Reasons to be a Photographer (by Thom)

I love to take pictures. At this moment, I have about 8 gigabytes of photos on my hard drive, which represents the pictures I've taken since 2005. Whether it's pictures of my family, of friends, or of the wonders of God's creation I find a lot of enjoyment out of both the memories and the process. Over at Desiring God Ministries they've been running a series called "9 Reasons I'm A Photographer." So far, they've posted the first 3 points. I've enjoyed the series so far and wanted to share it with you, too. Enjoy!

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Easter (by Thom)

Christ est ressuscité! Il est vraiment ressuscité!
That's French for the traditional Easter greeting, "He is risen! He is risen indeed!" Easter here in Mali is much different than in the US. We don't have the cultural reminders (stores selling Easter candy) or the seasonal reminders (the idea of "Spring" doesn't exist here). And unlike Christmas, Easter is strictly a Christian holiday here.
I talked about Easter with some friends here before. They are not Christians so I was trying to understand their view on things. One friend explained to me that he believes that while Jesus was in prison the day before he was crucified he tricked the guard into coming into his cell and then escaped, leaving the guard locked in the cell. Because the guard looked so much like Jesus the other guards crucified him instead. There's more about this theory here.
Much like Christmas, the Church in Mali extends the Easter celebration beyond just Easter morning. Friday night and Saturday night our church had evening services that lasted well into the night. Unfortunately, I was sick all weekend but Amanda got to go to the Saturday evening service and reported to me that it was a wonderful time of fellowship and celebration that we know a risen Savior. This year, even though I wasn't able to go to church for Easter I celebrate a Savior , perfect in life and death, who loved each of us enough to give up His own life that we now have hope of a future together. He is risen! He is risen indeed!

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Exchanging Blessings (by Thom)

A month ago we were on our way to our field's annual prayer retreat. This year it was held at a place called Teriyabougou. That's about a five hour drive from Bamako and took us straight through Mali's second largest city, Segou. It was 19 months ago that we were in Segou for a different field retreat; back then we had only had Miriam and Hannah for one week and Hannah was very sick and very small. We weren't completely sure at the time but we were beginning to suspect she had a milk allergy. It was at the conference in Segou that we first tried Hannah on goat's milk and that was the first time she started showing signs of life. That was obviously a major turning point for us and it became a huge deal to the hotel staff, too. They sort of 'adopted' Hannah as well and every time we go through Segou now we stop and show off how well she's doing and every time the staff fawns over her and talks about how small she was and how they knew that only God was able to bring her through her health trials.
Back to one month ago, we stopped at the hotel again and were eating lunch there when the waiter came up and shared a story with me. He and his wife just had their first child, a son, a couple of months earlier. His wife is a school teacher and didn't get maternity leave so she had to make arrangements for child care. Using baby formula is rare in Mali but they decided to try that. However, the baby was allergic, just like Hannah. They weren't sure what to do but then the waiter remembered us. He said to me, "I told my wife that I have two friends who are Americans. They were given a baby girl who couldn't drink formula either and they gave her goat's milk and today she's doing fine." So they arranged to get goat's milk as well and he thanked me, "God put you in my life and that saved my son." It's funny because we feel that we were so blessed by the help the hotel staff gave us in finding the goat's milk back then and now we get to be a part of their blessing. The Lord has a neat way of doing these things.
By the way, the picture above is there because Hannah (right) is holding her stuffed goat. She loves it even if she doesn't understand the significance of it yet. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find plush goat toys in the US!

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