If you missed our livestream of WorldVenture::In Review where we interviewed, Afrika Pruitt, here’s the recording:
Links:
- Learn more about Afrika Pruitt here.
- 5 Ways to Reach Refugees in Your Community
- Afrika Pruitt: The Journey to Find Her Calling
Highlights Of Our Conversation:
- “So, something I’ve been reading in my time in the world right now is I kind of did the reading through the Bible in a year, but I did it out of order because I started in the New Testament, because sometimes when I end in the New Testament, I rush through it at the end of the year. And so, I just started there, and I recently finished Revelation. And so, like in Revelation, of course, like I’m reading about how God has brought his whole plan through for fruition and through Jesus, the LAMB. He’s opened the scroll and now we see that all nations are coming to know him. And then I’m starting in Genesis. And so that was kind of fun to go from Revelation to Genesis because now I’m like, Oh, they don’t even know what’s coming.”
- “God has had a plan. He’s been working for a very long time and so I can trust him during my season of waiting right now.”
- “But then very sadly, the fall of Kabul happened, and Oklahoma took the third largest amount per capita at the time refugees from Afghanistan. And so, Oklahoma City, we took 800 and we had no housing. So, we put everyone pretty much in a hotel for several months as new families were coming in every day. And that experience was so unique because when I would go to the hotel to meet with my families, it just felt like stepping into a different country.”
- “Yes, I think that kind of two things. One: Just be okay with the awkwardness, like you’re going to make mistakes. There’s going to be moments where you’re trying to communicate and you don’t know what each other is saying, and then you end up just kind of smiling and nodding and, you know, just being there. And your presence alone is so important.”
- “So, like I said, I had been, like, starting to pray about maybe finding a different way to do the ministry I was doing. I was working for a government agency and they’re amazing. They’re doing so much work, but my faith couldn’t really be a part of what I was doing because of funding. And so that’s hard because that’s like one of the most important parts is being able to talk about the Lord and what’s meaningful and sharing about him. And so, I was praying about what that looked like. I was praying, feeling like the Lord was maybe asking me to move overseas. I didn’t know what that meant. And so I just asked a few people to start praying around me. And then during that time, one of my friends who is serving with WorldVenture, her and her family are in France, and she had texted me…and said, hey, you’ve been on my mind, my heart. And I just think that maybe, like, this would be a good opportunity for you.”
- “[France is] about 1.23% evangelical Christians. And so, I think that was really surprising to me when I first when I first learned that and from my conversations with the missionaries, it sounds like a lot of people maybe have a history of religion, but not a lot of personal relationship, not something that they are really doing anything on a regular basis, maybe just like an identity. And so there there’s a lot of need for there’s also only like one church for every 32,000 people. So need for access to people who are just living out the gospel in their lives, in their relationship with the Lord.”