I'm Back

I am officially the worst blogger ever. I can't believe it's been six months since my last post! Well, a lot has happened since then. I can't talk about everything, so I'll start in April, the busiest month ever! I had one volunteer come who wanted to stay for three weeks among the people her church has engaged. It was pretty brave of her because April is one of the hottest months! We left Good Friday with the intentions of celebrating Easter weekend with them. It's already an eight hour drive to this village, plus we had a major tire blow out that required buying a new tire (thank God for protecting us and providing someone to change the tire!) so we didn't get to the village until pretty late. The believer there had no idea we were coming, and he was definitely surprised to see us (I'm not sure if it was a pleasant surprise or not). We talked to him and found out that he and the other believers were planning on celebrating Easter the next day, from Saturday night until Sunday morning. In true Malian fashion, they would celebrate with food and dancing.
The next night, we got dressed up in our nicest Malian outfits and started the party. Peter, the leader of the believers spoke to them about Easter, then we got started dancing. We danced the exact same dance to different songs from 9pm-1am. Everyone stands in a circle and walks around doing two steps with their left leg, then two with their right, then back to left, back to right, and so on. No one really kept in beat and some people went faster than the other, so it kind of created a domino effect with all of us in such a crowded circle. There was a lot of tripping and falling into the person in front of you, then pushing them into the person in front of them, and so on. Anyways, after a couple minutes of this the music starts to pick up and the dancing gets a little faster. At this point you turn to face the inside of the circle and your left leg stays semi-still while your right legs does two steps in the front then two in the back. I say semi-still because you're still moving to the right in the circle. Honestly, it's not difficult at all, but I'm a terrible dancer, so it was a little challenging for me. I was the weakest link in the dancing circle and no one liked to be behind me because they would run into me so much. They did, however, like to watch me from outside the circle; they laughed and laughed.

Easter morning we were all tired, but about 20 believers gathered together to hear about the resurrection of Jesus. It was a privilege to celebrate with these new believers, but heartbreaking to know that the rest of the village has no idea what or why we are celebrating.

The rest of the trip went really well. We went to many new villages and found a lot of people interested in hearing more. We even were able to train Peter in going to other villages to share stories from God's Word. Although we have a car and could have driven, we wanted to show Peter that you can go to villages and share the gospel even if you don't have a car, so asked him if we could walk to a village and share the gospel with him. He picked the village and told us that it was 6 kilometers (about 3.5 miles) away (we went back and drove it and it was definitely 9 kilometers!) Our visit went really well and about 50 people heard the gospel. On the way back, Peter told us he wanted to go to another village, this one would be a 15 K (about 9 miles) walk.
"Round trip?" we asked. "No," he replied, "each way." We didn't want to squelch his enthuiasm for sharing the gospel in other villages, so we agreed. That's 18 miles! Oh my, it was a long walk. I was terribly sore the next day, but it was completely worth every step. We were all able to share the gospel and Peter presented a powerful gospel message. He told them plainly that they had to roads to choose, one led to heaven and one to hell. He is a very timid man by nature, but the Holy Spirit has given him incredible boldness in the last year that I've known him.
God is really working among this people group and it is such a privilege to be a part of it!
Please pray for them for two things: First, they are facing a lot of persecution, so please pray that God will give them strength to bear it and that He will continue to grow the church through it. Also, here at the end of dry season, food is running out. It will not be until the fall that the harvest comes in and they will have food. Please pray that God will provide food for them.

After the three weeks in the village, I went on vacation! We went to Paris, Mersaille, and London. France was fine, but London was freezing! I was actually looking forward to coming back to the 110+ temperatures of Mali!

Now I need to share with you two "compliments" I've gotten from Malians.
1) "Oh, Lala (my Malian name), you went to America and you came back big!" It's a compliment to tell people they've gained weight, it means America was good to you.
2)"I want to gain weight so I can be like you, big but not too big"
I realize this is a genuine a compliment as us telling someone they're beautiful or they've lost weight or something, but please keep your compliments to yourself, people!

That's all for now, hopefully it won't be 6 months before my next post!

