Wednesday, March 22, 2023 PM

That's great that they would have time in their schedule to come here and share with us. So we're glad to have them here to talk about the ministry that's going on in Ivory Coast. So I'm not gonna try and say it in French.

So we're gonna take a minute to pray and then Josh is gonna come and start things off and let them share and we have time, one at the end, we'll take some time to pray then as well. Now let's go to the Lord in prayer, all right?

Prayer for the Wohlgemuts and the Ivory Coast Ministry

Lord, we are grateful for this day, thankful for the blessing of being able to gather together as brothers and sisters in Christ. Thank you for Josh and Christie and their family and for the opportunity that we have to see them again, to share with them and to hear of the work that you are doing in and through them and the ways in which you're working there in Ivory Coast.

Grateful that we can have a small part in that ministry and I pray that we would be not only informed tonight, but encouraged and pray, Father, too, that you would enable us to be an encouragement to the Waldemarts and we're grateful, Lord, for them and just for their servants' hearts.

We pray, God, that you would bless them as they share this evening and pray that you would help us to listen attentively, help us to ask good questions and pray, Lord, that in all that is done and said tonight, that Christ would be exalted, that your name would be glorified and that we would give you praise for all that you are doing.

And so we thank you and give this time to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

While I set up, I'm gonna have my wife sing a special for you.

Oh, Ellen.

I don't wanna make anyone sick after they just ate.

Maybe we can do that, there we go.

Life and Culture in Ivory Coast

Well, in all honesty, I came for Taco Wednesday, but since we're here, we'll share some pictures. So, no, it's really good to be with you all here. There are some familiar faces, but it's been about five or six years since we've been stateside, well, here specifically in Oklahoma City, so it's great to see you all tonight and just hang out, let our kids play together and hopefully not break the church.

So we'll see, night's not over yet. So we are Josh and Christy Wolgamott, and this is our family. If you haven't seen our boys yet, that picture was taken only, man, a few months ago, but Jack's already taller than my wife, so she's very sad about that and he's very happy, so.

Anyway, we're here to share with you a little bit about what these last few years have been like for us, what we've seen God do in the country of Ivory Coast, West Africa, and just hopefully be an encouragement to you.

That's where West, that's where Ivory Coast is, if you need help on the map, not a mere stone's throw from Oklahoma City, I can tell you that, but we did appreciate the weather today. This is about the warmest we've had for many months, so we appreciate that, so.

So four years ago, four and a half years ago, we moved our family over to West Africa, and the question we always get is, what's it like over there? And while I imagine it's like many experiences that many of you had were, to really understand what it's like, you have to walk that situation, that life through it with them.

What we can do is show you some of the pictures of some of the things we experienced as Americans and some of the funny things, harder things, some of the things we experienced just to bring you into some of the new experiences that we went through there.

So one of the things that's always funny is some of the brands that you see over there. We saw Facebook Ice Cream. I don't know how it tasted, but it was blue, so I guess they named it Facebook. Here's some of the funny brands too.

We had Obama Biscuits, we had Rambo Insecticide, and we had tissues with the brand name Achum. I'm glad you get it. And my all-time favorite was Foot Gum. Yeah, we never tried it, but I think it has something to do with football, which is what they call soccer, or their name for soccer, anyways.

So, fun experiences, a lot of things to learn. Also, if you're gonna go overseas and you're taking your wife with you, make sure you get yourself a good, strong wife if she needs to pound the food to a pulp.

So.

Almost dropped it all in the dirt.

No.

It's like, it's called yin-yang, it's like a long, starchy potato, and they pound it up and roll it until it looks like a ball of Play-Doh, and then they dip that in sauce and eat it. It's just like mashing potatoes.

We also get our share of critters over there my wife doesn't like. So I think there was one week we lost, well, about three snakes lost their lives in one week, and then one time I think they even found a snake in one of the bassinets in the hospital, so.

There was no baby in it yet.

There was no baby in it yet, but he was waiting. We also get fun gifts. I walked home one day, I came in the kitchen, and I heard this clicking sound in our kitchen cabinet. Someone had given us a chicken as a gift.

