 
Week three has been awesome. As we continue to experience new sights, sounds, smells, and people we are soaking up the culture like sponges. It has been so fun going places and meeting new people. On Monday, we went to the Bible college in another village near ours. The village is very rural and spacious. The Bible college would look the way that one would picture Africa. It was located way out there and has three rather small buildings and a garden. Well, in the middle of our visit to this place I had to really go to the bathroom. Bamako our city was on the other side of the village and it would take a while to get there. So I had to use their restrooms which consisted of a hole in the ground(like an old timey outhouse) I have to say that it was a memorable experience to say the least. We met the pastors and their wives which was really cool. The women are very sweet. They are learning how to read. We are so blessed in America! We learn to read when we are 5 or 6 years old. These women ,who are in their 20’s and 30’s and possibly 40’s, are desiring to read God’s Word. They have to learn how to do something that in America we've done since we were young children. Well, Tuesday we had Bambara(Language) class as usual. It is a lot of fun and I see how we are learning a lot. The sentence structure is actually very simple, in many cases Spanish has a simple sentence structure but Bambara has a simpler one. I have had a lot of fun with it.
Then while walking our language teacher downstairs, to the gate(which is what you do culturally), I saw outside our gate…there was a man sitting on top of a large camel just outside our apartment. So I rush upstairs and get the other girls and we get our cameras. We take a bunch of pictures of the camel. Then the camel guy invited each of us to take turns sitting on the tall camel for a small price. So we did for $2.00 American money ,four of us sat on the camel and took pictures! It was too fun. We had a young woman from the church come and visit us and tell us about the different opportunities to serve at church. We are going to help out with the children, choir, evangelism, and human videos. This next weekend ,we are all going to a wedding of someone from the church. We are very excited. The whole church is wearing matching fabric to show the unity of the people in support to this wedding. So we all are getting skirts or dresses made. It is really cool! On Thursday, we went to the college here in Bamako and helped out with the English class. The students were separated into small groups and we asked things about their culture in English. So I had three men in my group and they knew little English. One was a hard core Muslim. What he liked about his cultures was the Mosques, Koran, and religion and what he didn’t like about his culture was that people didn’t pray enough. It is rather sad if you think about this man is serious, really serious about his faith, and we as Christians are often so lax about ours. Then another man in the group said,"I don’t like how people leave their jobs and posts to pray at different times of the day". He was saying this is distracting and implying it was a waste of time. So these two men had extremely different views from one another but they were sitting there like they were best friends. It was rather funny. On Friday, we visited a Christain School for missionary kids. We can help out there in many ways. We will be helping with mathematics, art, music, P.E., and prep work. We will be volunteering there once a week. Next week we will start working at the Native Christian School with the children who speak Bambara. They are very sweet kids . Chelsie and I will be developing an extracurricular program and are going to teach the students how to play Basketball! About 80% of the kids from that Christian school are Muslim. It is really exciting that we can form relationships with the students and help them learn a sport. Additionally, we will be helping out at an orphanage soon. I am very excited about that. In my own life I see how God is changing me to become more like Him. It has in many ways been a very painful process. I see how He is changing my heart and my agenda. I have missed my family, friends, and routine.He is trying to get me to a place where I solely depend on Him. I feel so blessed that He has given me this opportunity and I can’t wait to see what He does this year. I can already see that I will be the one in the end most changed by this experience not Mali. Going into a new culture is like relearning life. Often I ask myself why do we do this? And I begin to question our own culture. Even though we have so much more then Malians , they seem so much more genuine and have a real zeal for God. When I step back and look I begin to feel like I am shallow compared to these people. When they make the choice to follow Christ they don’t turn back . They give up so much. Their choice is a sacrifice, they may have to give up their family, job, children , and community to follow Him. Lord Help us! It is so easy to follow Christ in America and yet, here they greatly desire to please God. They know there is something deeper then just the physical world around us there is a deeper spiritual realm.  |
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