Joyeux Noel!!

Greetings from Africa!

Sadly, the internet was out for the last days and a half. I am not too saddened when the internet goes out, since, after-all, it is Africa. The sad part of this story is that I wrote my whole blog post offline, and just as i had finished, the computer froze up.. and it's all gone. So now I am writing for you the second edition of my blog post.

Sunday (21st)
Sunday morning was my first African church service experience. It was organized quite like most of ours in America... you know... singing, then an offering, then the sermon. On the other hand, it was so different. There singing is so much different than ours. I like it a lot. They say that when Americans sing it sounds like we're crying. I have some video of their singing, so you can see it when I get back. often, it is just the voices and percussion. They go all out with the percussion though. They have djembe's, a goat skin box (for lack of a better name), marimbas, and shakers of various kinds. Also on sunday morning, we had the delight of listening to special music by a very famous West African singer. Jan told me that she often sings at weddings, but for each wedding she writes a new song... just for that wedding. It tells of the brides life story and then the grooms life story, and is often about 20 minutes long.
The sermon was in Bambara, with a French translation. Ernie translated it again for me in English. So the message had to go through 2 other people to get to me (kind of like the game telephone... except in this case sometimes things don't translate correctly no matter how good your translation skills are).
Since it was the sabbath, we just relaxed for the afternoon.
In the evening, I gave another guitar lesson to Eddy (he is the son of pastor Ibrahim). If you've never tried, I would encourage you to try and teach someone something when you don't understand each others language.. Its a riot.


Monday (22nd)
In the morning we worked on these notebooks that we will give to the kids in the street kids ministry in Bamako. Hopefully, we will be teaching them to read and write their numbers in Bambara, so we wrote them down in each of the notebooks.
In the afternoon we walked over to observe a literacy class that the pastor's wife teaches. Jan said that the women that come are not allowed to come to church on Sunday because of their Muslim family, so it is a great ministry.
In the evening I gave another lesson to Eddy. We told him that he could have the guitar in exchange for teaching us Bambara, which he was very excited about.

Tuesday (23rd)
One of the guys who works with the drama team came by to take us on an adventure. We walked across town and met an old lady who had just returned from her pilgrimage to Mecca. There were a lot of people there and a lot of children. Once we took our cameras out the children swarmed us trying to get their picture taken. Then we went across the street and met her son who had also gone to Mecca. Often, when they come back from Mecca, they will wear white for the rest of their lives, just to show that they have been there. We also visited another church across town and then went to the market.
In the afternoon I went over to the radio station and helped the news guy. I showed him a website that had news in french for West Africa, and I showed him how to use Google so that he could find more sites like it.
After this, we went to get our clothes from the tailor.

Tuesday evening I gave another lesson to Eddy.


Wednesday (24th)
I'm not sure what day it started, but I'm going to stick it in the Wednesday post. Rachel has these children stalkers and it's hilarious. They come over all the time and ask to speak to just her. Then today (Thursday) they wanted a picture with her and a picture of just her. okay, so... she doesn't think it's as funny as I do.
Wednesday evening was the big party at the church, and they really know how to celebrate. We were there from 8:30pm until midnight, but it kept going after we left. There was a lot of dancing and singing. I think that pictures would justify it better than me explaining it, so just wait and see.


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It is interesting to experience the children here. some of them run away as if we are evil (we have been told that when the little kids are bad their parents tell them that the white people will come and take them away... hence the negative reaction to seeing one); Most, however, come running from all directions, hoping we will shake their hand or take their picture. It's a very strange thing. One of my favorite kids is Daniel, who was very shy at first, until I made him a paper airplane. It's the little things in life... so cool.

Prayer requests:
-I seem to have caught myself an African cold. I've had it since Sunday and it seems to be leaving, but I would appreciate your prayers for my health.
-Pastor Ibrahim is traveling to Bamako tonight, so pray for safety on the roads.
-We are traveling to Bamako on Sunday, so pray for safety on the roads for us. It's about a 7 hour drive.