It's a very typical thing to do over there certain times of year, so that's fun. Some of the makeup is different over there. Some women put makeup on their feet. My wife got to try that once. I think that'll be the last time, yeah.

Some of our shopping looks like this. If you want to buy material for clothes, that's what it would look like. If you want to buy spices right there on the side of the road, got all sorts of different spices there.

This would be your local meat market, yeah, flies included. And if you want to get a pedicure, you can do it right on your motorcycle there. There's these guys that walk up and down the road clacking their scissors together.

50 cents, you can get a pedicure, so they'll do it right there, so it's a really special deal. Driving looks a lot different too. Sometimes our traffic jams look like this. Oh, we were talking about this earlier.

One of us had to learn how to drive stick shift while we were over there, yeah. No one was injured yet, so. Also, there's this idea that there's always enough room, no matter what you're driving. There's always enough room.

There's always enough room. This is one of my most memorable days too. No one likes the DMV in the US, right? This is the DMV that I had to go to once. I was there for about five hours, and my father-in-law, who many of you know, Vern Johnson, he was not very happy when I told him that, because he said, I've been waiting 12 years for my license plate.

So, some things are getting better, but apparently they have his number or something, I don't know. So, if you got to shop for parts, sometimes it looks like this. We found our part that day, so that was all God, obviously.

Sometimes a walk to school looks like this, and sometimes a classroom looks like that. That's our second son, Sam. And if the electricity or water goes out, or the washing machine breaks, we're doing washing the, and the shower.

Sorry, I'm trying to, I'm thinking of French words. But, our weather, we've got two seasons, too. We have half of the year where it's dry and hot and dusty. The other half a year, it's rainy and hot. So, either way, it's a really good weight loss program.

Community, Religion, and Spiritual Darkness

On to some of the more meaningful moments and differences that we noticed. Here's a picture of our living room, completely full of women surrounding my wife. I had gone to church that morning, and they had heard for me that she had stayed home because she had an issue with, infection with one of her legs.

And so, I got home after church, and I looked down the road, this whole herd of women coming down. You know how they move together. And just, anyways, I'm like, Chris, who's coming? I don't know. Anyways, they had come to wish her well, just plop down on the floor and say, we're praying for you.

We heard you weren't doing great. And that's something that happens all the time. And we were blessed to be a part of that as far as their community. The other part of the community that we really saw, people come together for weddings.

If there's a newborn baby, and then we went to our share of funerals. It seemed like every Saturday, we were at a funeral or something like that. And so, a lot of darkness, a lot of death, but we saw just some of the neat ways that people drew together, just to be together, to support each other.

Yeah.

Those are just more pictures of funerals. So, everybody will come to help support the family. So, that's why there's so many people. But after we had kind of gotten used to some of the external things, like what they wear and what they eat, then we started to get to know them on a heart level better and what they believe.

And so, Islam is increasing in the country. It's almost half of the people in Ivory Coast right now claim to worship Allah. And we would be woken up every morning from four or five different call to prayers just around our house where we were.

And so, even while we were there, there were more mosques being put up. And so, we definitely feel that influence. And we see the patients and their family members praying right outside the hospital walls.

But even more than that, people believe in the spirits. It's a belief called animism. And so, they believe that there are spirits in the trees, in the ground. Spirits explain everything that they do from how people get wealthy to people getting sick.

And so, they spend a lot of their time, money and efforts in trying to appease these spirits. This little sacrifice, they often put them at the crossroads. You'll see them at stoplights, on paths. And they can be anything from leaves to milk to whatever the medicine man told them to put there depending on what they were asking for.

And so, you just see this fear driving so many of them. And this is another one of their spirits. They would call it a mask. Some of them, the women aren't allowed to look at. Some of them, you can get beaten if you're caught looking at them.

This one would come out to kind of help move things along if they're building schools or cleaning an area up or working in a field. This lady was brought to the church by Christians. Some people would say she had a curse put on her or maybe that she was possessed but that they were praying over her and taking care of her.

Just not really being sure. And I told them, I was talking to someone one day because a lot of times you would see homeless people walking up and down. Like, it's almost like they had lost their minds and people would say, oh, that's because of the spirits.