Bainbridge and Baptisms

I just got back from a great week in the bush! I got to go out with one of out teams from Georgia to one of the more southern people groups here. This people group has been notably hard to reach, but God has been so faithful to lead us to a few seekers. One man, Peter told them on a previous trip that he had been waiting 30 years for believers to come. Shortly after, his best friend, Paul, got saved. We have had the privilege of watching them grow and share their faith with people in their village and nearby villages. Both of them have experienced a lot of persecution, especially Paul. He told us the day he became a believer that he would be persecuted, and he was right. He was kicked out of his village and had nowhere for him or his family to live. They told him that he had too much influence on the young men
and they did not want the young men to stray from their muslim faith. He was eventually let back into his village, but he had to promise that he would not try to share Christ with anyone in his village. A couple months ago, he was on a trip to a different city and when he came back he found out that his one-year-old daughter had died of malaria. Because he was a believer, no one was with his wife. She had been alone there with the little girl's body and no one even cared.Through all of this, though, the church there is growing. They now have 50 believers who are meeting together regularly! Praise God! We talked to them on this last trip about the importance of being baptized, and they agreed. Baptism is hard here because it opens them up to even more persecution as they are truly abandoning the muslim faith, but they bravely went forward with it. Please continue to pray for these Christian leaders as they continue to endure through persecution and evangelize their area. They told us that they knew the only way to get through the persecution was to continue to witness. They needed more believers so
that they could encourage each other and work together. Pray for more believers to be added to this number!

Other news, I'll be coming home in a month for 2 weeks for Christmas! I'm so excited to get to see my friends, family, and America for a little while!

New Teams

It's been forever since I updated! A lot has happened, we've had some great teams come in and have seen God do some amazing things. One team was a dental team that came in. They spent entire days pulling teeth (it was really gross). I tried to stay as far away from the blood as possible, so I just cleaned instruments and loaded shots. You would not believe how scared the people get when they have to get their teeth pulled. They were hollering and trying to get away from the dentists. One lady had 16 teeth pulled! I'm not sure how may she had left after that, probably one or two. It will really make you remember to brush your teeth!
Last week we had a group from the Tennessee Baptist Convention come. They have adopted the south eastern part of Mali, so we showed them some villages there. We had to go out the week before they came and make sure we could find the villages and make sure the villages were ok with a bunch of white visitors. We made it to the first village fine, but when we went to look for the second, we couldn't get to it. The road had turned into a river during rainy season. We decided we would take them to another village, but we didn't get to go out there. The team got here and we were taking them to the village, but we didn't end up in the village we had planned. The other car and I got separated and when we we finally found each other, we were at a different village and just decided to stay there. It's funny how God has to work pretty hard to get us where He wants us! We

found a believer in the village and spent the night with him. He had lived there for over 25 years but had only once shared his faith with anyone in the village. We asked him to take us to a few different places and we shared stories from God's word there. The people were really open and seemed hungry for God's word. The second village we went to was a little different. The people were friendly, but it was clear that the chief and was not open to hearing the gospel and was not willing for anyone in his village to become a follower of Jesus. We were a little discouraged until the second day when a young man who had been hanging around us a

lot told us that he wanted to become a follower of Jesus. The second night we went to greet the chief, but didn't plan on staying there until he told us that more people had come and wanted to hear stories from God's word. He told us that 2 men had wanted to follow Jesus, but that they had sent someone in there place to hear the stories. We stayed there for a while and then went back to bed, not really knowing what to think about these two men, or knowing who they were. The next morning as we prepared to leave, it started raining. We were a little impatient to leave because we had crossed some creeks on the way in and wanted to get out before the water got too high, but our translator wouldn't come out of the hut until it stopped raining. We waited and waited on him, and finally he came and told us that the two men had come to talk to us. We talked to them for a while
and they told us that they wanted to follow Jesus even though they knew they would face persecution.These men understood the gospel, but they knew little else. It's awesome to see how the Holy Spirit's power to draw people to God no matter how little they know. They begged us to come back and teach them more, but they said don't go back to the chief's, teach them somewhere else. Once again I was reminded that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. God is doing all the work, but we have to be obedient to the great commission and make disciples of all the nations.
Please pray for these new believers as they will be facing a lot of persecution in the coming days. Pray that God will give them wisdom beyond their knowledge and strong backs to face the struggles coming up. Pray that they will have a heart for evangelism and share the gospel with those around them.

