People asking for the Gospel

We are sitting in our living room in the dark, a couple of solar lights to shine the way.
The kids are listening to Lisa read “Stewart Little” which we found here among Eadleman’s books.
We had an evening of playing Phase 10, and Catch Phrase.
I had to go outside in the dark to fix the shower. The pipe coming down from the barrel on top of the roof was blocked by dirt-sludge. So I got that out, refilled the barrel on the roof, and had my shower.
Power was off all night until noon the next day.

I had a really interesting experience today. I went to the commissariat (the police) to register our family’s passports, and to announce officially we are here in Kadiolo.
Pastor Youssouf took me over, and we were ushered into the Commadant’s office. All the officers are in uniform, but he opened his door in a fancy bubu. (By his clothing, he is definitely a Moslem.) So we went in, (Ben, Youssouf, and I) and he looked over our family’s passports. So he passed them off to someone else to take care of. He began to ask questions in french. “So you are a missionary?”
Yes, I said.
“Mission Baptiste? Is that protestant or catholic?” He asks.
“Protestante” I reply. (I’m not sure where all this is leading.)
“What is the difference between Protestante and Catholic?” He asks.
How to answer that question to a Moslem on the spur of the moment?
“Catholics believe that we need to pray and confess to God through a priest.”
“Protestants believe that we are all priests, as we are washed by the blood of Jesus Christ who died to pay for our sins, and open a direct communication with God.”
I continued, “both protestants and true catholics believe that salvation comes by faith in Jesus Christ as the one who paid the debt of our sin by his death. So the way of salvation remains the same.”
“Why are there so many divisions among Christians? Why so many kinds of churches? Isn’t there only one Bible?” He asked.
“That’s true, there is only one Bible, but people interpret it differently. Why are there so many different sects of Moslems?” I asked.
He began to explain some of that to me, how people don’t always divine the word of God correctly.
“Exactly!” Is what I said.
Well he moved on to other conversation. But it was very interesting to have the door opened so wide to be able to share the Gospel.


We also have an opportunity with local kids. There is always a myriad of kids by our front gate. They all want to see the petite blanks. (The white kids) So they hang around for hours, it seems. Yelling Benjamin! Caleb! So our kids will talk to them, or come out in the street to play with them. Our kids have done okay with this new stress in their lives. But we pray that opportunities would come so that the gospel can be shared with these kids. Laura Requadt, a nearby colleague has Bible story time each day, punctuated by juice and cookies.
She says all the kids in her village know the english word "cookie". She's hoping that teaching kids Bible stories will stick as well. She is wise to use a local believer to translate these stories from french to Bambara. He is being trained to carry the stories on...
Here is a few pics of kids at our gate.

Are there people around you asking for the Gospel? Are you and I looking to take advantage of these opportunities, or do we look at them as stress?
Please continue to pray for us as encounters like this are a daily opportunity.
Tom