Issue #50
March 13, 2000

Dear Friends and Family,
The Outreach Weekend went great. Thanks so much for all of your prayers. There were people praying all around the world for this weekend, and we could tell. There were no problems on the roads or with the cars. They sound system, the instruments, and the generator all worked well. Many people heard the gospel this weekend and quite a few received Christ.

We arrived in Korhogo on Friday evening. We had an evening service at the Cultural Center in town. There was not an extremely large turnout, but it was still a good service. After the service, we broke up into teams and went out into the neighborhood. At least one person on each team was trained to give the Gospel through the Evangelism Explosion outline. My group found some people sitting on benches talking. We went to talk with them. They were all brothers and sisters. There were about 5 of them. Some of them kept coming and going. They were Muslims and kept asking very difficult questions. Hannah was our French speaker and E.E. person. She did a super job at answering their questions. One guy did pray to accept Jesus, but we really aren't sure he was being sincere. Please pray that the seed that was planted with this group will grow. One lady in the group definitely had an "interesting" since of humor. We had Ryan, one of the kids from the visiting group from Ohio with us. The people we were talking to wanted to know why he didn't know French. We told them that he had only been in the country five days. The lady told him, "When they slit your throat, you'll understand." I wasn't sure how Ryan was going to take that, but he realized that she was just joking. Later they were telling us all to come back and told us to leave the Ryan behind because he couldn't understand. Again, it was a joke. I don't know why they decided to pick on Ryan.

Saturday was busy! In the morning, we met with the English Club. Many of the kids who usually don't get an opportunity to witness one on one had a chance here to do it in English. We also invited them to come back to the other things happening that day. In the afternoon, our guys and girls teams played a couple of local teams in basketball. Our guys didn't stand a chance. The guys they were playing were huge! We found out later they have one several National Championships. Our guys still had fun. By the end of the game, the Africans were cheering for our guys because they were impressed at how they played even though they couldn't win. Our girls did win. A large crowd showed up for the games and stayed around for the evening service. After the service, we went out on E.E. again. Several more people accepted Christ, and I think about 8 people accepted Christ after the evening service.

Sunday morning was a youth service with youth from the area churches. It was an opportunity to encourage them to have a bigger witness in the their area. It was a good service. Some of the people we had talked to over the weekend and some of those who had accepted Christ were at the service.

We came back yesterday afternoon very encouraged and very tired. I'm not sure what the final count was on how many accepted Christ. Several hundred had the Gospel presented to them one on one or in small groups.
Pray for those who accepted Christ that they will remain strong and find a church to be involved in.
Pray for those who didn't accept but heard the message.
Pray for the kids this week. They are tired and trying to keep up on schoolwork.
Pray for the Ohio team as they leave on Wednesday to go back to the States.

In Christ,
Traci Epps