Happy New Year

January 17, 2009

Greetings all, Happy New Year.

It is hard to imagine what this year will bring, but it is good to know Who holds the future and that He holds our hands as well.

The last month has been a busy one. Three young people from Michigan spent a month with us. It was a full one, including the holidays but other things as well. We spent a few days in Bamako and then went down to Kadiolo. One of our days in the south was spent at a New Testament Dedication festivities. The Supirye New Testament had just arrived from the printer and it was a great time of rejoicing. The three hour service included speeches from local dignitaries, lots of music, words of encouragement to local believers and praise to the Lord for the work done and that now He speaks Supirye. After the service we were served a delicious African meal. We sat in small circles and ate with our hands out of a common bowl, a new experience for the team members.

The time spent in Kadiolo was good. The children and young people were attracted to these visitors from America. They came often and Nate, Rachel and Kaitlyn spent hours with them. Rachel brought a guitar, Nate taught many guitar lessons and then they left the guitar with one of the young men. Oh the excitement!! We spent Christmas Eve at the all night service over at church--but our household didn't make it through the whole night. It was fun to be involved with the Christian's celebration. Then Christmas morning there was a service which included the children's presentation similar to a stateside Christmas program. After that three hour service we had a pot-luck dinner together. The nice thing about celebrating Christmas in a village is that it is indeed a Christian affair. Many non Christians come to the Christmas Eve service because there is not a lot of evening entertainment in town. And it is fun.

A few days after Christmas we packed up everything and headed to Bamako. We are running the guest house for January and February--or until Pete and Deb McClurkin can come to take over this ministry. During the last 10 days in Mali the team got involved with a street kids ministry. A Nigerian woman, Jessica, has a center where 40 or 50 boys, ages 6 to 15, spend their evenings and the night. She then feeds them breakfast and they go on their way looking for food and excitement for the rest of the day. Many of these boys have never attended school so Kaitlyn, Nate and Rachel figured out a way to teach them to read and write their numbers. While in Kadiolo they had spent several hours learning Bambara so they could do this. It was a rewarding ministry for them. They went every evening and gave those boys lots of positive attention. They found a couple of boys who knew their numbers and even how to read French. So they found some books for Jessica to have and encouraged those boys to keep learning and using their reading skills. Even the day that the students left for the states they spent a few hours at the center. Those boys had become part of their lives. Yesterday Jessica told me that the boys are despondent, waiting for their "teachers" to come back. This reminds me how easy it is to find people who want to see Jesus in us.

When they returned to the States about 10 days ago Nate decided he could not just forget the boys at the center. He made up a web page http://www.jessicashouse.info/ and is making some plans for how to raise money and awareness for the street kids of Bamako. Check it out--and you will see how these weeks in Mali affected these three students. Thank you, Rachel, Kaitlyn and Nate, for spending your holidays in Africa to make a difference in lives. God bless you.

We have a few praise and prayer requests.

1. Praise for the lives touched by the three students.

2. Praise for the opportunity they had to see and serve in Mali.

3. Praise for Jessica and the love God has given her for these boys.

4. Praise that the Supirye New Testament has been printed and is in the hands of believers

5. Praise that Ernie and Jan can serve the Lord by serving other missionaries at the guest house.

6. Pray that the many children and young people who spent time with the students will keep in touch with other local Christians and find the Lord.

7. Pray for the needs of Jessica's ministry as seen on the web site

8. Pray that the word of God will continue to encourage the Supirye believers and that others in that area will find Him.

9. Pray for Deb and Pete McClurkin that their support will come in so they can be in Mali by the end of February.

10. Pray that Jan's family will have wisdom in the living situation and care of her mother. We need to go to the States in March to help with this. Thank you so much for your love and care for us.

God bless you as you reach out to your world for Him. Love. Jan and Ernie

Nate, a short-termer, shares experiences

Well it has been quite a few days since I've posted, so I guess I have a lot of ground to make up.

Christmas was good. After going to bed late Christmas Eve, we had to wake up early Christmas morning. At the church there was a long Christmas service and then a potluck... which of course was delicious; and some of the food items were unidentifiable, but ya just have to close your eyes and eat it. Afterwords, we retreated back to our house and opened presents. I got a book about Mali, some bowls, and a prayer rug.
In the evening I worked on the network some more with Ernie.

