His Power, My Weakness

2 Corinthians 12:9 "But He said to me 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

This is a verse I seem to just keep coming back to this year as I've wrestled through what it looks like to walk humbly with my God, seeing myself in light of him instead of comparing myself to other people and going through an endless cycle of insecurity and pride. This past week I think this sums up what I've been most struck  by about God in ministry, in my quiet times, and as I've observed his creation! I've been reading through the book of Hebrews extremely in depth for my quiet times to go along with the Summit Church's sermon series on the book of Hebrews called "Christ is Better." I remember in one of the first sermons in this series J.D. suggested we continually read through the book while we go through it as a church and I decided to try that since I've never done it before. I've always finished a book and just gone on to another one, it's never crossed my mind to re-read through a book multiple times to really get deep into it. I'm really enjoying it. The book really paints a very clear picture throughout of Christ's glory. I think sometimes we get so caught up in Jesus' humanity, being able to relate with us and in fact dying for us that we forget he is the God who created the universe, glorious and powerful and that he raised from the dead. We forget to deal with Christ with awe. Hebrews really hits home on Christ's superiority. He's higher than the angels, he's the mediator of a covenant that is infinitely better than the old one, he's sitting at God's right hand and interceding on our behalf, hes perfect and blameless in a way that we never could be. Not only have I seen this in Scripture but I've been seeing it firsthand in my life. I've been so overwhelmed from huge waves to the biggest moon I've ever seen reflecting off the ocean to mountains and valleys and 17 foot wide redwood trees and even just looking at the stars which you can see better here than in Raleigh or Apex. I'm so humbled, I'm less than a dot in the span of God's creation why does he choose to love me? Why did he think I was worth dying for? When he looked at all that he said it was good, so why did he look at me and say very good? Why am I the one made in His image? Why does he pay me any attention at all? If that wasn't enough I've just been thoroughly reminded as I always am in ministry that I am completely dependent on God to see any change happen in anyone's life, and I am also completely dependent on him and his strength to get me through the day.

Okay, now for a quick update on what actually happened this week. So, the students arrived on Monday and that basically changed everything. There are now 80 people here instead of 30, lots of relationships to be built! The schedule this week was pretty intense since the students needed to get orientated (I know that's not a word but I like it better) for the summer. Wednesday and Sunday were the days most worth writing about I think. Wednesday we had from 9am-2pm to get with our roommates, who would also be our Bible study for the summer, and share what's called our "soul to souls." It's essentially an extended testimony that's like 20-25 minutes (or at least its supposed to be) and we go through our history, heritage, heroes, hard times, and high points. It's kind of a crash course in each others lives to build some honesty and trust into the group and so for the rest of the summer we can really see where others are coming from as we live with them and deal with conflict. Me and my co-leader JP shared ours Tuesday night to model it, and then on Wednesday we went to the Redwood forest and heard all the guys share theirs. It was definitely a really sweet time of laying a foundation for relationships that will last a lifetime and just encouraging to hear what God had done in all of our lives to bring us to be sitting in the redwoods together. After that we had fun day which involved lots of games and a scavenger hunt and a really good meal to cap it all off. Sunday afternoon was our first outreach. We went downtown and used a tool called Soularium to engage the community in spiritual conversations. For those of you who haven't used it before, it's got 50 pictures that we laid out on the sidewalk and when people stopped to look we asked told them it was a picture survey about life and spirituality and asked if they wanted to take it. The questions associated with it are which 3 pictures best describe your life, which 3 pictures do you wish described your life, and which picture best represents God to you? If you want to see the images, and how other people responded to the survey check out mysoularium.com. It was cool because it was unimposing on the people downtown, they approached us, and that also was a good first place to start for a lot of really nervous summer project students! They got to have some really cool conversations, listening to folks share their stories and what they believe about God and quite a few of them got to share in response what they believed about God! One such person was my man Sam Turkal, he was with me and really stepped up boldly into something he'd never done before and went through the Gospel with Jazz and Christian, two folks we went through the survey with.

Thanks again guys for all that you do for me! I love you all very dearly and you mean the world to me.

