Rainy Season.

Rainy Season. People often ask us when we're in the states, what are the seasons like in Mali? We reply, "We have rainy season, and dry season."
This is rainy season. It rains frequently. Here in Kadiolo, we joke that every time there are two drips of rain, the power is cut off.
It does get cut off frequently, but not everyday. It rains every 2nd day. Sometimes big lightening storms, that cascade rain down on our aluminum roofs, making a loud but soothing background noise to sleep to. (Often missionary kids from africa find it hard to sleep when they go to college in America because they miss that sound of rain on a tin roof.)
I did a stupid thing that only an American would do today. I stood on the side of the road in the rain, taking pictures of people going by. I was trying to capture rainy season in Kadiolo. I did get some pics, here was one of the better ones....




We're back in Kadiolo, last week, we travelled to Segou for two days with Danielle and Joannie, on our way to Bamako to get both of them to the airport. The Segou part was a bit of downtime with the girls, we stayed at a hotel that we stumbled on back in September on our Segou trip then. Joannie had not travelled much in the long time she'd been with us. She gets carsick, and rough roads do NOT help! But she really enjoyed being out with us, and seemed to particularly enjoy Segou. One of the fun things we did, (as well as some souvenir shopping...) was to take a pirogue (canoe) trip on the Niger river. That was fun. Here is a pic of most of us on the boat.



Here is an older pic from the week before. We had visited the waterfall with Joannie and Danielle. It was Danielles' only trip out there. Here are Hilary, Ben and Caleb.




The students results came back from their exams this week. We were close to so many through the study room. One in particular was finishing high school, needed a good result to be accepted into University at Bamako. He came over to our house with a big smile on his face.... He passed his exams. Pray for Ibrahima, who accepted a Bible about a month ago. Pray that his quest to fill the God shaped void in his heart would end with Jesus! He has become such a good friend to our family...

You can pray for me specifically this week. I have a drivers license issue to deal with. (I turned 40 this last Sunday, and with that celebration, my license expired.) So I need to talk to the Mali department of motor vehicles and arrange a drivers license.
Bureaucracy here can be huge. Please pray that I'm able to work out the licence, and that I'm not required to do driving school.
Driving school is in Sikasso, not available in Kadiolo.
So that would require a lot of back n forthin' to Sikasso.
The delay in renewing the license is my fault, but we go to Sikasso so little, and were quite busy here...

Thanks for stopping by:
Tom