Diary of an Adoption p.2 (by Amanda)

July 29, 2006
We learned a little more about the twins yesterday and settled on a plan of action. Well, at least we have a better idea of what we are going to do. As soon as papers are signed we can pick them up. We are trying to hope and yet prepare ourselves for the chance of not getting them. Another missionary has given us a crib to use and also a pack and play. Now we need are some car seats to borrow. I want these children so badly. For the first time since we got the news about them I slept well! I keep telling myself that I need to sleep so when they come I can have fond memories of what sleep is like.
I love them already and I have never even touched them!

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Diary of an Adoption p.1 (by Amanda)

July 28, 2006

This has been one of the hardest and joyful weeks of my life. I didn’t get much sleep Sunday night but I figured I could make it up later. Little did I know what God was doing. Wednesday Gail Warner (one of the missionary nurses in Koutiala) called us and asked if we would consider adopting twins. We immediately began to discuss it. “Yes” was the only option we could imagine. These beautiful babies whose mom died are now in Koutiala and we will probably be able to see them in less than a week. I have dreamed about having kids for so long I am struggling to believe that God may actually be blessing me with not just one child but two. I feel so unworthy of His grace and goodness and yet He may be bestowing on me the gift of life. Two little girls for me to raise is the ultimate responsibility. He may be charging me with their spiritual, emotional, and physical growth. I cannot describe the depths of my feelings at this moment. I waiver between weeping and fear and joy. I do not know what tomorrow may bring and if we truly get these children it will be a gift to raise them. I only pray that I will do it to the glory of God. I want them to know God, but I also want them to understand the overwhelming depth of His love and the love God has bestowed on me to give to them.

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Evangelism in the Bush (by Thom)

A week ago or so, I talked about the idea of what exactly a missionary looked like. Before my first trip to Africa, I had a rather narrow viewpoint of what a missionary did. I pictured them all as preachers who started churches. Obviously, the group of missionaries is much more diverse than that. Last week, I made my first trip deep into the bush to meet a Malian who is serving as a missionary in his own country, in an area without the Gospel. This seems like a good oportunity to share the experiances of Eli and the day-to-day work of a church-planting missionary. Again, like with the idea of a missionary in general, I’m sure that all are different, so I’m going to try and explain what this particular missionary is doing. Others, surely, have completely different approaches to evangelism.

Eli lives on the edge of his village. He’s lived there for about 8 years. Although he never attended high school he did attend seminary and learned to speak French on his own. He loves the Lord and has a burden to share his love with his fellow countrymen. Each Sunday since moving to this small, out-of-the-way village he and his family have gathered on his front porch. There they sing songs of worship, they pray together, and Eli shares from the Bible. His village is staunchly Muslim; most of the people there are descendents of the Fulani people – the first people-group to introduce Islam to Mali. Despite this, curious people stop by his porch and listen on Sundays. Some may like the music and others are wondering why a person with knowledge would be so willing to give it way: “After all, isn’t knowledge is too valuable to give away freely?” (This is a very common belief in Mali) A couple of people from near by villages also come each Sunday. They’re the only believers in their villages and they don’t have their own church to attend. Still, after all these years only two people from Eli’s village have come to faith in Jesus.

On the other days of the week Eli goes into the village and greets people. He’ll sit and talk, drink tea, and invite them to stop by the next Sunday. Everyone knows Eli is a Christian and they ask him questions about Jesus and the Bible. In fact, many people say they want to be Christians but they can’t: they are afraid of persecution.

When Eli isn’t in the village he’s at home farming. This is normal in Mali, and even necessary if his family is to eat. Life isn’t easy, and I imagine Eli needs a lot of encouragement. Still, he seems to always have a huge grin on his face. He’s laid a great foundation in his village, and another American missionary remarked to me “Once a family or two come to Christ, a large part of this village will follow suit.”

Again, I’m sure there are all sorts of different ways church-planting missionaries act, minister, and live, but I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the life of Eli and will hold up his ministry in prayer.

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Very, Very Rural Mali (by Thom)

Note: I wrote this on Thursday, but was without internet access so it wasn’t posted until Saturday. All time references should be based on Thursday.