Friday was a full day. In the morning we journeyed over to the campground. Basically, its a rustic retreat center. The pastor leads literacy camps and things of the like. I asked if they ever do youth camps (kinda my specialty) and they said that there used to be some a long time ago, but it would just take someone to run with it and motivate people, otherwise it wouldn't happen.
later in the morning, our friend Eddy came over and taught us some more Bambara. We learned the numbers associated with their money system. confusingly, they have a different number sequence when dealing with money than they do with counting other objects and such. everything in the money system is based off of the number five instead of 10 like ours. so, in order to say 25 you would pronounce it 5 5's.
In the afternoon I gave another lesson to Eddy on the guitar.

Saturday was kind of the calm before the storm. In the afternoon I gave another lesson to Eddy, his final lesson. He came along very well and I bet he'll make a great guitar player. The rest of the day was spent packing, saying goodbye to people, and going to the market.

Sunday, we got up very early (5:30), packed up the car, and headed off to Bamako (about a 7 hour drive). Along the way we stopped and looked at a nice waterfall.
Once we got to Bamako, we spent the rest of the evening getting settled in.

Monday we took a taxi (something I'm getting used to, but it's still weird to me) over to Jessica's warehouse (the street kids ministry) in the afternoon. For Monday, we were just going to check it out and look around. Jessica is this lovely Nigerian woman who has given up her whole life to take care of these children. It's literally all she does. She doesn't have another job, she just takes care of the boys. She survives on some money that her sister sends her. She doesn't even speak their language. With all of this despair around her she still has hopes and dreams. At the moment, these kids hang out and sleep in this warehouse (think of one of those rental storage garage's. its about 20x20 feet). There are anywhere between 30-50 boys that inhabit this place. Jessica took us over to a house that she hopes to rent out for the boys. I was shocked when we walked around in it. This house has at least 8-10 bedrooms, several bathrooms, and lots of living space. Jessica has plans of providing sleeping space for up to 200 boys in this house! Some of the kids would stay there all the time and be enrolled in her program where they will be tutored by teachers until they reach an appropriate grade level for their age. Unicef has said it would provide beds, school supplies, and teachers even, but not until they get the house (and they wont provide any money for the house). The landlord was touched by the ministry and is offering the house to Jessica and the boys for $800 a month... for a 10 bedroom house!! are you kidding me? what landlord in their right mind would ever consider letting 200 boys live in one of their houses, let alone lower the rent for such a cause. God is truly working here. Sadly, they have no one to provide for any of the rent.

Jessica is a trained nurse who could be making a nice amount of money, but instead she has given up everything for these boys.

I have finally seen a holy fool in person and in action; someone who takes Jesus seriously; someone who cares more about the cause of Jesus than her own well-being.
This forces me to ask myself, how can I be like this?

Tuesday we went to a missionaries house. She had a shop in her house that she stocks with Malian craft items. so we did a little Christmas shopping.
In the evening we took off for Jessica's warehouse again. This time we passed out the notebooks we had prepared and began teaching the boys how to read and write their numbers. There is something strange and rewarding about teaching 15 year old's and 8 year old's how to write the number 1.. and at the same time awfully depressing that a 15 year old has never written a 1 before.
Our taxi driver is pretty much the coolest guy. His name is Ousman. He waits for us while we work with the kids, and even comes in and helps us teach. He knows just a little bit of English (maybe as much as the Spanish I knew by the end of high school). So Ousman talks to the boys in their language (Bambara) and translates it to English and made up sign language for us.

Wednesday (New Year's Eve) we went back to the warehouse in the afternoon and interviewed some of the boys so that we could better understand where they come from and why they are there. Ousman, our taxi driver, translated for us again. We also worked on some of their numbers.
In the evening we relaxed a bit and enjoyed the sounds coming from the street. At midnight it sounded like someone was bombing us. apparently, the people here love fireworks :-)

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Thoughts:

Bamako has been really exciting so far, but at the same time I really miss Kadiolo. It was nice there because we got to know some locals really well and we saw them everyday. There was kind of a sense community... what I've been longing for... and then I left.

Temporary move to Bamako

Have you ever expected to have something happen and suddenly you find things are not going your way...? Well we expected to be in Kadiolo, Mali until the end of February working and helping the ministries there. We now find ourselves in Bamako managing our guest house there. This is a critical ministry. Missionaries from the country of Guinea and Mali need a place to stay when they come to Bamako for re supplies, medical help and just plain rest and recuperation. When there is a coup in Guinea or another neighboring country the guest house availability is extremely urgent. Last week the president of Guinea died and the military took over. Praise the Lord the missionaries did not feel at risk and did not need to evacuate to the guest houses, but they had the security of knowing that they had a place to go if it became necessary. Thank you for your prayers as we fill the gaps in this support ministry.

Please pray for a couple trying to raise their support to come out and take over the important guest house ministry.