Recap of Final Week in North Africa

Well, I guess it is about time I gave a recap from the final week of the trip. It was really good to get to travel and see a lot of the rest of the country in the final week and it definitely had it's positives and negatives. We had some really long traveling days and included in there was an 11 hour train ride and a 9 hour bus ride. What was special about the trip was that we got to see some of the home towns of some of the believers in the church where we were most of the 6 weeks. We stayed at one house a couple of nights and slept on the roof there. It was actually very cool and refreshing sleeping on the roof of the house but we woke up to the hot sun quite early in the morning. While we were in that town we had the opportunity to go out into some mountains and pass out some bibles in some villages. It was really special seeing the response and surprisingly the receptiveness to what we were giving. You are maybe wondering why we didn't get arrested. Well, we were so far from any major town that there was nobody close enough to where we were that could really do anything about it so needless to say we had a lot of liberty in what we could do. Also while we were out in the mountains we took the opportunity to swim in a river there so that was kind of fun. Oh yes, and we showered in the river as well. One final thing to wrap up the trip was pretty special. In the last city that we were in before meeting back up with the rest of the group and flying out, Cole and I had the opportunity to share the gospel with about 3 or 4 guys so Praise the Lord for that. The truth of the gospel was planted in some young adults lives and we were also able to give them a few gospels of John so pray that they will read God's word and be able to see the truth of the gospel through the working of the Holy Spirit. I would like to say thank you to all who gave and prayed for this trip. It was incredible to see how God worked. Continue to pray that the light of the truth will pierce the darkness in North Africa.

Video of Second Half

I was able to put together another video of pictures and different things so I put that on facebook so if you get the chance check it out. Since we didn't have internet access while we were traveling I obviously was not able to update but I also don't want to have one long massive post of everything from the last two weeks or whatever so I will probably do a couple different posts over the next few days of how the rest of the trip went.

Not much time left

Let me just give some highlights from the last week. If you remember I had an opportunity to share the gospel with a guy that I met on the beach. Well, I met with him to give him a bible and when I did he brought with him a friend from work. His friend could not speak English but was very interested in Christianity and discussing things from the bible. We ended up talking for a while in a cafe. I was able to give the gospel to both of them and he translated a lot for both of us with questions from his friend and than my answers to the questions. I was able to give him a bible so I praise God for that. I hope to meet with him one or two more times in the next few days before we leave. So, pray that God would open up another opportunity to get to speak with both of these men. Pray that he will read the bible that I gave him and pray that God would open up his eyes to the truth of the gospel.

Another great opportunity was earlier this week I was sitting in my classroom waiting for my students to come and I was asking God to give me an opportunity to share the gospel with the students that I had not been able to share the gospel with yet. Well God already had the plans at work, because the only two students that showed up that day, because the others were traveling for the day, were the ones that I had not been able to share the gospel with yet. So I decided since many of the students were absent that we would just kind of have a day of discussion. We talked about their government for a while and how everything worked and then they brought up the topic of religion and wanted to know my views so I gave it to them full force. Praise God that they were able to hear the gospel and that God gave me the words to speak.

Our time is short and running out. Pray that I would not waste time but use the time that I have left wisely for the glory of God.

Video of the first half of the trip on Facebook.

I was messing around and put together a video of some pictures and video clips from the first half of our trip. I tried to upload it on here but it didn't work so it is on my facebook account. If you get the chance check it out.

"Could you get me a Bible..."

Last night was incredible to see how God worked. I went to the beach after dinner and played a little soccer and met a few people. There was an older man that spoke English and I was able to talk to him for a little bit. After we finished playing soccer I walked down the beach a little ways and then sat down and started reading my bible. A younger guy, maybe mid twenties, came up to me and started talking to me and then asked me what type of book I was reading from. Well, to make a long story short we ended up talking for over an hour and I was able to walk through pretty much all of redemptive history, OT and NT and give this man the gospel. It was incredible to see how God gave me the words to say and the thoughts to think and the verses that God brought to my mind were incredible. I am reminded again that it is completely of Him and all about Him and I need to continue to saturate myself in the word and prayer in dependence on Him. One thing that I kept telling the guy that I was talking to was that he needed to read it for himself and truly see what the Bible has to say so that God can use His words to convict him and then he can either accept the truth or reject it. At the end of our conversation it was awesome because he ended up asking "could you get me a Bible?" and of course I told him that I could so I will be giving him an Arabic Bible tonight. Pray that God will use the word in his life as he reads it to open up his eyes to the truth of the gospel. I think I am going to have him start in the gospel of John...