Look below for some prayer requests!


Some things you can be praying for are...

- Pray for me to continue to find rest in my Savior, to know him more and better each day and overflow the fruit of the Spirit.

- Pray for God to raise up leaders among the students to take our place when we're gone.

- Pray specifically for Victor, Damon, Branson, Sam, and Greg as these will be the guys in my action group this summer that I'll be focused on pouring my life into. Pray that God rocks their world this summer like he rocked mine when I was a student on this project.

- Pray for those in Santa Cruz who don't know Christ, pray that God would go before us and prepare their hearts to hear the message of his unfailing love for them, what he did for them on the cross, and his desire to have a relationship with them.

- Pray for continued unity among the staff team, and for that to be contagious to the students that they would really work as one for the summer especially once the staff have left.

- Pray for clarity for my really good friend here named Nichole! She says shes real confused about a lot of things and asked me to pray for her not to be confused anymore!

Sweet Rest

Well hello everybody, it seems I always end up re-vamping this blog every summer for my trips, and I can never seem to keep it up during the year. It's been so long since I last posted that the whole layout of the site has changed! Sorry in advance that this is going to be a long one, it's been one heck of a week and I'm gonna pour out my heart a little bit. I think it'll be worth the read.

Anyway, I've been in Santa Cruz, CA for a week and 2 days now, and it has been CRAZY. The students haven't even arrived yet and I've been feeling pretty exhausted. For those who don't know, I'm returning to the same summer project that I was a student on two summers ago only I'm going to have the privilege of staffing it this time! We arrived 9 days early as a staff team, May 19th, to begin to plan out the summer and set up the Peter Pan Motel where we'll be staying for the summer. The students arrive tomorrow, May 28th, and I can't wait. We spent the first 3 days here in nearly non-stop meetings hardly leaving the living room of the beach house we were temporarily staying in. Our directors did a great job of breaking things up with fun activities like going out for dessert as a staff team, and taking snack breaks. There's only so much you can do to ease the pain though when you have an entire summer project to plan out in 3 days. A few blessings though were Sharon Mehaffie's cooking and the hot tub that we got to use in the evenings. :) I also had an awesome heart to heart with one of the other single staff guys, Julian. After those 3 days it came time for the physical labor, which was actually a relief after sitting still for so long to get out and use my body. We were all pretty mentally exhausted. Setting up the Peter Pan was a beast though, we had to pull out all of the stuff for the summer from 3 huge pods, then load those pods back up with all of the hotel mattresses, box springs, and frames. Then we had to get everything off the floors in all of the rooms so they could come in and power clean the floors, moving all the tv's into storage in the process. Then we had to set up two triple bunks in each room (which was way more difficult than it sounds), get the lounge, kitchen, and office in working order, moving around ovens and refrigerators and couches and who knows what else. This just sums up the major things that we did, but I don't say all this to complain just to give you an idea of what my week has been like. It's been pretty intense. A blessing was the 11 students (10 guys and 1 girl) who came a few days early to help us set up the Peter Pan. Not only would we have never been able to do it without their help, but it was awesome to start getting to know them. Beginning to pour into those guys was a great reminder of why we're here and what all this hard work was for. All of the work on the front end will be completely worth it because of the lives changed through this summer project. Mixed into all this it was AMAZING to see my friend Nichole Saucier again, who I'm still in touch with from the last time I was here. She's still working on the boardwalk, where the students will be working and where I worked for a whole summer, and I've bumped into her twice. I'm excited to get to hang out with her outside of work once we get the chance. It's been awesome in general just to be back in Santa Cruz again, a place where I have such sweet memories of my life being changed just two summers ago.

