I Wasn’t Expecting This…(by Thom)

Sometimes things happen out of the blue. You don’t see them coming until it hits you in the face. A lot of the time these things can be painful, but sometimes they are great things! We had such an occurrence this past Sunday. Amanda and I tend to visit about 4 different churches regularly, but we feel most at home at a church in the Magnambougou section of Bamako. On Palm Sunday, we got to church not even realizing it was Palm Sunday. We don’t have the cultural reminders here of Easter. There are no rabbits in store windows, no “Easter Sales” at the furniture stores, and there aren’t isles of Easter candy in the grocery stores. We don’t have the seasonal reminder, either. While it’s spring in the US, here we’re in full-blown hot season. Honestly, this is about as far to the opposite of spring as I can imagine. Anyway, we got to church and found out it was Palm Sunday. We sang a number of songs, in both Bambara and French, and then the announcements started. They went on for 45 minutes! The Magnambougou church is planning on building a new sanctuary. This is a good idea, because they regularly have 250-300 people coming in a building that would be comfortable at 200. Basically, the announcements were a business meeting. Here, culturally, the people didn’t mind a 45 minute announcement time (although I saw a few nodding off!). However, I felt like the energy had been sucked out of the room, and was starting to wonder how people will make it through this and the sermon.

Like I said, sometimes things happen out of the blue. The message was a very good one, and at the end, the pastor had an invitation. Twelve people (11 men and one woman) stood up to make a first-time commitment to Jesus! I was floored! We haven’t seen anything like this in our time here! I mentioned it to some others, and they were shocked, too! After the invitation, the pastor petitioned people to rededicate their lives to Christ. Between 50 and 75 people stood up!

So, after a long, dry announcement time, on a 105 degree day with no air conditioning, after a 3 ½ church service, great things happened. Praise the Lord!