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This week’s news stories include: Nigeria stumbles upon Benin, & Benin becomes the host city of a national Bootcamp

This past week, on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday, we had a school group from Nigeria come down to Benin to be trained by DRIME! We had a blast with them the three days. We taught them some of our dramas, trained them in evangelism, played awesome games with them, & just had an overall blast with them! It was hilarious, even after the three days that we had known each other, they already had realized one of my quirks...I wear backpacks, EVERYWHERE! So because of this, they bought me this funky African backpack as a thank you present, I was honoured by the gift, and now have another backpack woo! Us & the DRIME Benin leaders definitely enjoyed out time together with the Nigerian Team! It was actually the first time the DRIME Benin leaders go to train dramas! Exciting! Favourite moment of the three days would have to go to Janna’s epic fail! We were fooling around, attempting to kick over each other, and Janna was confident she could kick over Calixte’s head...poor Calixte! You can see where this story is going! One second she is winding up to kick over his head, the next, Calixte gets a foot directly in his face! Classic moment we all laughed off!

Bootcamp was this weekend! For those of you who don’t know, bootcamp is the kick off weekend for all the DRIME Benin members, to start the year! As you can tell, a very exciting moment for all of us & for the DRIME Benin Leaders! We had an awesome weekend training them in the dramas & evangelism, getting to know them all, & just spending the weekend together bonding to start off the year together! It was so amazing and crazy to actually be with the DRIME Benin team. To see where we started, & where we are now, amazing! All the glory goes to God, because his hand has been over this ministry the whole entire team!

We completely left the weekend up to the DRIME Benin leaders, for them to run it all, and make all the decisions together without us. It was so cool to see them run the weekend & take charge of every situation, us just there to help with whatever they wanted us to help with.

DRIME Benin did their first official ministry time to close off the weekend! Was that ever awesome to see them perform the dramas, and get into conversations with the crowd, and just really dive right into being a part of DRIME! They are amazing servants of Christ with awesome hearts for Him! DRIME Benin has a great year ahead of it! One member at the end of the weekend said the following which just melted out hearts: “I have never experienced such joy or felt such a sense of family than I have in these past two days.” God was so present this weekend, already creating a tight family bond between the DRIME Benin team! Not only that, but in our 2 hours of ministry, 30 people came to know Jesus as their personal Saviour! Praise God!

Random Fact: Did you know rats can climb up walls in Benin....EEK! Abby & I were chilling in the training room at bootcamp, when we saw a rat randomly climb up a completely vertical wall...WOAH, creepy! Apparently all the lizards here have rubbed off on the rats! Haha.

‘It’s a stormin’ out there!’

The past few weeks the storms have been crazy, which is really fun though haha! The thunder and lightning have been going berserk! Last night actually, we had one huge storm at 3am which woke us all up, loudest thunder I have ever experienced for sure!

The sad thing about it all though is that it creates massive flooding here in Benin, due to the lack of a proper sewering system. It is actually crazy how much flooding has occurred in the past while. Most side streets are completely flooded, in which many people have to vacate their home! Where we live is okay, but the road that leads up to our house is completely flooded, so we have to walk to the main road everytime we want to go anywhere on mototaxi’s now, because cars and mototaxi’s cannot get to us! We were on our roof looking out on the city, and people are literally cementing their doors higher, and constantly pouring out bucket fulls of water out of their houses! We are fortunate to live on a second floor of an apartment! Olivier said that every June and July is like this, many people have to leave their houses and such! Today we were walking to the cyber cafe, passing by many roads, and we actually had to take another route because of flooding, it’s crazy! Sewers is definitely something that I did not think twice about back in Canada, but am now very fortunate to have them!