The spirits asked them to do something. They didn't fulfill their obligation and so they lost their mind. And I thought, you know, if they were in the States, some of them probably, they would take a pill in the morning and a pill at night and they would probably be okay.

That they would be, there are ways that we know how to help people but they just, the spirits for them informs everything. They believe it causes many of the problems in their life. And so, it was into this darkness that missionaries came in the 1960s to start a Baptist hospital in the northern part of the country.

And that's where Josh and I went to work. And the main goal in starting this hospital was to give physical healing but also to help introduce people in this area to Christ. And it reminds me of a verse that means a lot to me in James where it talks about, suppose one of you sees a brother without clothes or without food and says to them, go, be on your way, be well fed but does nothing to meet their needs.

What good is it? And so, this hospital is meeting physical needs and spiritual needs at the same time. I'm a nurse and so when we got over there, I hadn't intended to work with babies. I would cry over here when we'd have to start an IV on a kid and so I always thought if I could avoid pediatrics, I would prefer it but there was a need.

And so, God moves you to where you're working past your limits and that was definitely the case for me. I learned a lot and I spent a lot of time in research because I hadn't been trained in it but I cared for the premature babies over there.

So, here's some of them. I just like pictures of babies. These are three sets of triplets that I took care of while we were over there. The one, the lady who's sitting there with the three of them, she had had one baby with her first pregnancy, twins with the second and then triplets with the third.

So, he said, be careful. That's why she looks tired. But they all did really well. Our hospital there in the north has a really great reputation and is probably the only center in the northern part of the country that can successfully treat premature babies.

And so, I was really privileged to be a part of that and not only just because of the good reputation but because they would stay until they could get to two kilos or almost four and a half pounds. And so, you would have a month or two with the babies and with the moms and there's time to build that relationship and to talk to them.

And when the babies would go home, you could tell them because the resources are so limited, you could say, it's because of God that your baby's going home. God healed your child and he has a purpose for them.

And you would have a lot of conversations like that. They would get to hear the gospel. There's also a lot of education going on. There's still a lot of deep-rooted, I don't want to call them old wives tales, but there are certain things like that that you can kind of help.

Like there are better ways now to take care of your baby and to keep yourself healthy and to just kind of empower the moms to be able to take care of their kids in village settings. I also had the joy to work at a clinic about 30 minutes from the hospital that was started in a Muslim village and the story of how this clinic got there is pretty amazing as well because the people there are pretty hardened to the gospel.

But a French missionary was able to go in and by God's grace started a small church and he started this clinic. And it's been such a great way for people to come to be able to be healed. It's one of the only safe places that they have to hear the gospel.

They'll put on music videos or parts of the Jesus film in the tribal language. And I remember looking up from the desk one day and one lady who was waiting to be seen just had tears rolling down her face.

It was the part where I think Jesus had healed Mary and Mary was just, thank you, thank you, thank you. I said, mother, why are you crying? And she said, it's so good, it's so good. And you just think they won't have a chance to hear that anywhere else.

So that was an amazing experience. This was a young man, Adama, that I trained. I'm a registered nurse. I'm not a nurse practitioner but I was trying to train him to be one because there's nobody else to diagnose or prescribe medication there.

So I provide the resources and we talk through things as far as what I knew. And he has such a heart to see his people come to the Lord. He was Muslim himself before the French missionary came. And when he became, when Adama became a Christian he was persecuted.

His dad kicked him out of the family and he was beaten. And yet I saw him every day he would invite more people to come to faith and to walk that journey, the same one that he had walked because he knew that it was worth it and it had made such a difference to him.

And now he has such a reputation in the village before he was so angry. And now the people say he loves us so much and they can see the difference that Jesus made in his life.

I myself, I got to get my hands dirty quite a bit. I do ministry with my hands and one of my passions and desires in going over there overseas was to serve others and serve other people who are on the front lines themselves.

And so I got to have my hands in a lot of different projects. For example, churches that were well off grid and they wanted lights in their church so they could do literacy programs at night to read their own language.