So, you might wonder after such a lengthy list of all the exhausting things we've done in just a week why I titled this post "Sweet Rest." I titled it that because the concept of biblical rest in Christ completely rocked my world today in a very timely and refreshing way. I wish I could say that I've been finding my rest in Christ  throughout all this craziness, since that would be the spiritual missionary thing to say, but to be very vulnerable I came into this morning pretty mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted. Emotionally because on top of the physical and mental labor, I was really struggling with connecting with others on the project and I was upset about it. I'm one of the only single guys on the whole staff team, and sometimes it feels like the staff don't entirely see me as one of them because I'm still a student, but then it also feels like the students don't entirely see me as one of them because I'm staff. It's something I struggled with last summer in Senegal as student staff as well. I don't even know how much truth there is to the feeling, but its definitely an insecurity that Satan has used to get to me. I was stressed, I had a headache, and I was exhausted. My tank was just about empty, and that was not a good sign for what the rest of the summer was going to look like. God knew that was going on in my heart, and in His perfect timing He entered in with His good word. This morning I went to go try out the church I'll be attending all summer for the first time (It's called Twin Lakes), and I didn't know what to expect but we walked in on the middle of a sermon series about refueling spiritually, and this weeks sermon was on Rest. The pastor was preaching on Matthew 11:20-30, the passage culminating in Jesus' sweet promise "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Not only that, but I came back to the Peter Pan, spent some time reflecting on the message, then decided to watch J.D. Greear's (Pastor of my church back home, the Summit) sermon from last week that I missed. In God's perfect timing his message was titled Inner Rest, and supplemented what I had heard in church really well. This particular topic of finding rest in Christ is not one that I've explored much or heard preached on very much at all, but one that I desperately needed to start incorporating into my life. It's especially crucial I think for someone in ministry because this is very much not the first time I've felt burnt out from doing things for God. I am really thankful for my director who really protects our Sabbath day well. I had until 4:30 this afternoon to spend with the Lord and just beginning to apply this idea of resting in Him. I feel SO refreshed seriously I went from bottoms to not being able to remember a time where I felt more fresh, and I know this is a concept that not only really helped me recharge from a rough week but one that as I begin to apply more and more will help me the rest of this summer and the rest of my life. It wasn't just physical rest that I needed, I had 10 hours of sleep the other night and still felt awful the entire next day. There was a soul rest that I needed that no amount of sleep or vacation or even encouragement could give me, it was only found in Christ. I spent this afternoon on a perfect day reading a book in a hammock on a cliff 75 feet up overlooking the ocean (picture attached). Tonight we went out to eat as a staff team one last time before the students arrive and it was a very nice meal that was covered by the project, but best of all I felt like I really connected with the other staff at the dinner table. I seriously felt like I was a zombie walking around and now I'm alive again. I want to thank my beautiful Savior Jesus Christ for doing EVERYTHING necessary to save me, and then SITTING DOWN at the right hand of God, and in so doing allowing me to sit down as well from a lifestyle of works trying to earn his favor, build an identity, feel like I'm worth something.

Prayer Requests:

- Pray for me to continue to find rest in my Savior, to know him more and better each day and overflow the fruit of the Spirit.

- Pray for the students, for courage to get on that plane and come out here, for safe travel, for God to begin preparing their hearts even now.

- Pray specifically for Victor, Damon, Branson, Sam, and Greg as these will be the guys in my action group this summer that I'll be focused on pouring my life into. Pray that God rocks their world this summer like he rocked mine when I was a student on this project.

- Pray for those in Santa Cruz who don't know Christ, pray that God would go before us and prepare their hearts to hear the message of his unfailing love for them, what he did for them on the cross, and his desire to have a relationship with them.

- Pray for continued unity among the staff team, and for great unity to grow immediately with the students when they arrive. Pray we'll be a community that reflects Christ in the way we love and relate to each other.

Full Swing of Things

Hey everyone! So, welcome to my first blog post in months. Life has been absolutely CRAZY, so here goes my attempt to catch you all up on it, as well as some things coming up that you can pray for. This will also serve as my first monthly prayer letter to those who support me for my Cru Internship. The plus side of that is that there is now guaranteed to be at least one blog post a month on here! =] However, that doesn't mean that there won't be blog posts that aren't prayer letters, just that all of my prayer letters will also be blog posts. Make sense? Let me know if it doesn't.

