My 38th! Happy Women's Day - celebrated today in Mali and many other countries

Thank you so much for your prayers and well wishes this past week.  It was a rough start to the week for me with some homesickness and I really feared the village was going to be much more trying this week but God answered all those prayers and it turned out to be a really smooth sailing nice (not easy! but smooth) week.  The weather was cooler in the evenings than last week and sleeping on a cot under mosquito net was more comfortable then on the ground in my tent.  We really are starting to be able to joke and laugh more with our family and are figuring out ways to communicate.  "Emma" is quite funny actually.  Language lesson was good but not overwhelming this week.  My homemade chocolate chip cookies (first ones I've indulged in since I've been in Mali because our chocolate is so precious)  lasted most of the week in the cooler without melting!    Garden work was fun - we got to do some harvesting of onions, okra and eggplant. 

Another great boost for the week was the encouragement and joy that worshipping together brings. Wednesday night we had our first 'official' worship service out on our porch.  We shared scripture and sang and prayed for just about 20 minutes before we were called to dinner.    "Rita" did stop by for a moment to see what we were doing and I asked her to sit but she was on her way somewhere.   We plan to continue this regular service in the hopes of two things..... one day when we know enough language to tell the Word in "Sonshine" language stories, that is what we will share at our services and that eventually people will come, stop and listen because they can understand what we are sharing.    Please pray for our small worship to one-day have visitors and grow to include believers in Yosemite.  
 

Please pray for fast healing for my teammate Sarah... she has confirmed Malaria after test Sunday.  She is the first of our team to experience this but  we caught it early - thanks to a wonderful book a really smart friend (Christy Schindler!) gave me -  "Where there is no Doctor".   She is doing well, eating little and able to be up, just feels like a really bad flu with aches and no energy.  She has started the malaria medicine that we all have with us.  
 

When we arrived Tuesday, one of our main goals for the week was to try and get the English class set up.  God paved the way ... when we arrived at the Mayor's office shortly after getting to Yosemite, he was actually there.  Within a short time the Director of the school happened (not really - God knew we needed him) to show up.  Within an hour (that's fast for Africa time because everyone has to have their say) we had it ironed out.  The next day and Wednesday's each week  following at the school at 4pm, the 6th graders would come for class.    We were glad the Director showed up to help us with the class because we are unfamilar with their style of teaching.  They do a great deal of repetition and you repeat by sides of the classroom, together, then by individual table and then volunteers snap their finger at you and you select them to stand a recite on their own.  We taught the alphabet and Good Morning and Welcome.  At the end another teacher who had showed up and spoke some English, asked us to sing a song in English and they would sing one for us.    We decided to sing "Esa Loves Me"... another open door and on our first day of class - OUR FATHER is GOOD!  We pray to be able to eventually be able to teach this to the class and have a chance to talk about what it means. 

We have made a friendship with a man that we have started parking our truck outside his shop right near the market every time we go to town.  "Brad" speaks French and "Sonshine" so he helps us learn some words when we come.  We have nicknamed him our 'parking attendant' because he always likes to give us hand signals on how to straight park against the curb!  Most Africans do like to tell you how to drive and park even though most have never driven a car and many have never been in one :)  We usually don't buy anything from his store because has odds and ends but he doesn't mind.  Last week we needed a 25 kilo bag of rice to take to the village with us which we haven't done before.  We were asking him where we could buy it and he just happened to have that (no real surprise, God allowed him to have what we needed).   As we were making the purchase inside rather than talking on the street as usual, he asked us if we 'pray'.    We proceeded to have quite a long discussion in my simple French about Esa.   He was actually trying to debate theology and showed us Our Father's Word in French alongside the M. book of faith (but we could not touch it because our hands had not been washed) and even told us what page to go to read about Mary falling asleep and our Father coming into her for Esa to be born.    We soooo wanted to look at his book,  but couldn't.   He persisted with questioning me quite a bit but I was eventually  able to end the conversation cordially with him knowing we follow the Esa road and that we both love our Father, but believe differently in the power of Esa.  

We have been taught that it is best not to get into an argument/ deep discussion with people on such issues for the time being.  They are likely not under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, they just want to debate, so we simply ask for prayer that as our relationship develops with "Brad" we will have a chance to share the true Esa with him.

My 38th Birthday highlighted the end of the week!  I laid there looking up at the moon peering just around the edge of the thatch roof porch and thought about my birthday last year - celebrating with A. Norma and Lori in DC and how I never would have dreamed I'd be celebrating it this year on a cot, under mosquito net on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Mali!  WOW what God can do in a year.  I also thought about I have no idea where I will be laying looking up at the moon next year but THANKFULLY GOD DOES!  