There just was no power there. So to help them set up solar panels and stuff like that. Missionaries well off the grid who have a whole fleet of computers they need to power because they're trying to translate the Bible.

They're well off the grid and so they need stuff like solar panels and solutions like this. So I enjoyed being able to do some of that. We've got a Bible school that needed some water tower and water pump projects because they're just bursting at the seams and they can't invite more future pastors into the training program unless they're able to expand and have more capacity.

And we have like my wife mentioned briefly one of the things that one of our French colleagues started was a agricultural project with the goal of being able to support national church planters who would be going to reach their own people often into spaces where an American probably wouldn't be able to survive because of danger and extremist activity and stuff like that.

So a lot of those things it was just my pleasure to be a part of and give them physical help and technical support and those kind of things. And two at the hospital a lot of time just training guys how to keep things running.

I spent a lot of time translating materials because the Chinese are not very good at writing English manuals for West Africa. They try really hard and I appreciate that but sometimes more translation is needed and really because we have doctors and nurses that are on the front line there and they can't do their work and they can't minister to people without some of these things of equipment running every single day.

One of the coolest projects I've been working on and started a while ago was working with the translation team that's about to print the New Testament. We thought wouldn't it be cool if we did an audio version of this New Testament as well and so that's one thing that I continue to work on.

We're hoping to have it completed this summer but just the goal of being able to produce an audio New Testament that's quality enough to be able to put on the radio and I think we've released about five or six books so far and after the audio is done I send it off to them and they're the ones that are tasked with riding all over the countryside into their 30 different villages of their people group and it's been neat to hear the stories of people running to them when they hear the things coming and just anxious to be able to hear the word in their own language which has never happened before in the history of their people group.

So a lot of what we do in medical missions and when we present the gospel is planting seeds because the patients are sometimes there from one day to several to 120 days. We had one of them there for a long time and so you start off by bringing them meals or helping them financially if you can and then you pray that you get the opportunity or you earn the right to be heard and to speak into their lives and to sit down and share with them.

And I remember one case like that was a young man who had tried to commit suicide by drinking insecticide and he came to the hospital and they were able to save his life. And the next morning one of my colleagues went in and shared the gospel with him and his dad and they both accepted on the spot.

And stories like that are amazing. And I love that we get to talk to so many people about the Lord. In this picture you see what they do Monday through Friday every morning before the outpatient clinics open they'll share for 20 to 30 minutes either a story from the Bible or they're just preaching or they're presenting the gospel to the people who come.

So at a minimum there are 5 ,000 people a year who hear and of that we know of there are about 80 to 100 people who accept Christ every year because of this intentional presenting of the gospel. This is another way they'll take these little boards down with four different pictures once a month and they'll talk to everybody in the hospital.

They'll go to the bedside and they'll talk to the families and they're making sure that everyone who's there has gotten to hear. And so before I talk about Koratum I just wanted to expound a little bit on what Josh said because I am so excited about the Palika audio Bible that's going out because there are generations of people who will never learn to read French much less their own language.

That's why the audio Bible is so important. And the team that was taking the little memory card around to each of the villages they would get to sit down with each of the chiefs because if the chiefs don't accept it then nobody would be able to accept it in that village and they would get to listen to Ephesians or Mark or Acts.

And I remember they said that one week after that they delivered one of these books. One of the chiefs had passed away and the team was just had tears in their eyes. They said that was the first time that that man ever got to hear the word of God.

And they said can you imagine if we hadn't gone or something had kept us from going and they were so thankful that at least he'd gotten to hear one time. They said we've heard so many times and he only got to hear once and so it's such a challenge to us and we're so thrilled for the way it's being received.

And there was a funeral a couple of months ago it was a pretty big one so people from all the villages were coming and my mom's team they took the book of Romans and they played it on the loudspeakers because the funeral is there they go all night long and they'll dance and they'll sing and they'll speak and different things like that.

And so the team decided just to play the book of Romans and there was a Muslim religious leader who was there and when he heard it start up he sat down in a chair right next to the speakers so that he could hear better.

