Today's post was written by Louanne Green. Louanne is a daughter, sister, girlfriend, friend, small group leader, short-term mission trip leader, boss, and employee. She is totally unworthy of the absolutely amazing grace that God has bestowed on her and just hoping that, by this grace, His glory may be made known through her life.

God is so good, even when my faith doesn't seem as big as a gnat's!

When I sat down to write this post, I knew that I was going to write about a recent trip that I took to North Africa. What I didn't know exactly, though, is what I was going to say about it. After I prayed over it and thought about it and prayed some more and thought some more, I think the best thing to do is just to tell you about the first day that we were able to do what we had planned and prepared for and how faithful God is.

First of all, when I was asked about going on this trip this year, it seemed like a fairly easy decision. After all, I went there last year with my best friend Bethany, and we had a great experience and felt like we were able to be part of God’s work there. I’m a big advocate for going back to the same places year after year as I feel it builds greater community and credibility, and Bethany was going again - so SURE I’ll go too! Of course, I didn’t have the money to pay for it, but God has provided that before so I had no doubt He would do so again. And what do you know, less than 1 week before our departure date an anonymous donor paid the balance on both Bethany and my trip! Talk about smacking me in the face telling me I’m supposed to go! Of course, as humans tend to be, I quickly forgot about God’s provision a few times throughout the course of the trip.

One thing to know about where we were in North Africa is that the beginning of September is the end of their rainy season - unless it's a particularly harsh rainy season, which this year happened to be. Our first day, we spent 8 hours in the car and came within 4-5 miles of our destination and couldn't go any further because of the road conditions. Of course, after this delay, we had to change our plans for the rest of the week as we had planned to go the exact same way the next day.

Our second day, we were finally able to spend time with the people of a local village. The plan for Bethany and me was to share malaria education and prevention information with the community health workers and then to share with them about a sickness that every person on the planet suffers from - sin. We walked through the threads of the gospel with our health worker, Darius, and the ladies who came to join us. Of course, we started with the character of God, leading into the sinfulness of man, moving onto the sufficiency of Christ alone. This opened the door to the necessity of faith and then the urgency of eternity. After this, I asked the ladies if anyone had any questions. Darius replied that the ladies didn't, but that he had a few questions. He began to tell us a story of his friend who is growing weary waiting for the second coming of Christ and has turned away from his faith. To answer his questions about this, we turned to the source for all answers - Scripture. We looked specifically at James 4:13-14 to talk about how short our lives really are. This sparked a question about heaven and hell and whether a person who goes to hell will be able to be redeemed and then go to heaven. Back to the Word for the story of the rich man and Lazarus. And you guessed it, he kept asking questions, and we kept going to the Word for the answers. This went on for 1.5 hours (roughly). And even though the ladies in attendance didn’t seem to have any questions, after every question he turned right around and interpreted the questions and answers for the ladies there! It was an absolutely fantastic experience, to say the least! And, it was just 1 day....there were more of days to come!