A Grand Adventure: Christmas, camping, and a wedding!

On December 31st, we celebrated the long awaited wedding of Timothee Ouattara and Lea Sekongo! I wish I could describe the joy that I felt to see this day finally arrive! I have known them both since I arrived in Cote d'Ivoire; Timothee has been one of my closest Ivorian brothers. I've worked in sunday school with both of them, and traveled to Ghana with Tim. He's been my translator and cultural guide, and we've talked for months about the day they would get married. As I gave Lea and Timothee hugs in the greeting line, and congratulated them, Tim yelled, "en fin!" (finally). Here's our Benkadi group picture.

As the balafones started up, I joined the rest of the youth in a circle, doing what I like to call the Senoufo shuffle. I snapped this picture on my way past the lovely couple.

Alyssa, Mai, and I. Mai is Timothee's sister and my good friend.

We're all wearing the wedding pagne (for close family and friends who are practically family)

This is right when Lea said "I do", or in this culture, "oui!"

The grueling 5 minutes of the traditional "roll up the veil" routine. Meanwhile, I was standing next to Mai and the other youth from church, yelling and screaming for him to kiss her already.

The kiss!

Lyss and I

Tenan and I! Il etait trop sappe!

Poor Tim and Lea were exhausted at this point.. which is why they look unhappy. It was the end of a fantastic day.

Between Christmas and new years, we took a trip to the NZ river lodge, west of Bouake. Spending a few days in the bush, in the middle of nature, cooking over the fire was such a refreshing time. Here's some of our team posing in the stream.