Today I made my first trip into the ‘deep bush’. Here we define ‘the bush’ as a place where there isn’t electricity or phone. By this definition, I’ve visited the bush before but even in those places there was a certain degree of comfortable familiarity. Today, however, I saw a lot of things I’ve never seen before.

A little less than ten years ago, the Malian national church sent out 5 missionaries into areas where there hadn’t been churches before. The American church gave the Malian church some start-up money with the intention that after the first year the local church would start supporting, and each year increase the percentage of support. However it didn’t work out that way and the Malian missionaries got mostly forgotten about outside the local mission-sending agency. After all these years now all the money is about gone and the Malian church will need to start fully supporting their own missionaries. In order to raise awareness and support for these missionaries (there are 4 of the original 5 still serving in their villages) the Malian church is having a conference this fall. In order to show the ministries of these missionaries the National church has asked if I would make a video project showing them, including interviews and footage of their ministries. I was excited to be able to be a part of this project! That’s why I made my first trip into the ‘deep bush’ today.

I visited the tiny village of Bledio (pronounced blen-GIO) with Amanda, our houseguest from the US, and two other missionary couples. What a fun time! Life is definitely a lot slower out there. The missionary in Bledio has had exactly two converts there. However, they were both fairly old people and died shortly after becoming Christians. This has scarred off the other villagers from becoming Christian. It’s a bit hard to understand, sitting in America, but the idea of Muslim in Mali and the idea of Muslim in the Mid East are completely different. One major separation is the mixture of animism in the faith here. With these traditional beliefs, people will ‘cast spells and curses’ and credit all bad things to demons at work. Since the two converts both died, the villagers believe that Christianity is ‘cursed’ and are afraid to accept Jesus.

Still, the missionary-pastor is filled with a wonderful joy. He goes into the village and sits and talks. The men on this trip all went through the village greeting people. Despite his faith and despite living a completely different life style, the missionary has become good friends with the villagers. I cannot stress how important this is here in Mali for evangelism. I believe that after a family comes to Christ, a large part of this village will follow suit quickly.

I got to video a lot of the missionary’s stories and some of his area. My next step is to return to Bamako and edit. I have a lot more thoughts and ideas from this trip, and I hope to share them here again real soon.

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Cooking In Mali (by Amanda)

Living overseas presents its own sets of challenges: you’ve heard about our grocery shopping, house hunting, driving and all kinds of unique experiences we have shared. Sometimes things as normal as cooking become an adventure. Like the other day I was opening tomato paste when the contents exploded over me and the wall I thought “Wow! Did it have range!” The fun part is all the new things we get to try. Some things stay the same; other things are totally different. When we went to church a couple weeks ago I even got to stir the food. I stood over this big pot with a huge metal spoon and stirred what seemed like ten pounds of food. It was a photo moment. After church we then got to eat the meal that was prepared in the big pot and it was delicious! Even the name sounds good: “nsaame” (pronounced “en-SAHM-ay”).
At home we eat a lot of what is familiar: steak, potatoes, spaghetti, even tacos. The big difference always is in how it’s prepared. For tacos we have our house help make the tortilla chips (she does a better job than I do). For spaghetti there is no store bought sauce for us; so it’s just a little different every time. It depends on whether I have tomato paste or tomato sauce at home for making it.
Often I am looking for new recipes on line which can get a bit tricky because there they tend to have prepackaged food in each recipe. For example, the other day I made a breakfast casserole and it had as one of the ingredients “frozen hash browns” so I made my own hash browns for the casserole. If I cannot find a certain ingredient I often try to substitute something else or I may just move on but it is always fun to look. I know this may seem normal to a lot of you, but I never liked cooking at lot in the US, so this is all new to me. Here is the recipe for nsaame. It was given to me in Bambara so this is my translation:

• The list of things you need are: oil, tomatoes, onions, meat, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, pepper, tomato paste, garlic, najini (boulin cubes), salt, water and rice.
• Put oil in a pan and brown the meat (usually they use some sort of beef). Add some water, tomato paste, and boulin and bring to a boil and let it simmer. Cut up the onion in rings, cut up tomato, carrots, potato, and cabbage (not too small). Add garlic pepper and salt as you want. Bring to a boil and then let it simmer for a couple of hours.
• Make rice and place the sauce on top.
• As you can see in the picture, hard boiled eggs also make a good topping.
  