So, school has not only officially started but is now in full swing, hence the title of this blog post. I am taking 20 credit hours of school (so glad I'm not an engineer), and also interning with Cru, which takes at least 15 hours each week but usually ends up being closer to 20. So as you can imagine I stay very busy. All this just to give you an idea of how much has actually happened since I last posted a blog and since I last talked to some of you in person. As busy as things have been, I would not say things have been overwhelming and with the exception of a few of my classes/assignments it's all been things that I thoroughly enjoy. One of the things that Todd Smith said my freshman year that has stuck with me is not to do anything by yourself. That's the reason that I manage to meet with all the people that I meet with during the week is that I don't eat any meals by myself and I try not to do anything without a purpose. My day to day schedule basically consists of class, homework, bible studies, and meeting with people one on one. I meet with 6 or 7 guys each week, including Todd who disciples me. The rest of those are either younger believers that I'm meeting with for whats called Discipleship, or non believers that I'm trying to be intentional about loving on and sharing the Gospel with. One of my best friends this year has been a guy named Cody Hanna, shout out to him if he's reading this. We hang out at least every Friday, and its been a real blessing to get to know him and we've had some great discussions, it's awesome to hear his thoughts on things. To explain more about Discipleship for a second, it's so much more than just sitting across a table from someone for an hour once a week and getting into the Word, so much more than just a one on one Bible study. When you look at Jesus and His disciples, or Paul and Timothy, what you see is that they did life together. They did ministry together, they did accountability, they spent time just plain hanging out, etc. That's what I try to see happen in my discipleship relationships, and obviously the way things are with classes and etc we don't spend every waking moment together like those Biblical figures did but I think you all see the point. I say this so that when I throw out the word "Discipleship" in these prayer letters, you all will know what I am talking about. Shout out to Kenny Ragsdale who has put up with me in that kind of a relationship for over a year now, love that guy. My Bible study has gotten off to a great start by the grace of God, I can't believe how much my guys have grown up over the summer. Many of the young men who were kind of on the outskirts not really consistent in coming have really built strong walks with the Lord over the summer and are now some of our core guys. We're pumped to be seeing about 20 guys coming out each week and we've already had some really good discussions. My favorite thing has been to see a lot of the guys being more outwardly focused and really being intentional about pouring into other guys lives to try and make a difference for the Gospel. Some of my Bible study guys are now leading their own Bible studies and I've met many of my "grandbabies" in the faith this year, which is kind of silly but it has been very exciting. Some of them even got baptized this past weekend. I've also gotten more involved this year with my church here at school, The Summit.

Some big events that have happened so far this year that I want to praise the Lord for have been The Summit's Church at the Ballpark, and NC State's Campus Crusade movement had our annual Fall Retreat. Very recently The Summit church in Durham had it's Church at the Ballpark, I hope it was the first of many. The church has about 6,000 members and this was the first time that the whole church had worshiped together in about 10 years. We rented out the Durham Bulls Athletic Park and had well over 7,200 people at one church service, it was like nothing I've ever seen before. The pastor gave a Gospel presentation and then they opened it up for baptisms and we saw nearly 400 people get baptized. I had the privilege of being a baptism counselor, helping walk people from death into life. They intend to open baptisms up again this weekend for those who didn't get the chance last weekend and I plan on being a baptism counselor again. Also, just a few weekends ago, NC State Campus Crusade had their annual Fall Retreat. We had about 350 students come out to Camp Dixie for a weekend (some of you Salem folks know all about that). The exciting thing was that we had a lot of freshman come out this year, I would say nearly half of that 350 were freshman. Fall Retreat is always a time where many freshman get plugged into Bible studies, build relationships that last through college, and even make decisions to live for Christ in college. I got to lead a small group at Fall Retreat and it was cool to see some of the people in the group making decisions like that they wanted to be more committed to getting into the Word of God daily.

One big event that is coming up for us is our annual Barn Party. This is always the most fun thing that NC State Cru does every single year. We always have a ton of people come out who are not normally involved in our movement and it's good to see a lot of those people experience the body of Christ. We will be having line dancing and hay riding and lots of good food! Please be praying that this event would be successful and that many people would come out and that God would get glory from relationships that are built.