Report of the Week

Well, it has been a little while. I can explain why I haven't posted. I was putting together a movie to put on here that kind of summed up the first half of the trip but it ended up being too big or something like that so that was kind of what I have been working on to put up on the blog but it didn't work so I will probably try to put it on facebook or something like that. I will try to briefly sum up this last week. English class has been going very well and I am starting to build a pretty good friendship with some of my students. More and more they are open to talking about religion and the gospel so Praise the Lord for that. Cole and I have had a few interesting encounters the last week. We went to some type of forest, which was beautiful, and we were able to get some sweet pictures of the sunset overlooking the coastline and different things like that but the fun part was that there is some type of abandoned castle thing and we were going to go in it but there was some guy there claiming to be the caretaker or something like that and he was going to charge us money to go inside so we decided against that. Maybe some other time. But while I was walking around the building just kind of checking it out there were a bunch of boar that we had seen earlier that came from the woods out of nowhere about 15 feet from me. It was so weird because they just stared at me and then they started to walk towards me and there was no way I was going to stick around to find out what was going to take place so I like scaled down some wall and ran back around to the front where Cole was. It was definitely one of those you had to be there.

On Wednesday we went to a city that is owned by the Spanish to check it out and pass out some literature. Since it is owned by the Spanish then it is fair game to do whatever religiously so that was good. It was a gorgeous city right on the coast and pretty much at the tip of North Africa. Now, last night was pretty crazy. Cole and I were sitting in the office just kind of minding our own business, checking our email, reading, things like that and all of a sudden we begin to hear an incredibly loud noise. People were banging on drums, playing weird snake charmer type flutes and what not so we opened the windows to look outside and find out what was going on and there was a huge parade of people walking down the street and in the middle of the group was some lady on a horse but she was in like a box type thing covered in fabric. Kind of like what you would see on a movie in India or something. Anyway, we grabbed our cameras and ran outside and just kind of joined the group because we wanted to find out what was going on and we wanted to get everything on film. It ended up being some wedding ordeal but it was pretty crazy and so we followed the parade of people all the way to their final destination. Now the crazy part is to top it all off, it is not like this was taking place at 9 or 10 at night it was like 1:30 in the morning. As we were walking down the streets everyone was waking up from the noise and opening up their doors and windows to see what was going on. It was quite the experience. I am glad that we joined in on the processional or whatever it was and get it on film.

I guess the last thing to make note of is that Cole and I had the opportunity to spend some time on Friday and Saturday with two guys and we are starting to build a decent relationship with them. Well, I think I will end this because I don't want to make anyone fall asleep. Hopefully I can update a little more often this week so that the next post won't have to be so long. Keep praying that God will open doors, Christ will be the center of our focus, and God will be glorified.

God Opens Doors Wide Open

For the sake of not really being able to explain in a concise way how my students know where I am spiritually and what I believe, I will just say that they have a general idea. It mainly has come up during times that we have shared common misconceptions about our cultures and so I have shared a lot of misconceptions that they have about Christians and what a true Christian is. The idea that most of them have is Catholicism. Anyway, two of my students today remained after class and began to ask me questions. To make a long story short God gave me the opportunity to pretty much walk them through God's redemptive plan for mankind throughout history. Pretty much a "Creation to Christ". We talked for about an hour and a half to two hours and most of the time I was talking answering their question but mainly proclaiming Jesus Christ as God who came to this earth and died for their sins as a perfect once for all sacrifice. It was amazing and God gave me the words to speak. Another opportunity came about this evening. Another one of my students wanted to get together and spend time with me so we did. We spent a couple hours together and during the course of that time I had the opportunity to share with him the motives for why I do what I do and my desire to serve Christ and love Christ and know Christ and then share that with other people. So I thank God for that opportunity as well. This student that I spent the evening with is a very real person. He is very genuine and very dedicated to Islam. His commitment to what he believes is much stronger than I see in a lot of American Christians and it caused me to think. A lot of Muslims in this city neglect to pray except maybe on Friday but he prays five times a day. There was actually a point this evening when we were walking be a Mosque in the city and he excused himself to go in and pray for a few minutes because it was at the point of one of the prayer times during the day. As I stood outside the Mosque waiting for him I couldn't help but cry out to God for more American Christians that are totally abandoned to the cause of Christ as well as realizing the only thing that is going to penetrate a heart so given to darkness so given to something that is not the truth so deceived is the Holy Spirit opening his eyes to the truth of the gospel. These people need the truth. Desperately!!!