And he kept shushing all the kids because he wanted to hear it and scooting closer and they said after that time like they said everybody's talking about it like in the whole canton all the Palika people are talking about this word of God on audio and so that is one of our big prayer requests that you'll pray as the word goes out.

We know that God said it won't come back void but that God will cause it to take root and to bear fruit in people's lives. And so I had mentioned also the clinic that I work at in Wolo and how hard it how hard-hearted that people group is.

There have been two or three people who have gotten saved at the clinic and to me it's so significant because it is so hard to reach people in that area and we're so thankful that we're able to be a part of people hearing the gospel and this is Kota Tum.

She got saved at the hospital from listening to missionaries and having people pray with her and she had been really struggling with depression and a lot of stomach issues and we were able to help her and come alongside her and she became a Christian and the church has just kind of embraced her as a family and so the picture on the left is of her burning her like her idols the things that she would use to worship the spirits before she brought them to the front of the church and burned them in a little ceremony and the church sang Christian songs and danced with her.

And you guys have had such a big part in all the things that are happening over there and you sent us there and we do feel your presence with us when we go into hard situations. We know that you're praying and that you're keeping us there and so maybe you won't meet them on this side of heaven but you're going to meet your sister one day in heaven so thank you for your faithfulness and for being a part of that.

Prayer Requests, Persecution, and Hope in Christ

Just a few prayer praises prayer requests. There's a lot of hard that's happening over there. There's a lot of amazing joyful things that are happening there at the same time. This one is personal and kind of close to home.

This is our son Micah. He was. He had some breathing issues over the last few years and we've been able to find some solutions here in the states while we're back and it turns out it looks like he has asthma and some allergies to different things.

So we're praising God that we're finding solutions and we're going to continue to pray that some of those issues don't resurface over there because a lot of medical cases are just harder to deal with in West Africa away from some of the things we appreciate here in the states.

Um this is my mother-in-law Denny Johnson. I would like you guys to pray for this team this is a team that's been working with her for years on translating the new testament. A lot of these guys also are tasked with taking these audio bibles out to the different chiefs of the villages.

So pray for those that go out pray for boldness for them as well as all of us who work there. My wife touched briefly on like some of the persecution that happens. Persecution is very real. If you become a believer over there in certain communities especially some of the muslim communities you more often than not you will be kicked out of your family which means you lose your source of income your house your whole family which is everything and so in some of these places where there is not a huge christian presence there are not too many places for them to go.

So when people do come to Christ they know what they're getting into. So pray for that. I would ask you to pray also just for this region of the world especially West Africa north of us in this area up here Burkina Faso and Mali north of us there's been a lot of extremist activity over the years and some of it has gotten a little bit close to home and just the Ivorian government has been doing their part to try and keep some of these things at bay but scary times for some people.

I talked to one man recently he his village just across the border he said my village isn't even there anymore like it's just been completely demolished. There's not a single house still standing and so but in spite of all that all the hardships and threats man we look back over the last few years and just seeing how God continues to be faithful even in dark times especially in dark times.

So I want to leave you with this verse that I've really come to appreciate it's in Luke chapter 1 verses 78 and 79 it's kind of a short prophecy of Jesus about Jesus by his father-in-law sorry his uncle talking about what Jesus coming on earth is going to mean to the world and it says this.

And he shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in the darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace. So over and over again we saw dark times. We saw dark things.

We saw hard things over there. When we were over there as a family we saw everything from political corruption to poor new mothers trying to figure out how to feed their baby trying to convince their families that they should keep the baby because a lot of times people are they're forced to decide between giving medical care to a newborn or feeding a child they already have that's healthy.

And so some of these conversations and situations are pretty hard and bleak but time and time again like everything we saw was that God never stopped working like even through throughout COVID like we literally saw the whole world come to a screeching halt as the world kind of closed in around us where we work there.

But in spite of everything coming to a stop God never stopped. And so I would just encourage you with that whatever is happening in your life right now or whatever you may have been going through the last few years God doesn't stop working.

And I hope that's an encouragement to you. If there are any questions soon I'll just close by saying thank you, thank you, thank you. We couldn't do what we do without folks like you telling us to get out of the states and we'll take care of you and pray for you.