Prayer Requests:

- Above all please pray for my personal walk with the Lord, that I wouldn't get so caught up in my busy schedule that I forget to spend time with Him.

- Please Pray that the Bible study would continue to grow and press outward to make an impact for the Gospel

- Pray for Cody, and some of the other guys that I've been getting to know this year. Pray that they would experience Christ in a real way.

- Pray for the Barn Party, that God would use this incredibly fun event to be glorified and that the body of Christ would really be on display.

- Pray for me to continue to manage my time well, so that I can have a healthy balance between my school work and really investing my time in other peoples lives.

- Pray for the guys in my study who are leading their own studies that God would help them build great relationships with their guys.

- Pray for the 3 guys that I'm currently Discipling; Brad, Christian, and Kenny, that God would be able to use me to impact their lives for the Gospel and that they would then impact others.

Thank you all SOOO much! I don't know what I would do without you. Your support in so many different ways is vital to everything that God has allowed me to do at N.C. State. Please let me know if you have any prayer requests, I'd love to return the favor. All of this is also going to be posted on my blog at mdcoope3.blogspot.com and soon I will put some pictures on there, so please check that out and I believe if you click "Follow" it should allow you to receive emails when I post a blog.

In Christ,

Matt

Life in Apex

If you know anything about Apex, then you know why I don't have much to write about lol. Today though I went and helped with a service project through the Summit, which is the church I go to in Durham. I love it. Anyway, we were originally supposed to be doing work at A.V. Baucom Elementary, which is my old elementary school, but they were finished before we arrived. They still put us to work though, they moved us to Apex Middle School which is my old middle school and we helped with landscaping. It was fun, the only person from the school there was my old Assistant Principal, Mrs. Avramidis. That was nice seeing her though, and kind of surprising that she remembered me since that was so long ago and it was such a large school. We got a lot of work done in a short amount of time though and I even got to help plant the new Apex Middle School Spirit Rock. =] I went out to lunch with my dad yesterday, and it was awesome, we had one of the best conversations we've ever had with each other. Thanks Dad! Later tonight I'm going to a Saturday night church service at the Summit, and then going to see Harry Potter for the second time with Chris Yow. I saw the midnight showing the other night and it was so much fun, we dressed up and everything.  We went to get dinner as a group beforehand and I got to share the Gospel with a homeless guy when I gave him our leftover Pokey Stix. For those of you who don't know, those are like garlic cheesy breadsticks, they are great. I also got to see Kenny again that night for the first time since I've been back because he came to the movie with us, love that guy! We went before the movie and visited Mike Mehaffie, he just recently had some major eye surgery so pray for a quick and successful recovery for him! It was great to see him again too. Tonight I'm going to church with Chris for the first time ever and I'm really excited about it, then we're seeing the movie and he is sleeping over at my house. I saw Chris about a week ago for about 2 hours but this will be our first real opportunity to catch up and I'm really excited for it. Also in the past few weeks I've been raising support, and making phone calls just about every day for an internship I'm doing in the Fall and that's been faith stretching.

God has been definitely moving in my heart since I've been back. I've had to be disciplined in continuing to have a daily quiet time without a team of people around me encouraging me and holding me accountable. I've had to be disciplined as well in making lots of phone calls that I don't want to make every day about raising support, it can be a pretty stressful process but I know I'm growing through it. The biggest thing God is teaching me right now is to be intentional in looking for opportunities to share my faith. They have always been right there in my lap as far as campus ministry and spending my summer's on mission trips. This is the first time in over 2 years that I've spent more than a Christmas break in Apex and I don't want to waste these months. I know there are opportunities to share the Gospel, I just have to be proactive in finding them instead of just waiting for them to fall in my lap. That's what led me to sign up for the service project I did today, and I was really excited to get to talk to that homeless guy on Thursday night. Pray for me to continue to look for opportunities and make the most of them when I find them. It's true that there are fewer opportunities here than at N.C. State but there are still plenty of people in Apex who need to hear the Gospel I just don't necessarily interact with them on a daily basis. Thanks for taking time to read this, I love you all!

