Hello from Africa!!!!

Well, here we are!! :) Hello from Africa (finally!!)

Me and Emily arrived on Tuesday and have been trying to make Niger our "home sweet home" for the next couple of months. It hasn't gone exactly as I imagined it would, but then again, does anything EVER?? (haha, we all know God loves to change my plans and perspective on just about everything in my life...)

Some things you could pray for would be first of all for my health. Ever since we got here I've been struggling off and on with nausea (probably due to the extreme heat and lack of good rest.) I haven't been able to sleep soundly since Monday night at Emily's house... (I've never been able to sleep on airplanes and then of course if you throw jet lag into the mix my system's just all over the place.) Something else that's really effecting my sleep right now is my paranoia (one of the side effects of my malaria meds.) I haven't had crazy dreams or hallucinations (praise the Lord!!!) but my anxiety and paranoia levels have been through the roof with certain things. It's gotten to the point where I'm debating about not even taking my malaria meds anymore (since we found out when we got here that the malaria strain has built up a resistance to the particular brand I'm on anyway.) So honestly, if there's a chance that I'm going to get malaria either way, I'd rather not be going out of my mind while I have it. ;)

Besides that, also please be in prayer for the Songhai people. We haven't even gotten out into our village yet and already the need for Jesus is just so obvious. I don't even know how to go into detail on this one...just pray for their hearts to be open to the calling of Jesus. We keep getting told something here that I've never really taken to heart before this--When the Shepherd calls, His sheep hear His voice and listen. I believe that God is going to lead us to the people whose hearts He has already softened towards the Gospel, but we still need lots of prayers that the Songhai will actually RESPOND when they hear their Shepherd. And pray specifically for the village of Boubon and the people there. This is the village that Emily and I will be living at for the next 2 months. We get to visit for our first time tomorrow with the other team from Living Hope (sooo exciting!!!) After the team leaves, we'll go into a week of intense language training, and then it'll be move-in day!!! :)

That's about all the main prayer requests I can think of for the moment, so in closing I'll leave you with some fun tid-bits from our trip so far (that way you might get a smile out of this instead of just a headache from all the straight up info...)

1. IT'S SO STINKIN HOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think I could eat or drink anything I'd like all day, every day, because I would just sweat off all the calories. Seriously, I have NEVER sweat this much in my entire life. For instance, I took an ice cold shower yesterday (best shower of my LIFE!) and within 15 minutes of getting dressed I was sweating again. (What's the point of even showering if you're just going to get sweaty right away?!?! Blaaaah hygiene.)

2. I was given my African name yesterday!!! :D It's MARIAMA. A sweet lady named Biba gave it to me. I pretty much love it. It doesn't mean anything fancy, it's just the Zarma way of saying Mary. So whatever Mary means, that's what Mariama means I guess! :)

3. I can successfully say a few things in both French and Zarma now!!! The French mostly came from having to navigate the Moroccan hotel and airport and the Zarma has come from, well, being in Niamey of course!

4. I can also successfully transfer American dollars into cfa's!! Yay!!

5. The Phillips (Mark, Parker, Izzie, and Luke) are super wonderful and I've just enjoyed being around them so much! We've also gotten to meet Randy and Susan Saleeby (or Grandy and Grusan as little Izzie likes to say!), another missionary couple here in Niamey. I'm so thankful that we'll be working with these people and getting to learn from them this summer!

I wish I could tell you all more about the people and the food and the place but we're still just settling in and all of that will have to come later. Hopefully pictures will come with those stories too! :)

Love you all!

Ay sabu, kala tonton! (Thanks, see you soon!)