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Kevin and Sherri Cooley
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Settling into a new village and a new routine has proved rocky at first. The students had grown to love the kids, teens and elders of Gambell and so found it really hard to say goodbye and come to a new village. The sentiments I heard most often is they felt like they were abandoning those they had loved and ministered too. As a result their first impressions of Savoonga were not so high. I think that is just the way it goes though. In the past our DTS teams have always come to Savoonga first then gone to Gambell and so all the past teams felt Savoonga to be more open to the things of God and Gambell to be the harder place to minister. This team following the opposite route, are finding the reverse to be their experience. We have been encouraging them that their feelings are normal but soon they will find a great love of the people of this village and find it just as hard to leave here. I am grateful that in what has proved to the hardest week of our outreach we had a visit from Sherri, one of the school leaders and part of the YWAM Homer leadership team. She came bearing chocolates, encouraging words and some challenges to students and staff alike on the things she could see in us as a team. It was good to have her here this week, especially for me. Being about 10 years older than my students or fellow staff I don’t really have anyone I can lean on. So it was good to have someone I could talk to and share my burdens with. I appreciated being able to ask for advice on how to inspire, challenge or comfort my students as needed.
Our first week here was intense. An evangelist who has seen many people healed in his crusades in India, was here for our first week. He held 3 days of meetings where he preached the gospel and prayed for the sick. We were part of his prayer team. We had our team meetings in the mornings, and then sat in on his afternoon and evening teachings. And then we had ministry times to the young adults in the late evenings. This made for a really, really long and concentrated first week. On one hand I worried for my team as I could see the long days 9 am-3am were quickly taking their toll on everyone’s energy and enthusiasm. Yet at the same time I loved seeing at least 16 people (what I counted on the first 2 of the 3 day meetings) surrender their lives to Jesus. What a way to start off our month of ministry here! This next week we should move into our own schedule. We have decided to sleep in an hour later to accommodate for the late nights. What you have to understand about village life is this is a night community. Since people don’t have to get up and go to work it is not uncommon to have guest until 4-5 in the morning. So we will sleep until 10, spend the morning worshipping and praying for each other as a team. After lunch we will go out into the village to visit elders. We have several invites already. Yesterday I and Sherri went to pray for a woman recovering from a stroke and I promised to bring some of the girls back for a visit in the weeks to come. And today I went and played cards with two ladies in their 70-80’s and lost severely!!!!! After supper we will run a children’s ministry time. In Gambell I did not get real involved in the children’s time as I wanted my students to run with it…however I love being with the kids and really missed out. So I plan to be around as much as possible. During those same hours other members of our team will go play basketball at the gym with the teens or hang out in the living room with the older kids who come to visit. 11 pm we will be hosting a nightly worship service and Bible Study. We have been informally doing this all week and have had a great turn out. This will be a great time to focus on feeding those new baby lambs that recently gave their lives to the Lord. Ideally at 2 am we will say goodbye to our housefull of guests!!! We also hope to assist the local Baptists pastor as much as possible. On one hand we want to be an encouragement to him and his wife but also we want to connect him with those we have ministered too while here. Please keep us in your prayers. Many in the team have been fighting a chest cold. We were told the church we had stayed at in Gambell is full of mold and well I did get the same deep cough last time I was there. We are recovering though! Pray that as this first “real” week goes that the team will connect to the people of Savoonga, and catch God’s heart for this village. Pray that as leaders we can guide our team through this transition, and help them engage with ministry here as well as protect them and their time.
-Loralie A. Underwood |