Prayer Requests:
- My internship requires that I build a team of ministry partners to support me financially and make my ministry possible, right now I'm working on building that team so that I can actually do the internship in the Fall. I'm 6 weeks behind because of my trip to Africa.
- Senegal's political situation (see Pray for Senegal), and the hearts of the students I met while I was there, that God would grow the seeds we planted and prepare them to be harvested.
- For me to find and take advantage of opportunities to share the Gospel while I'm in Apex for the remainder of the summer.

In Christ,
Matt

Pray for Senegal

Hey everyone!

Please, please, please pray for Senegal, especially the city of Dakar. You may or may not know that there was some rioting there while I was in the country, a lot of political unrest about the President. Long story short nobody likes him and he tried to pass some bills that would keep him in power when nobody wants him to get re-elected next year. The electrical power has also been getting worse and worse there and that's government run. The riots have intensified since my team and I left the country, in fact there is now a curfew in effect on Dakar, the city that I was staying in. Also, some radical Muslim groups that have up until now been pretty underground groups are now using the political unrest and the rioting as pretense for attacking churches. Several evangelical churches in Dakar, at least 6 to my knowledge, have been attacked and burned down by these radical groups. I am especially worried about the safety of many of my Senegalese friends and Nationals who were working with the organization I was there with, they attend evangelical churches and I honestly have no idea it could have been their's that was burned down. There aren't a ton of evangelical churches in Senegal so it wouldn't be a stretch. Please pray for the country, and for my friends. Pray that God would show up there in a mighty way, to protect the believers there and to use this for His Glory. Pray for Pascal and his family, Yasenth (sp?) and his family, Martin, Severe, Pacifique, Ida, Etienne and all of his cousins, Samba, etc. Thank you all, I love you!

In Christ,
Matt

Settling In, but not Settling

Well everyone, I'm back in America and now have time to write in more time and with more detail about all the craziness of this summer, as I'm just resting all of today and tomorrow. I'm still not going to tell everything because I have to leave something to tell you all when I meet you in person lol.

God has done and taught me so much, I honestly am not sure where to start. Let me give you the big picture, and then hone in on details. If you've been reading my blogs up to this point then you'll have read about a lot of it. You'll have read about how God has broken my heart for the lost and especially the 10/40 window. You'll also have read about how God tore down sinful pride that was filling my heart but covered up on the surface level, and taught me how to live a life that makes much of Him instead of myself. I didn't actually mention in my blogs but at the end of the summer we counted up and between the 16 of us over the course of 6 weeks we shared the Gospel about 1,000 times with over 450 DIFFERENT people. 9 people put their faith in Jesus Christ and in doing so despite the sacrifices that it required, gave God glory. They decided that no matter what they had to give up, He was worth it. One example in particular of someone who had to give up much was a Muslim background young man who has decided a relationship with Jesus Christ was worth more than potentially his family relationships. Then there was Etienne who decided that in light of his new relationship with Christ he would drop everything and begin to be an ambassador for Christ, I am so proud of him. God already has and is going to continue to use him to do big things in Senegal. These are the major points of what happened this summer, time to elaborate.

Point one: heart for the lost. The 10/40 window is the area from 10 degrees latitude to 40 degrees longitude that contains nearly all of the world's remaining unreached people groups. An unreached people group is a group of people that does not have any access to the Gospel. How that is actually measured and quantified varies I believe but the gist of it is that they would walk for days and day and not find anyone who could share the Gospel with them. Senegal is included in this window. If you lined up all the people who are unreached in a single file line they would circle the earth 25x. Can you imagine a line of people as long as the earth, 25 people wide, trampling to destruction? This was just a statistic to me until I spent every day for 6 straight weeks driving past a huge graveyard full of people who had never heard the name of Jesus or seen a Bible. I will now spend the rest of my life doing something about this problem, whether God calls me personally to go live overseas or not I will always be involved prayerfully and financially in sending the Gospel to the 10/40 window.

