goldfish, mountains, and hope

Goldfish aka Intern: Ana
For the last week Ana stayed with us for a few days, wanting to see how we live in the village and to learn a little bit about our work. It was encouraging having her with us. She was willing to try anything. She could speak French and could communicate with pastor that way, and a few others who spoke French. With everyone else we would translate, so communicating was not an issue. Our people loved her, and she really soaked in the village life.

Every night we went to pastors house and prayed with them. Pastor would divide up the prayer requests for each person to pray, and we would all lift them up together. There was one day when we even got together with the church at our compound and spent the whole day just praying, and some even fasted. The Malians would be praying in Bambara/Maninka, Kacy and I in English, and Ana – who is from Holland – would pray in Dutch. What a small glimpse of what Heaven will be like, people from different cultures and languages all praying to God, and we are all sure HE does hear everyone of us. How sweet is that?

* Ana was learning Maninka from our kids using pictures in the sand

Mountains of Praises: (pictures to come later)

On Ana’s last day, since we do live in Archenland, we decided to hike up some of the cliffs. Pastor led us of course (coz we don’t know where to go). We climbed up a cliff that leads to a cave, with a natural spring. After that we went to the natural bridge, and hiked around. We were up places so high we had an amazing view of our town, and even glimpses of the town nearby, and just an awesome view of all the other cliffs and the sky, and the rest of nature all around us. Standing on those cliffs, praises just keep coming to mind. Definitely praises for protection and reaching the top, since there were some scary, hard spots. But also praises for God and HIS beautiful creation. Songs were being sung in Bambara, English, and Dutch. God is Amazing!

* view from the top

Prayer for Hope:
About two days after Ana left to go back to her home, we had another visitor. It was Brother – from Kville.(our old village)

Even before this day he’s been asking more questions about the bible. So when he came up, we spent some time looking in the word, listening to some of our recorded stories, and even telling some others.

Lately Brother’s question has been about hope. See in the last couple months many of his closest friends, including us, moved away. And then one of his other friends – who he’d been helping recover from a stroke or something, like teaching him how to walk and talk again, and he seemed like he was improving a little – well he passed away. During that time his dad (village chief, and our village dad) had been sick, but while we were at home for the two months, Chief passed away too. All these things had deeply discouraged him. He said the world is not happy anymore, everyone keeps leaving… this visit he didn’t seem like himself at all, and he seemed depressed, and he’s looking for hope.

As we’ve shared stories about why we put our hope in Jesus, Brother just couldn’t accept it. He can’t believe that there are no rituals, or words to repeat over and over, that it’s too easy to believe… and the fact that he’s stated before he just can’t accept Jesus unless God tells him to in a dream or vision.

So please lift up Brother. He’s really down right now, but hopefully this time would draw him to Jesus, and help him understand he can place his hope in HIM