My teammates, Abby and Sarah, made my Mali birthday one to remember.  Starting with they surprised me in the morning at the village with fula-fula (the donut hole type fried millet that I like) and the other breakfast looking donut thing that is bigger and made with flour.   It wasn't as good and was a hollow pocket of air on the inside --- we joked saying, if they only knew they had donuts but were just missing the  jelly or custard in the air pocket! 

We came back into town during the day so dinner that night we headed into downtown "North Star" to a 'restaurant'.  Restaurant here is a term used loosely.  It basically means you have some food you cook up and you have a table you cook/ serve on and some benches and chairs for people to sit around you.  "Sibi" the man we wanted to go to was not set up so we wondered around determined to find something else.   We settled on one as we saw the guy adding food into the pot when we walked up so we knew it was fresh.    We wound up with some meat (most of which we can't eat because it's intestinal) and broth with onions and tomatoes in it that we dipped in bread.  It was good actually.  The broth reminded me on French onion soup and when dipped in bread - that reminded me of White Castles - so I had White Castles for my 38th Birthday (or won't Chuck Hird be proud!)  They had brought a candle with them and held it in my bowl of meat and sang Happy Birthday to me which the 'chef' and those around of course had a good time with.  I explained in French is was my birthday and they gave me many "Felicitations!"
 

After returning home, they gave me my surprise treats - Pringles (I'd been eyeing them in the store but they are really expensive so I hadn't bought them), Mali chocolate cookies, green apples, Nutella and some patchwork material to make a ponya out of.    The piece-de-resistance,  for my birthday cake - the first ever probably Song-u-may cake with meringue icing!   Sarah and Abby had gotten some of these dried sweet leaves we love and soaked them, added lots of sugar and replaced the water for the powder milk with the song-u-may liquid instead.  The whole cake turned purple and it was so amazingly good.  They also made slushies out of the liquid and then saved the leaves and sugared them and you can eat them like candy.    We have told everyone here that we are going to bring Song-u-may to America because we love it and they love that.    Have to open a "Song-u-may Store" in the states.  There is so much you could do with this yummy flavor!

"Emma" gave us a first in the village this past week.... Jah-bay, or Henna.... the real kind.  Turns out what we had before was more just like a paint on our hands.  This was the real process.  It is a tea substance mixed with water.  They use surgical type tape to tape a design on your feet and then put the paste on.  Then plastic bags over your feet and socks and you sleep like that (and yes, walk very little to try not to mess it up not to mention how hard it is to walk in the slippery bags!)  The next morning, it is scraped off with a knife - yikes! we are lucky theirs are really, really dull.  And then an veggie oil and ammonia mixture rubbed on it to set it and your foot is rebagged for a bit.  After they took ours off, we could tell that they thought something was wrong.  Turns out they were upset that it wasn't  darker we think.  On them it looks completely black.  Most likely they've never done Jah-bay on a white person and perhaps never even seen it on white skin.  We assured them we loved it and it looked great.  So since pictures don't work - imagine the bottom of your foot black, like you stepped in ink and then going 1/2 way up to your ankle around the edge of your foot, solid black as well.  Then black toes and several small lines across them as well --- that would be what my feet look like at the moment. 
 

We officially topped our meals/ day record this week - truly not anything to brag about really and actually I'd like to ask for prayer to help us figure out how to handle this difficult situation.   Thursday, we had 7 meals- breakfast at 8am, breakfast snack sent from the Mayor at 11:30am, then lunch at 2:15pm, dinner snack at 6:15pm and then 3 different bowls of food showed up for regular dinner at 8pm!  I actually took a picture of the 3 evening bowls just because you wouldn't believe it.  We had beans & onions, macaroni with a little bit of meat in it,  couscous with chiga-mo-gun-gee (peanut sauce that also has beans in it) and couscous with another similar sauce.  My stomach literally hurt after finishing that night so that I was curled up in pain on the mat outside the hut.  Our 'momma' asked me what was wrong and I was able to tell her in broken "Sonshine" language -  "Enkey   i-ee-gay   ah-gah-be   no-go   wah-tah"  (translated - I eat lots stomach sick).  She just kind of chuckled, still not getting the point that this amount of food is outlandish.     We continue to pray each meal as more food arrives for God to help us figure out how to handle this. 
 

I bought some fried waso to try in the village this week.  It is one of the things ladies will fry on the 'road' that you can buy wrapped in some brown paper.  It looks like a red potato but it's not a potato at all.  It is kind of heart-shaped and red.  They fry it up like french fries and serve them with salt.  They were good actually - had a little sweetness to them but the flesh a bit more dense (Abby said - root like) than a potato.  We can't yet correlate it to anything in the US so if anyone has an idea please let me know.