North Africa Highlight Photos

Here are some highlights from our trip:

While we were in D.C. waiting for our flight to Paris, I got to meet President Obama. The Secret Service wasn't really excited about me putting my arm around him, so this is the picture right before I got pinned to the ground and pounded on for a few minutes.

Thus is the typical inside of a home in North Africa. That's Ed, one of the faculty on our trip, working on his computer.

If you think that people in America have a problem with watching too much TV, well this is a typical site throughout North Africa.

This is a view of approximately a tenth of the city from a large hill sitting basically right in the center of the city. So imagine in all the buildings there are maybe 4 people who know Christ as their Lord and Savior.

This is an Armored Ground Cricket. They are about the size of a small cell phone. These bugs were all over the place in this one village we visited. We were told it was poisonous, but I still got one on a stick and held it up to my face. Later, someone else said that it wasn't poisonous. So I guess I wasn't that dumb after all.

This is a picture of our team: Adam, Dana, Kanon, and me (L to R).

So it's taken me about 3 hours to get these pictures up so I will try and put some more up later.

North Africa Trip May 20 - July 6, 2009

I had the wonderful opportunity again this year to participate in a trip with my school to interact in a Muslim context where there is very little gospel presence. This summer I had the opportunity to travel to a country in North Africa where less than 1% of all its citizens are believers. In fact, the city where we spent most of our time has only 1 believer for about every 62,500 people. That same percentage would mean that in a city the size of Raleigh, North Carolina, there would only be 6 believers! Hopefully you understand now how desperately this area needs the gospel.

A group of 12 students and 2 professors went on this trip. Each group was divided into 4 students. My group consisted of myself as well as 3 other students - Adam, Dana, and Kanon. The first week we spent in a larger city where we worked with a team that concentrates on working with students who are attempting to learn English. The second week we travelled around the southern part of the country working with a team that uses water projects (i.e. wells for an entire village and water distribution systems) as a means to develop relationships for sharing the gospel.

During the first week of our trip me and Adam were able to meet with a few guys we had met through English language study and spent about 5-6 hours with them. We began by having juice at a local cafe (it was too hot for the traditional tea) and ended up walking around the city for a few hours then having dinner and walking some more. It was a great time all around. But during our time at the cafe we were able to communicate that we were students studying religion and were then able to talk about our beliefs for almost 2 hours. Most of the time consisted of them communicating why Islam is better, but it was still a valuable time as we were able to share with them about the truth of God's Word and to love on them well. I have even been able to keep up with one of these guys through email since we have returned home.

This was an awesome trip. I really had no real interest in spending time in this area of the world, but was simply attending it for an opportunity to travel and tell people about Christ, but also for the 3 hours credit. But because of this trip, God really pricked my heart for this area and for these people, and I would not be surprised if He were to call me there for a significant period of my life.