Hopeful Anniversary

This month and the next brings us to a couple anniversaries.

About a year ago this month we discovered that our crafter Andrew and his wife Rebecca were suffering from a terrible disease. After hearing that news, for the next following months majority of our time with them consisted of hospital visits and any other way we can minister to them and help lessen their pain. There were many nights it looked like it could be their last. There were many prayers cried out to God for healing and comfort.

Today as I write this I praise God that he has answered some of those prayers. Today Andrew and Rebecca are doing very well. Though their illness is not completely gone, they continue to receive medication and there has been a tremendous improvement in their health and spirits from a year ago.

With the improvement in Andrew's health we have been able to continue working on our story set with him, and are getting more recordings done. After each recording session we usually spend some time with him and his family up in his village, the Goonies. It has been so nice to sit there and talk with him and his friends, and watch Andrew be able to interact with everyone with ease. It was a beautiful thing to hear and see him laugh again as he played with his daughter. Just the other day after working on a story we dropped him off in his village. It was the sweetest thing to see as we got out of the car and walking in his compound Andrew's little 2 year old girl ran up to him and he sweeps her up and they both laugh. I could have cried right there at how glad I was to see him so well.

We thank you all, and Andrew thanks you all for keeping him and his wife in your prayers.

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Next month will mark four years since Kacy and I left our homes in America and moved to Mali for the first time. The past four years have been filled with so much trials and triumphs, many tears and laughter, pain and healing. And through it all I am glad I'm able to rejoice and say I've seen how God is faithful and true, God is good, and God can do the impossible.

Even just a few months ago I still wondered if we will leave here with our story set completed or not. We were preparing ourselves to accept it if it didn't get finished and say we did our best. But today we are hopeful to see our story set will be completed before we leave. Today all of our stories has been through first round recording and has been tested in full with a couple of our main story groups. As the stories have been checked and worked on thoroughly we then began the process of final recordings. This is the last step of recording for each story and will then be available to put on cassettes and radios. To this date we have 20 out of our 25 stories final recorded and we plan to record the other 5 in the following weeks.

As we are nearing the end of our time in Africa, we our glad to know the work among the Maninka people will continue. We are hopeful to leave behind a set of 25 stories so that the Maninka people will have access to God's Word in their own heart language. We are also filled with excitement as we just found out that a team of churches from Tennessee has decided to partner with our dialect of Maninka and plans to use our stories to share the gospel on various volunteer trips.

Again I want to thank you all for your constant prayers and encouragement over these four years. May you all rejoice with us.