Final Sprint

Me and Usher

Me and Stephen/Etienne (If you follow Anna's blog, this is the guy from the dream) my new brother in Christ!

Hey folks,

Blog link (with pictures of Etienne and other names you've heard me write about): mdcoope3.blogspot.com

It's time for the final sprint. I'm beginning the process of going harder in one week for the Gospel than I might have previously thought was possible, and quite honestly I'm not going into it armed with a full tank. I'll explain in a moment what that is going to look like, but first I want to start as always by thanking each and every one of you for your support, which I absolutely could not do without under any circumstances. God used you all to get me here and he has use you all to get me through, so THANK YOU for being willing to be used in that way.

This past week has been pretty crazy. One of our teammates, Ben, was sick for about a wee and a half and finally got sent home. He wasn't deathly sick or anything but it wasn't really getting better and we basically realized that if he stayed he wouldn't get back on campus to do ministry at all anyway, and he needed to get home to better medical facilities to figure out hat it was. Now he is home safe, and has been diagnosed with mono :( pray for him please! Anyway through all that we were all pretty affected because we lost our project directors for a week essentially to constant trips back and forth to the clinic, constant phone calls to Campus Crusade back in the U.S. as well as Ben's parents and etc. This also left a lot of responsibility on the other staff members (like me). It was crazy spending most of the week as the only guy staff member that was around and available. I ha to impromptu lead a lot of devotionals and things like that which were scheduled to be Justin, and fell on me. Even little things like helping get our team out the door in the mornings, and enforcing curfew. It was faith stretching. One of the things that kind of got forgotten about in the process was our weekly outreach. We realized the day before that we hadn't secured a place to have it, and that was my entire day that day trying to make it happen. God is good though and we got a GREAT place for it at the last second. The outreach was a Christmas in June party, which was awesome. We got to teach our curious Senegalese friends about the biggest Holiday in America and all of our fun traditions. In the process we were able to tell them why it was so important to us, the birth of our Savior. We read them some prophecies from Isaiah as well as the stories of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke. Then a girl from our team, Brinkley, shared her testimony of how Jesus had changed her life. We also had a lot of time talking and hanging out and enjoying sharing culture with them. We cut out snowflakes and stockings and put them on the walls. The stockings had Senegalese names like Fatou and Etienne and Babacar and Ousmane. :) We also decorated cookies, and played Christmas music!

Anyway, more about the sprint. There have been a lot of comparisons here about STINT (being here for a year or two) being like a marathon, and summer project being like a sprint. The STINT schedule is much less intense and full than ours, what we do is NOT sustainable in the long term. We're like special ops or something, we come in with the man power and energy to provide a short term boost to the ministry here, and since we aren't here for long we can go harder. Cross country and track people know what I'm talking about here; if the race is shorter, you have the freedom to run faster. If it's longer, you have to show discipline in pacing yourself. What I'm doing here has been specifically compared to a 400 race. Its 1 lap so it's just short enough to be a sprint, and just long enough to make your legs want to give out at the end. I have never personally ran in one of these races but my director has described it as your body basically giving up and you only make it to the end because you see the finish line and your willpower kicks in. You see it and you realize the harder you push to get there the sooner rest comes. "Rest is coming soon, I can see it, but now is the time to give everything I have left." This is my mindset for the next week. We get Monday through Thursday here doing ministry. Thursday night is our goodbye party, and then Friday morning we leave for our debriefing. That will be blissfully sweet rest but now is not the time for that, now is the time to do everything I can in faith so that when I leave I can rest peacefully knowing I did everything God asked me to do and the rest is up to Him as far as the salvation of my friends here. Oh, how I pray that I will see them in heaven one day. Pray that with me and God Willing (or Inshallah as they say here in Senegal) I will introduce you to my friends here in heaven one day. Anyway pray with me and for me this week that God's Spirit provides me with energy that I don't have for this final push, so that I can leave nothing on the table. So I can do everything God calls me to do and when rest comes that it will be a peaceful rest because of that. As I push harder, y'all pray harder! :) Thanks so much, I can't wait to see you all very soon.

Prayer Requests:

- For energy in the last leg of this sprint.

- For Babacar (both of them), and Hdiangue, and Usher, and Musa, and Djamel, and Frederic, that the Spirit would move in their hearts and show them their need for a Savior, and show them that Christ is that Savior. For me to have Words to speak as I share the Gospel with them just a few more times.

- For the rest of my team and their contacts, the same prayer request as above.

- For Etienne and Patrick and Paul Demba and Paula (Praise the Lord!) as they continue to learn what their new relationships with God practically look like and how to follow Christ.

- Safe travel to our debriefing location, and a God given time of rest and reflection on the summer.

- That every student at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD) comes to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

In Christ,

Matt

P.S. If you were astute enough to observe that I'm sending this on Saturday instead of Sunday then here's why: I have a visit to Etienne's house tomorrow afternoon! I'm very excited :)

Beautiful song about God's heart from the nations, based on Scripture.