"The Message is in the Journey" by Thom

Last weekend Joel Bubna, our field director, and I traveled to San, Mali for a pastors meeting. In Malian culture, to be introduced is very important. Since Joel and I are new here it was very important to go to this meeting of Alliance pastors. Friday, we left for Koutiala. Our mission has a guest house there, and we stayed there Friday night. Koutiala is about a 5 ½ hour drive from Bamako. Early Saturday morning we left Koutiala with 5 other missionaries. Four of them are also new and one of them is our “elder statesman”. It was his job to give the formal introduction. From there we had a 2 hour drive to San. Our introductions took about half an hour, during which Joel give a nice message about the importance of cooperation between the mission and the national church. Standing outside after the introductions someone remarked that we had drove about 7 hours to say “hi”! (That would like driving from Lima, OH to Milwaukee, WI!!) We all laughed about it, but at the same time we knew this is one of the important cultural differences between Mali and the US. Here, relationships are key; much more so than in the states. The US is a country of homes and walls. We live inside. Malians live outside. They cook outside; they socialize outside; they play outside; they work outside. To the average Malian, ‘inside’ is a place to sleep. Anyway, that brings me to the title of this post. The president of the national church instantly recognized the importance of our long trip. He was very happy we came and told us, “The message is in the journey.” How exciting it is to know that relationships have been started and friendships begun.

Romans 10:15 – And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”