Sorry that this is missing details (like how much of each thing), but that is how they give recipes here. They basically tell you at the end to cook it until it is ready and they never tell you a teaspoon of this or a cup of that you just have to give it your best estimate.
If anyone out there tries this, please let me know how it turned out and what you think. We love eating African cuisine, and enjoy sharing it.

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Misconceptions (by Thom)

One of the questions rolling around in my head lately is, “What exactly is a missionary?” I know that even just 3 years ago, my idea was way, way off the mark. I imagined a missionary as someone living far off, probably in a mud or thatch hut, who spent their days preaching. At the time, I didn’t see how I could fit into that role; much less offer something to the missions community, short of my money. My trip to Burkina Faso in 2004 changed those misconceptions for me. While I was there, I saw people living in a cross-cultural environment who worked in a medical clinic, built radio stations, managed a guest house, did finances, and (of course) preached. This totally blew away my preconceived notions. “You mean I could do missions? I’m not a preacher! But I can do radio; I can fix computers; I can add numbers reasonable well.” Low and behold, that was exactly what the Lord had in store for us. Perhaps all three!

This still doesn’t answer my first question: “What exactly is a missionary?” I’ve Google-searched the web a few times, but most answers seem incomplete. In fact, most formal definitions are pretty close to what I thought before I actually saw missions in practice! However, the best definition I’ve found so far is found right in the Great Commission: And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." - Matthew 28:18-20 (New American Standard Bible).

In addition to that, I’ve been thinking about roles in the church. The place for evangelists and preachers is obvious in scripture. I also like to look at the roles of the seven called to serve in Acts chapter 6: the Apostles were being bogged down in busy work so they appointed “seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and of wisdom”. I’ve chosen as my mission statement (so to speak) that my role in Mali is to “serve the missionaries, doing what I can the best I can so they can do what they can the best they can.”

It’s amazing to learn more about the missions community. I’m still new enough that in many ways I’m an outsider. I’m learning more and more each day what is involved in fulfilling the Great Commission and that is exciting!

Next week I’ll probably being driving out into the bush. The Mali national church has sent a handful of Malian missionaries to spread the Gospel and has asked me to produce some videos of their ministries to raise awareness among fellow believers. Explaining all this really should be its own blog entry so I’ll save it for another time. I’m very excited about the opportunity and ask you to pray for my trip, for the translation, and for my work – that it will lead to a better awareness of what Malian missions means to the church here.

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I Kinda Like My Ruts (by Thom)

Let me start by saying I actually like my ruts. When things are steady, when they’re consistent, I feel like I do my best. I’m fully aware that this seems a bit askew, considering we’ve been called to a missionary life in Mali, Africa. That’s hardly what most would consider a fertile ground for building ruts and patterns. Just a couple of weeks ago, though, I was thinking to myself that we’d mostly settled into a comfortable pattern. We’re feeling more and more at home in our new house here in Bamako, things at the mission office have been going well, language class has been consistently challenging, but also consistently rewarding, and life, in general, is feeling consistently good. Starting this week, though, things have been changing and will be continuing to change for the next several weeks.

First, we have a short-term work team here in Bamako now. They come from Florida and are mostly here to work on constructing the Sabalibougou church (Sabalibougou is a section of Bamako and the church there is growing and dynamic. We’re so thankful that we can be a part of its continued growth!). Also with the team came an accountant to audit the mission books. This was daunting to me as I didn’t know what to expect, but it has gone well so far.

Next up, we have visitors coming from Michigan to stay with us for the next month. We’re looking forward to this and getting to play ‘hosts’ in our adopted city and country.

Also coming up I (and possible Amanda, too) will be making several trips out to the bush to visit with Malian pastors who are in completely unreached parts of Mali. They’re considered missionaries sent by the Malian church and have a very difficult job. I’m going to be filming them and putting together a video with their stories.

I don’t expect to feel ‘the rut’ much for the next few months, but I’m ok with that. I know that times of growth happen in the times of stretching and times of challenges. It should be a fun few months, but please pray for us. It’ll be a challenge!

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