From Erin Bloss:

I have been spoiled today. 🙂 I’m not gonna lie, I have taken advantage of ALL of the wonderful amenities that Niamey has to offer (such as American style bathrooms–complete with REAL showers!, beef fajitas at the American embassy for lunch, A/C at the Phillips house, and indulging in some movie watching and card game playing!)

I look at today and compare it with the past couple of days that we just spent in “B”, and honestly it feels like I’m in a completely different country when I’m in Niamey! I think I have successfully adjusted to African city life, but village life?? Shoot, that’s a different story!

I feel like I could talk for hours about what life in “B” has been like over the past couple of days. It’s probably been the best and worst time of my life. God has taught me SO MUCH, but my faith has been tested in ways that I never expected…which has been hard to say the least. To keep it short, my biggest blessing has been the closeness that I’ve felt with God from having to rely on Him for EVERY SINGLE DETAIL OF MY LIFE. My biggest hardship has been the physical, emotional, and mental toll that village life takes on my body. I have had more physical problems here in the past 5 days than I have had in the past 5 years! But it’s just another thing to give over to God…that’s what I constantly have to do: give it to God and trust that He’s going to take care of me.

Awhile ago I made a blog post about how my mantra has been that God is so faithful. While God has continued to remain faithful in ways that I can’t even begin to describe, my mantra seems to have changed to: Jesus never said following Him would be easy. I think I’m finally learning what it truly means to be a disciple of Christ, and it’s a hard lesson to learn!! But I am SO CONFIDENT that it’s worth it. It’s worth the blazing heat that makes my skin feel like it’s burning off my body; it’s worth drinking the dozens of bottles of water that smell (and taste) like sulfur; it’s worth the sleepless nights and waking up to donkeys and roosters and cats and who-knows-what-else; and it’s worth the persecution that we’ve already had to face.

No matter what happens this summer…whether we see fruit from this experience or not…I know that this will not have been in vain. I think it will be easy to go through all these hardships and become discouraged if we don’t see any immediate results. But God’s teaching me to rely on Him and HIS time table. He’s the one who’s COMPLETELY in control and at the end of the day, if I’m doing work for God, I know that in the end He will be glorified. And that’s really all that matters. 🙂