Friday Foto Flashback

(I'm toying with the idea for a new series on Fridays where we'll look back through our photograph archives and find a moment that holds special significance to us. We'll try this a few weeks and see if it has any traction. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!)

Photo taken: 4/14/2008 near the village of Senou on the outskirts of Bamako, Mali.

(written by Thom) In April 2008 my Malian pastor, Christophe Dembele, asked if I'd come with him to see a project he was working on. Several times of the previous year or two he had hosted work teams from Canada and New England as they came to build an orphanage. Pastor Christophe is one of the most ambitious and driven men I've met and he does a great job of focusing that internal drive for the glory of the Lord. This orphanage is just one of many of the projects he's spearheaded or gotten involved with. Aside from the importance of the orphanage (the building was going up behind me when I took this picture) this was going to be a significant place for at least three other reasons: they were going to start a school for the orphans and the greater community, it was located in a bustling, newly-built community where the government was giving houses to the military, and the well you see. Wells are so important in this dry climate. Christophe's church was built in a neighborhood in Bamako that didn't have a well and miraculously held water and became such an important centerpiece for that neighborhood, opening all sorts of doors to outreach. This well, which was so deep I couldn't see the bottom, would be a solid foundation to outreach in the Senou area. I think, as Americans, we can look at such a primitive thing as this well and wonder how it can revolutionize an area but we've seen it happen. Praise the Lord for wells and for his living water!

(Side note: On the way out to Senou we drove by the Coca-Cola bottling factory. I pointed to it and jokingly told my pastor "There's the most important factory in Mali!". He looked back at my like I had just kicked a puppy, "But, they make beer there!" was his response. I had no idea what to say to that.

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him." By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:37-39)

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Friday Foto Flashback

(I'm toying with the idea for a new series on Fridays where we'll look back through our photograph archives and find a moment that holds special significance to us. We'll try this a few weeks and see if it has any traction. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!)

Photo taken: 9/16/2006 at Bethel Bible School in Koutiala, Mali.

This was one of the first pictures we took upon arriving in Mali back in September 2005. We arrived on a Thursday, spent the first weekend adjusting to the time change, and then the first week following setting up our new house. The following weekend we were taken to Koutiala, a city 500 KMs (310 miles) east of Bamako. The trip has nice paved roads and takes about 5 hours to drive.

We came to Koutiala as part of our orientation. Even though Bamako is the mission's headquarters Koutiala functions as a major hub of Alliance activity in Mali, due in no small part to the hospital we've built there. Another key to Koutiala is Bethel Bible School, the seminary where many Malian C&MA pastors train. That particular weekend coincided with the biennial Alliance Women's Conference and Amanda spent much of it out in the heat with the women. That's where she snapped this picture. It was brutally hot for 'newbies' like us with temperatures around 100 and Amanda was quite overwhelmed with all the newness of everything: the languages, climate, languages, culture and languages. Still she left the conference with a deep appreciation for the hearts of these women, as well as a burden for how many of them sacrificed for their faith. The support, comfort, encouragement and mutual rejoicing called the second chapter of Philippians to mind. In their call to be Christ-like, they certainly encouraged us!

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2:5-7 NIV)

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