One Year

It's hard for me to believe I'm already one year into my term! It seems like time has flown by, but when I think back to where I was a year ago, it seems like a long time ago. I think my favorite thing about being here is seeing how God is working everywhere, even where (or especially where) no one is joining Him. We have had so many divine appointments, driving around (probably lost) until we found a random village, only to find that there are people there who have wanted to hear more about Jesus, but there has been no one to tell them.
I probably write about this over and over, but the work really is the Lord's! There are people groups here that have absolutely no believers, but what a promise that one day there will be believers from that people group, worshipping around the throne with us! God made that promise, He has to make sure it comes to fruition, He cannot lie! It is a privilege for us to be apart of the completion of that promise.
However, there are definitely times since I've been here that

I have not seen it as a privilige. It's awful how I can get distracted by little things, like, it's too hot here, I can't find anything I need, misquitoes are biting me, I'm sick of having to explain why I don't want to marry the men, etc. It's so easy to get caught up thinking about what I'm missing at home, how much easier life was there, but I forget it doesn't matter.
I want to ask you to pray for the last people groups of Mali without any believers, especially the Moors. They are a nomadic people who live in the desert. Getting the gospel to them will be hard. but Praise God not impossible. There will be Moors worshipping the Lord one day, and let's pray that that day comes quickly!

Things I have learned so far:
-Bambara! My Bambara is terrible, but I can usually say what I need to (using hand gestures to clarify!) and have only made a few major language mistakes (that I know of)
-How to eat with my hands. You might think this sounds simple, little kids do it all the time, but it's hard. I don't know if it's because we got in so much trouble as kids for doing it or because we're out of practice, but it's hard. Especially when the food is so hot it's burning your fingers, Africans can pick up red hot coals, so they don't understand why I can't touch boiling sauce!
-How to drive a stick shift in Bamako traffic! No kidding, one of my biggest fears about coming here was driving a stick shift. To say I got off to a rough start learning is an understatement. I think I killed the enging about 90% of the time (that's not an exaggeration, I was actually that bad). Fortunately, I have only hit one non moving object and no moving ones since I've been here! And I rarely stall anymore either. Clearly that is not my own skill, God knew I would need special grace to drive here!
-How to eat wierd food. I've eaten rat, wart hog, pigeon, and surprisingly, all of those were better than the worst food of all, "to." Especially cold to. Gag.

That's all I can think of for now, but surely I've learned more than that. Who knows what I'll learn in this next year? Maybe Bambara with no hand gestures? Doubt it. Maybe I'll figure out what I'm going to do when I get back to America. Right now, I have no clue! I doubt my parents are going to let me live with them the rest of my life, so I better work on a plan!

On a different note, yesterday we all went to a friend of ours' baby naming party. They had really wanted us to come, and there were 7 of us white women there, which has to be some sort of record. The dad had borrowed a friend's camcorder and insisted on keeping it really close to our faces for most of the party. We stayed for a while, ate (the food was delicious, I didn't know lamb was good until I came here!) and finally asked if we could leave. The dad said that a friend of his had wanted to come meet us, and we had to wait for her. We waited and waited and waited and waited, finally she came. Apparently she was a griot, because as soon as she came, she started singning. She then asked our names, then would sing a song about our names, the command us to stand up and dance, and one by one we each had to dance for her with the camcorder recording our every move. The thing about griots is, they sing for you when they want to, we never asked for this, and you have to pay them! I actually paid the lady $2 for her to sing a song about my name and then she made me dance. That's a rip off. She then would make us get up and dance in groups that she chose, then she made us all get in a circle and dance around. Finally, she made us get in the middle of the circle "one by one" and shake our butts at everyone then point to the next person who had to do this. All of this was caught on film. How mortifying.