Sewards' Online Snapshots: Bamako Meetings

Bamako Meetings

We came up to Bamako to meet with our other WorldVenture colleagues. We are 5 couples here in Mali, that make up our Mali Worldventure field.Two couples serve in Bamako. One couple does translation in Fourou, but are currently on home assignment. Ernie and Jan Eadelman just arrived from medical leave in America, and will be working again in Kadiolo.

We are so glad to have them back with us.

Part of having them back is meetings with the rest of the field to
make decisions about things we were waiting for the Eadelman's to have input on.
Here is a pic from the meeting.

Bamako is a difficult place to come to. It is nice because there are other missionaries. The kids love it because they have friends here. But the roads are so congested, and police stop you at every whim, it seems.Yesterday we were stopped in our new car. The policeman asked for my car papers. They were all in order. He looked disappointed.

He asked for my drivers license. (Issued in Mali) It is a temporary one, the real one comes in 90 days. He was bothered because the temporary paper had no photo. I said it was your department of motor vehicles that issued me this license, if you don't like it, talk to them.

So then he was bothered about the fact that we have tinted windows. That demands a fine of 15,000 francs. (about $30) Ernie was with us, so he had to talk a good while to work out that problem.So today we are scraping off the tint, so we are legal again!

This morning, (because the window scraping wasn't finished...) we decided to walk to a local protestant church that worships in french. Caleb came to me. "Daddy, please can we go to the American church." One thing the kids look forward to every Bamako trip is to go to English speaking church. There is a body of ex-pats, and missionaries. Some are working in school ministries, medical ministries, or some embassy people. They hold an English speaking Sunday School. We usually try to make the service if we can.(Caleb does Sunday School in Bambara in Kadiolo, Ben's age does it in french.)So how can you refuse a plea to go to church? So we decided not to drive the car yet, but we taxied over.It was a nice morning...And Caleb got to have SS with friends in English.

Here is a pic of his big smile as he sits in Sunday School!

Here is a pic from last week's story. Youth BBQ at our house!