And we love you for having our backs for that even though we don't get to see you for four or five years at a time. And some of you this is the first time we've met you but know this that because of everyone's faithfulness and generosity and prayers like people that you'll never meet probably in this side of heaven people you haven't ever met yet.

You're reaching those people even though you haven't ever met them. And the good news is that someday in heaven we'll all be rejoicing together. So if you have any questions I guess this would be an appropriate time we've practiced a lot.

Questions and Answers About Missions, Culture, and Ministry

Yes sir.

What are your boys names?

Yeah I'll show you the picture. So Jack is on the left he's 12 years old Sam is on the right he's nine and Micah is in the middle. He's seven. So Jack, Sam, and Micah. Yep sometimes we joke that their names are Eenie, Meenie, and Miney and we hope to have no Mo.

We'll go back to Missouri and then we'll keep traveling until the end of April. Oh mid-July. Yeah. The boys asked to stay for another July 4th see the fireworks.

Micah is seven. Micah is seven.

Yep yes sir.

Quite often I think this last stage like we were next door neighbors for most of it so but typically when they live in the village they're about half hour drive away from us so enough where we can bug them on the weekends or.

Yep yep yeah. So our kids when we were in language study in France they did really well and so we ended up deciding that we were gonna put them in a Christian French school just just across the road from the hospital and so they did that and it was man there was a morning class then the French system has a two-hour break in the middle and then a few more hours in the afternoon but yeah a lot of interesting times we all had a lot to learn through that process.

Um well the kids hadn't some of them had never seen a western kid before and so they were really curious about their hair and their skin and and different things like that and would laugh at their accent and so some.

Some of the some of our boys could laugh it off and other ones couldn't so it was kind of a learning curve for sure but yeah.

Yeah the boys.

The two oldest ones did really well Sam was first in his class one semester I think and so they picked it up pretty quickly but the youngest one he had didn't really at all because he was too young really to start when we first got there and kind of bounced around from like preschool to kindergarten and didn't really learn.

Well he literally bounced around too.

Oh yeah.

Apparently he was singing and dancing in class.

They sit for so long there's not like the getting up to play games and and things like that. The structure is that one subject you write a paragraph on the board and the kids copy it down and then the teacher erases it and writes the next paragraph for the next subject and they copy it down.

And so our boys had a little experience with writing already so we're kind of proficient and so they would have to sit and wait for the rest of the class and it was a little bit harder I think for Micah to sit still so he made his own entertainment.

Yeah.

Yeah well.

I'm I don't know I'm assuming that middle line. There is the equator so we're just north of that. Well you would you should know. You grew up there two or three degrees north I think.

That's a good question I'll have to look that one up. Yeah I think they're five or six hours ahead of us here.

Yeah but as far as the length of the.

Yeah.

Yeah it's like six to six thirty and then the other half of the year like maybe six to seven thirty. It doesn't change a whole bunch.

Feels like it.

About this fast I think I have some homework to do. Next time we're back I'll have answers for you.

Yes sir.

Like national missionaries that is something that the national church is just now learning and it's really exciting to see but one of the things that has been hard hardest for them to learn is that.

Um.

This idea that to reach a different people group effectively you need to learn their language and culture and that's harder for them to understand because it's a lot closer to them than it would be for an American coming in.

But it's been really exciting over the last few years just the fact that they are now doing missions like three years ago. It wasn't happening two years ago it was. And so there's this training training program in place and they sent out the first three couples last year I think.

And so yeah it's a new thing. But it's really exciting that they're grabbing hold of it because that means it's not just a western man's culture a western man's thing anymore. Like this is God's program and so yeah it's really neat to see.

But yeah I mean you're talking the first missionaries over there were probably there in the 50s or 60s and so western missionaries yeah so how much of a foundation the people before us had to lay and the things that they saw.

And just putting in grinding hours just to see some of these things to come into fruition. We have a older nurse over there she retired like 15 years ago she's 82 but some of the stories she tells. Like the one of the biggest lessons we learned over there is just the the fruit and the benefits of long-term ministry because some of these people like her like she gets to see things that took 30, 40, 50 years to happen to happen.