We are excited about what is happening tomorrow and want to ask you all to pray with us!

Tomorrow we plan to visit the village of Kemand (name changed). This will not be our first visit to this village, but we are now planning to start regular visits that will continue for the next couple of years, Lord willing. We have two specific goals for the coming months: 1) to help those with diabetes and high blood pressure better manage their illness through community health groups, and 2) to start several Bible reading groups.

As nurse practitioners, our teammates have a lot of medical knowledge and experience they can share. One of the first things we will do is visit each household in this village (which is quite a large one) and do a health survey to identify those with diabetes and high blood pressure, which are common ailments throughout Senegal. The survey will also enable us to gather the health data that will help us later to see if our intervention has had an impact on the health of those we have worked with. As we visit each household in the coming weeks, we will start to build relationships and ask if we can pray for the needs of each family. Through regular visits and conversations, we will begin to get to know people and see who is interested in reading the Bible. The booklets Corey has worked to produce over the last few years with long excerpts of Scripture printed side by side in Wolof and Wolofal (Arabic-script Wolof) will enable the groups to learn more about what God has done in the past and what He has promised by reading the Bible for themselves. We hope that reading groups will be formed in multiple households, with each head of household gathering his whole family to participate.

But this vision still exists only in our minds – we don’t yet even know the names of more than a handful of the folks in this village. And while we know the chief a little and he has opened the door for us to work there, we don’t yet have any idea what the response will be to the idea of having Bible reading and community health groups. So would you pray for tomorrow’s visit? Pray for a warm welcome and for God’s leading. Pray that His Spirit will open doors so that we can be a blessing in this village where Jesus is not yet known. Pray that He will draw people of peace to us and give us good relationships. And pray that the Lord will lead our hearts “into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ” (2 Thessalonians 3:5). We want to know and express God’s love well and we will need patient endurance for this work.  Thanks for praying with us!