one morning, Dave did devotions with us and talked about the parable of the talents. Someone made a catch phrase for the day: “Let’s invest”, so we went out and decided to. We had the afternoon free, so we visited a school that we had been to a lot the previous week, where there was an English club who we had befriended and really liked. We went into the schoolyard and noticed that every one of them was standing around doing nothing… it turns out the teachers had gone on strike and they were just hanging out. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but we all just started witnessing to them, some one on one and others to a group of 3 or 4… maybe more. It was amazing the resolve we had upon entering the school and seeing how God had worked everything out so we had a free day on the same day the teachers had gone on strike and how we had just talked about investing in people’s lives. I got to talk to a guy and share with him about Jesus. I didn’t realize how little I knew about his religion, so I got to learn a lot about it while at the same time teach him about mine. I don’t think I thought about how difficult it would be to try and convert a Muslim, because just as I am so grounded in my faith, so is he. It was also a challenge to try and relate with him because the only person he knew from the Bible besides Jesus was Moses, so basing all my religious fact off of Moses was not something I was used to doing, but God gave me a lot of insight and I was able to relate with him really well. After talking with him for a while I realized there was not much more I could say to him, I had told him all of the evidence I could think of to prove that the Bible was true and that Jesus is God, so the only thing I could do was pray for him to think about the truth and choose it above Muhammad.
One day of this week we went to a village and did a medical clinic. We got some nurses from the hospital and some medication and travelled about an hour out of Thies. The government had put a clinic in the middle of this village, but they had no medicine or doctors there. It was just an empty building serving no purpose. The nurse from our group and the nurses from the hospital worked all day in the clinic treating the people in the village while the rest of us went around and visited the school and played soccer with some of the kids. Even after spending hours in the village there were still people who hadn’t been helped, and I’m not even sure if any other nurses will be visiting the village soon. It was very sad to see all the children with runny noses and sores on their bodies. There was also a baby there who was severely malnourished who was 4 months old, but only looked about 4 days old. We were very sad to leave all of them behind knowing that there was nothing more we were going to be able to do.
The last Sunday we were in Senegal we attended a local church, and the service was entirely in French, except for when we sang “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” for them (they always wanted us to sing for them, and we only had one girl who had talent!) and our leader spoke for a bit on being a light for Christ.
The next day we went to Touba, wherein held the largest mosque in West Africa. We had to be covered from head to toe, and it was scorching hot.
While we were there we took a tour of the mosque and did a prayer walk. It was unbelievably sad to see the people there worshipping knowing that they were so misguided and in desperate need to hear the truth. [I'm not sure why the picture is so small... a little ironic though, huh?]
We left Senegal on Tuesday, spending some time with Dan and Angie before we left. It was that morning that we discovered that 3 people from our group had developed malaria! Fortunately we caught it before we left and were able to get proper medication, but they still had a hard time traveling.
All in all it was a great experience and God taught me so much! He showed His awesome power and His divine timing in everything. He also taught me that I should live a more abundant life because of the gift of eternal life He has given me. The people in Senegal are so happy, and they don’t even have Jesus… so I realized how much more happy I should be because Jesus came that I might have life more abundantly.
Please pray for the people in Senegal, and pray for the missionaries we left behind, that they will be encouraged and that God will bless their efforts.
That flight was 5 hours, which wasn’t too bad hour wise, but for those of you who have read my previous blogs or have heard my airplane horror stories from my own lips know that I absolutely H-A-T-E traveling via airplane. We arrived in Dakar around 10 or 10:30 at night where Kwashi, the missionary we were going to be working with, was waiting for us. The airport was packed and ridiculously hot. One of our team members lost his luggage, but we wandered around the airport for a while before finally concluding that it was not there. Coming out of the airport was a little scary. There were a lot of people around and they were all pressing us to help carry our luggage so that they could get a tip. We finally all packed into a van with our luggage, preparing for the hour and a half ride to Thies. We stopped and picked up two more people, Dan and Angie. They were young missionaries who have lived in Dakar for 8 months. They are in the process of getting their ministry going and are currently learning the language and observing the culture. We got to Thies very late and had dinner waiting for us prepared by the Kwashi’s wife, Davi. It was delicious! After dinner we all got to go to bed, thankfully!Day 2 Tuesday– We met after breakfast for devotions and orientation. During orientation we talked about our plans for the next 2 weeks and went over our schedules. The first week we were going to do TESL, and we had bought books and picked out topics for discussion such as American holidays, health, environment, etc. to use while we interacted with the kids. During orientation we met several of the people we were going to be working with throughout our 2 weeks. After orientation, we girls had some more in depth conversations with Angie and Coreen about the proper conduct for women in the culture, so that was really helpful. Later that afternoon we split up into 2 groups and headed to our first school. We had a plan to read an ABC [A is for Africa, B is for bird, C is for canoe, that kind of thing] book out loud to the kids and then discuss the letters and what they stood for and whatever, but that went out the window when they asked us to go 2 by 2 to visit practically all of the classrooms in the school and introduce ourselves and do a sort of question-answer thing. That went well – I guess, and we then returned to one classroom where they did a couple skits for us and then asked us to do the same… which we totally weren’t expecting. So we somehow were able to make up a skit on the spot to perform and it turned out pretty ok. Little did we know that this sort of thing was going to be happening to us all week…
I can’t really remember the specifics of the following days, but we visited several schools never once opening a book or discussing the topics we had picked out with the missionaries. I think it really taught us a big lesson on flexibility and learning the value of quality time instead of structured schedules. We mostly kind of hung out in the classrooms and observed or told a little about ourselves and did some question-answer kind of stuff. They were really interested in what we thought about our government and always wanted us to sing songs for them.