Point Two: brokenness. There is an entire post about this, so I'll keep it relatively short. I was living a life to glorify myself, all under the pretense that it was for the glory of God. That's not an easy confession to make, but it's true. Even my God given spiritual gift of evangelism I was using so people would say "wow look how successful he is!" God spent all summer showing me how not one single aspect of my life is to make much of myself, not even my salvation. All of it was to make much of Him. Even the fact that I have had access to a Bible and the Gospel for my entire life is an undeserved gift of God that I took for granted until I collided with a people group who hadn't been exposed to either, ever. The fact that I even know who Jesus is is entirely a work of God, and has nothing to do with me. Why did he do it? Did he do it because he wanted to make much of me? No. He did it because he loved me, yes. But not an American definition of love, where you make much of the person you love. A Godly love where he loves me enough to give me himself, so I can be satisfied in Him and in being satisfied in Him, also glorify Him. Life is not about making much of me, its about making much of Him. By consequence, this means making little of myself, and I'm okay with that now.

Point 3: 16 people, 6 weeks.The Gospel was shared 1,000 times with over 450 different people, most of whom had never heard it before. 9 people put their faith in the Lord. Because of point 2 I want to take time to emphasize that none of this had ANYTHING to do with me or my team being awesome. We were only faithful, God did the rest. Because of your prayers, and because of God's Spirit, we were able to see and be a part of these incredible things.

Point 4: my Muslim background friend. He is from the Wolof people group, which is one of the unreached people groups I was talking about above. There are over 5 million people in this people group, and only 150 believers, there is no complete Bible in Wolof. It is 0% Evangelical Christian, and my friend is being discipled to begin to share his faith. In case your faith isn't that big of a deal to you, this guys family might not ever speak to him again. I can't even begin to imagine sacrificing the things he will have to sacrifice, but God gets the glory because guess what? My friend looked at the Bible, saw Christ for who He really was and said if this is really true then it is worth giving up EVERYTHING that I have. He hasn't actually sacrificed a thing either, he has gained.

Point 5: Etienne. I can't say enough, and I've said a ton already, so I'll summarize. I hope Etienne is reading this right now. I'm so proud of him. First I saw him go from death into life, talking about how big of a decision it was whether to open his life to Jesus or not, because he knew he'd have to follow it his whole life. He decided Jesus was worth it and he never looked back. The Spirit came into his life as promised, and God began changing him from the inside out. He quickly became bold and passionate about Jesus, and before long was sharing his faith with family members and friends. 3 weeks after becoming a believer he had helped me lead 3 more people to put their faith in Christ. Then I left Dakar to go to debriefing, and he led another guy to invite Jesus into his heart without me even being around. He has grown so much, truly he has grown into a man of God. Being a part of his life this summer and a part of his growth was an honor and a blessing. God is going to use him for huge things, and I can't wait to hear all about it. Glory isn't to Etienne though, glory is to God. Before God came into his heart, Etienne was a cool guy, but I couldn't have said any of what I just said about him. Etienne is a living testament to the radical life change that is supposed to happen once you open your heart to Jesus. I love you dude, I'm proud of you, and I'm praying for you.

In summary, I will say one more thing that God has taught me. My last post was titled Home Sweet Home, and now that I think about it thats not totally true. When I come back to America, I miss Etienne and other dear friends. When I go back to Senegal, I miss my family and my friends here. I miss my Bible study. Home is heaven, where I won't miss any of them. I'm settling back into life in America, but I'm not settling for just any life. I'm following Etienne's lead, I'm living in light of the Gospel, living passionately for Christ. I'm not wasting my life.

In Christ,
Matt

Home Sweet Home

Hey everyone!

mdcoope3.blogspot.com

I am posting now to let you all know I am home, and it was an incredible summer! It was also rather exhausting though, especially the plane flight back and the jet lag. So, I won't be writing anything more here about the trip, although there is more to tell. This is officially the end of this emailing list, however I will continue to update my blog regularly (perhaps more regularly now that I'm in the US). I will also be bringing back my Facebook that I had been fasting from for quite a while now. Many pictures will be posted there. The link to that is www.facebook.com/mdcooper Thanks again for everything you all did to make this summer possible, I love you all!

In Christ,

Matt