So. Our time in Cote d' Ivoire has officially come to an end.

Here are some notes and highlights as I attempt to summarize our time in the Ivory Coast.

Overview of our ministry for the month:

-My team and I preached almost every night in church services that sometimes went till 2 in the morning.

-We did door to door evangelism several afternoons in our village. (every time we did this we had people who came to church for the first time afterwards)

-We went for a prayer walk from one end of the village to the other (just under 8 miles total)

-We got to visit a school to share the gospel and some life advice with the kids. This was really cool actually because missionaries had never been allowed in the school before.

-A couple of nights we led women's group in worship and Bible studies.

-We did some really fun children's ministry (sans translator). This mostly looked like music, dancing, and teaching kids to jump rope. We also taught them how to limbo and they loved it.

There were some days when we did up to 13 hours of ministry (sometimes reaching into the early hours of the morning), but we got to see some amazing things.

We saw the faith and fervency of the church here in Africa, we saw healings, we saw people give their lives to Christ, and we saw true kingdom joy and celebration through the wild 4 hour Sunday morning church service dance offs.

In addition to ministry time we had a few other notable things happen this month.

Primarily we spent some time exploring Man, the largest nearby city to Mahaplu.

This included:

-getting pastries at a local bakery

-learning we can fit at least 7 passengers into the back of the taxi

-going to visit a famous waterfall, being told it was closed for construction and then going to a small village and paying a local to hike us out to a different waterfall

-getting tested for malaria

-getting ice cream

Oh yeah, hang on, let me backtrack there for a second.

Malaria testing.

This could be a whole separate blog so hang with me if it gets long. Love ya.

Okay so the week before we left for debrief a couple people were feeling a little under the weather, so they decided to go to the hospital in Man to get checked out. Nothing serious, just feeling a little yuck.

Half way through the day, the rest of us got a text message that two of the three of our team mates had tested positive for malaria.

The next day the other 5 of us went to get tested, just in case. None of us had any symptoms, but we needed to cover our bases. It took 2 hours to get the test results so we walked into town and got some ice cream and WiFi while we waited. We got back and had to wait another 10, 20 minutes for the nurse to bring us our results.

As she handed us our results we opened them and found that every single one of us had tested positive for malaria. We just started laughing, someone commented that she felt like she could run a marathon (this person had the highest malaria count of all of us). There wasn't a doctor to give us any explanation or prescription so our translator had to run around (actually) the entire hospital looking for a doctor (And thankfully was able to find one). We had to go to several pharmacies because the medicine was selling out everywhere, but we got our medication, took it for three days and then got retested at a facility in Abidjan before we headed to Ghana. I am happy to report that the team is now malaria free and no worse for the wear.

Here is a picture of us after getting retested and being 100% malaria free.

Thank you all so much for your continued prayers and support. I am still a ways away from being fully funded so please consider donating! Pray for me and my team as we head to our next host location in Keta, Ghana.

Much Love,

-Hattie