… Whatever day this is… Saturday – This was the day of the English Festival. We had prepared a skit to do [Lifehouse – Everything] and some songs to sing. All of the schools involved worked really hard on their skits and they were all really creative on the different ways to address their topic: KIDS HAVING KIDS.
Yeah. We totally didn’t know that was the topic, so to them our skit was going to be completely random and nonrelated. It was a really powerful skit that I’m not sure any of them understood, but at the end of it a woman yelled “Jesus is Alive!”, which was really awesome so if they didn’t get the point while we were performing, they got it then.
Sunday – We attended and English speaking international church in Dakar, and they were very welcoming. They had all of us stand up and give our names and where we were from, and afterwards offered us drinks [I’ll clarify here that the beverages were non-alcoholic, as I hope many of you assumed] and gathered us in a circle to tell us more about their ministry and to learn more about us. After church we took a ferry to Goree Island [I have no idea if I’m spelling that correctly], to see the fort where slaves had been deported. The island was absolutely gorgeous, though the time there was bittersweet considering the horrible things that had occurred on the island.
During the course of the week Angie had taken us girls to the market where we picked out fabric and had a tailor come and measure us and make wrap skirts and head coverings. The skirts turned out beautifully!
The following week we did a basketball camp, and those of us who were not athletically inclined felt a bit useless. We mostly played with the kids or took naps… and some of us even got a little discouraged because we felt like we hadn’t accomplished much during this mission trip… until one morning, Dave did devotions with us and talked about the parable of the talents. Someone made a catch phrase for the day: “Let’s invest”, so we went out and decided to. We had the afternoon free, so we visited a school that we had been to a lot the previous week, where there was an English club who we had befriended and really liked. We went into the schoolyard and noticed that every one of them was standing around doing nothing… it turns out the teachers had gone on strike and they were just hanging out. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but we all just started witnessing to them, some one on one and others to a group of 3 or 4… maybe more. It was amazing the resolve we had upon entering the school and seeing how God had worked everything out so we had a free day on the same day the teachers had gone on strike and how we had just talked about investing in people’s lives. I got to talk to a guy and share with him about Jesus. I didn’t realize how little I knew about his religion, so I got to learn a lot about it while at the same time teach him about mine. I don’t think I thought about how difficult it would be to try and convert a Muslim, because just as I am so grounded in my faith, so is he. It was also a challenge to try and relate with him because the only person he knew from the Bible besides Jesus was Moses, so basing all my religious fact off of Moses was not something I was used to doing, but God gave me a lot of insight and I was able to relate with him really well. After talking with him for a while I realized there was not much more I could say to him, I had told him all of the evidence I could think of to prove that the Bible was true and that Jesus is God, so the only thing I could do was pray for him to think about the truth and choose it above Muhammad.
One day of this week we went to a village and did a medical clinic. We got some nurses from the hospital and some medication and travelled about an hour out of Thies. The government had put a clinic in the middle of this village, but they had no medicine or doctors there. It was just an empty building serving no purpose. The nurse from our group and the nurses from the hospital worked all day in the clinic treating the people in the village while the rest of us went around and visited the school and played soccer with some of the kids. Even after spending hours in the village there were still people who hadn’t been helped, and I’m not even sure if any other nurses will be visiting the village soon. It was very sad to see all the children with runny noses and sores on their bodies. There was also a baby there who was severely malnourished who was 4 months old, but only looked about 4 days old. We were very sad to leave all of them behind knowing that there was nothing more we were going to be able to do.
The last Sunday we were in Senegal we attended a local church, and the service was entirely in French, except for when we sang “Lord I Lift Your Name on High” for them (they always wanted us to sing for them, and we only had one girl who had talent!) and our leader spoke for a bit on being a light for Christ.
The next day we went to Touba, wherein held the largest mosque in West Africa. We had to be covered from head to toe, and it was scorching hot.
While we were there we took a tour of the mosque and did a prayer walk. It was unbelievably sad to see the people there worshipping knowing that they were so misguided and in desperate need to hear the truth. [I'm not sure why the picture is so small... a little ironic though, huh?]We left Senegal on Tuesday, spending some time with Dan and Angie before we left. It was that morning that we discovered that 3 people from our group had developed malaria! Fortunately we caught it before we left and were able to get proper medication, but they still had a hard time traveling.
All in all it was a great experience and God taught me so much! He showed His awesome power and His divine timing in everything. He also taught me that I should live a more abundant life because of the gift of eternal life He has given me. The people in Senegal are so happy, and they don’t even have Jesus… so I realized how much more happy I should be because Jesus came that I might have life more abundantly.
Please pray for the people in Senegal, and pray for the missionaries we left behind, that they will be encouraged and that God will bless their efforts.
Sorry to everyone who was waiting for me to finally put this post up! I will have more to share about my summer soon...
1 comment:
I love those lounge chairs! And why don't we have a picture of you in your native dress????!!!
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