A Cancellation, A Game, A Loss, and A Challenge

If you read my last blog entry, you probably remember me mentioning a ministry opportunity we were going to have in one of the villages this last Saturday. Well, late Friday night we got a phone call saying that the person who had invited us to do ministry had cancelled on us! So we were super sad to not be able to do ministry – obviously it is the part that we are most passionate about! And we also felt bad about calling the team the night before we were supposed to go to tell them that we were no longer going! Of course, that wasn’t our fault but we still felt bad that it was so last minute! But don’t worry...we found another way to occupy our time...

As you can probably guess, we drink A LOT of water here!! It is very hot so, I’m not gonna lie, a lot of sweating happens and we need more water than usual. There is no recycling here so we have been keeping our empty water bottles in a closet. We have literally about 200 empty water bottles in that closet!!! The 3 of us have been trying to figure out what to do with them and over the weekend we came up with a brilliant idea....BOWLING!!!!!!!!!!!! Yep, we set up a 10 pin bowling lane in our apartment and had ourselves a rousing game! It was lots of fun!!! We heard that our church collects water bottles so we will give our bottles to them. I don’t know if they’ll want 200 at once but....oh well!!

This last weekend, we lost 50% of the appliances in our kitchen!! True, we only ever had 2 appliances but losing one is still a huge loss!! On Saturday, we noticed that our fridge wasn’t as cold as it used to be. By Sunday, it was actually warmer in our fridge than in the rest of our kitchen. Yeah...gross!!! So Jamie and I went downstairs to attempt to talk to our landlady (she has a very thick accent and is really hard to understand). She called a repairman right away and invited us to put some things in her fridge, which was a lifesaver because we had frozen meat, eggs, and milk in the fridge! But it was sooo nasty going into that fridge – it reeked!!!! Some of our food went bad and we’ve been eating more than usual these last couple of days to try and get rid of stuff. The repairman came on Sunday afternoon and then on Monday they came back to take away our fridge. Our fridge was completely broken!!! Our landlady did buy us a new fridge and we received it on Tuesday. So luckily we only went 2 days without a fridge but that is actually a long time to go without something so essential to everyday life! We are definitely learning to not take anything for granted!!

We received all the applications for the DRIME Benin leadership team on Sunday so this week has been spent looking over them and having interviews with all the potential leaders. It is a fun process because we have been able to get to know these people more and it is fun to hear their passion and vision for DRIME in Benin. But it is also a very stressful process because we have to say no to some people! I definitely want the best people possible for this team but I can also be a bit of a people pleaser and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. We are just praying that God makes who he wants on this leadership team super clear to everyone involved – to us 3 who have to execute the decision (because really it is God’s decision) and also to all the people who have applied so that they can feel confirmed in whether God is calling them to DRIME leadership or maybe something else.

Prayer Requests
o Health and safety – we have each been affected in different ways these last 2 weeks. My teammates have allergies and bug bites and I have had a bit of nausea this week. The burn on my leg seems to be getting better but the part that was burnt the most hasn’t changed at all.
o We are deciding on the leaders this weekend! Pray that we would be sensitive to God’s guidance and that all the applicants would be very accepting of the decision.
o Praise God that our fridge problem was fixed! Please pray against any other major problems with our apartment.
o Pray that many contacts and connections would continue to come out of meetings that we’ve had with other churches and Christian organizations