New house, update

Mine at Fourou

This is our family on a field trip to the mine in Fourou. Tom & Laura Requadt arranged for us to have a mine tour. It made for a good homeschooling experience, and we enjoyed looking at piles of rock that are supposed to have gold in them.

We are making good progress on our house. We're hoping to be able to move in March 10-15th. Somewhere in there. We are so looking forward to it. We are ready to unpack cartons and get our stuff together, and feel like we're finally "home" somewhere.
This may not be a big deal to your family, but ours has moved 13 times in the last 9 years. That spells LOTS. So we're so excited to be installing ourselves here.
Here are some pics of the house we'll be renting. It is costing a bit of money to set it up with toilets, running water, and electricity. But the rent itself is $40/month.

Our house

The yard, well and gate.


The guest house/dependance.


We really want to thank the individuals and churches who gave generously to our house project. Those gifts made it possible to find a place for us.

Subject for prayer: Lisa and Hilary left on the bus to go to Bamako. They fly out of Bamako to Dakar, Senegal on Sunday. They are exploring the school there, to see if Hilary will be going there next year. This decision is very important to Hilary's future out here. We were hoping that a place would work out in the Bamako school, but it is not a boarding school, and we didn't find a family to take her in... So maybe Dakar is a solution. Hilary has lots of friends there, and there are families from ICA there. But Dakar is far away from here... Pray for us as we prayerfully make the decision about schooling.

Thanks again for stopping by to visit!
God Bless,
Tom & Lisa Seward

February Ministry Pics

Here are pics from the ministry sides of our life here in Kadiolo.

New Literacy ministry for women. Here are a couple of our church ladies after their second class in learning how to read. We're excited about how this ministry has taken off. We're even more excited about the possibilities next year as we will be able to conduct bible studies with them.
Pray for these ladies as they struggle to learn to read and write.



Study Room. This ministry continues to serve as a bridge for us to contact students. Here are a couple of them. The guy on the right accepted Christ a week ago. He prayed with one of the church leaders who is also involved at the study room with us.
Please continue to pray for us as we are building relationships with students. Pray that those opportune times would arise to share Christ with them, and they would have ears to hear....




Local Church. We are pleased with the local church we are working with. It is a joy to serve with brothers and sisters in Christ, especially Pasteur Youssouf. Today something special happened. The sermon was about putting away your idols. Someone came to Pasteur after church, and brought his fetishes. (Witchcraft
materials.) So Pasteur called the believers together, and together we declared that Jesus crushed Satan on the cross, and burnt these materials. It was a special time of praise to Christ for the power and liberty He gives us.
Continue to pray that God would call Africans to Himself, that He would be able to free them from this bondage of witchcraft..




Local relationships. Friends are an important area of ministry. Some friendships are redemptive relationships that enable us to share Christ with someone. Some friendships are with believers from church. These allow us to encourage and to be encouraged. Freddy and Miriam are two such good friends.
We thank God that we are not here in Kadiolo alone, but that He as placed us to work with the local church and believers to advance His kingdom here....
Pray for the local believers as they endeavor to share Christ as well with their friends, co-workers, and neighbors. They are a joy to us as we serve here with them.



God Bless,
Tom.

New literacy ministry started

New literacy ministry started

Last Sunday, a new literacy ministry for the ladies began as part of their twice-monthly Bible studies. Actually, the Ladies' Ministry is very discouraged, there is no leadership, they have few ideas for organization, and have no vision or purpose for meeting together. But they are scheduled for a meeting every other Sunday afternoon, and at least a few women usually show up. The three meetings I've been
able to attend, showed their frustration and request of me for ideas of how to proceed.

I don't want to come in and take over this ministry for several reasons. I don't yet know Bambara well enough to listen and share their heart, I don't want to start a mentality where a missionary comes in and "saves the day" and does the work, and I've got a full plate with homeschooling and homemaking and all
the support roles I'm filling right now. Inserting my humble ideas one at a time and helping them grasp them little by little seems a better way to make permanent change and do some leadership guiding along
the way.

There are some capable women, but only 4 of them can read Bambara or French, and two of those don't write. There are another 10-12 who are basically illiterate, although a couple of them can speak some French, so we can at least communicate verbally with them. I don't know that any have had any formal or even correspondence-style Bible training, so spiritual counsel is hesitant at best, and unscriptural at worst.

One of the voiced frustrations among the women is that most come 30-45 minutes late to the meetings, and how can we get them to come on time so half the meeting isn't lost waiting for whoever might show up? I'd been wondering about starting a literacy program through our Study Room, since there are no students in the mornings. We could offer some classes or tutoring to ladies and get more full-time use of the room. Instead, I suggested that we start a literacy class the first hour of the ladies' meetings to draw more women to them on time, then the regular Bible study or prayer time can take place the second hour
with higher attendance.

This is how last week went, with nine women in the basic A-B-C class, and four women in the higher level French reading and writing class. Pastor Youssouf who is a trained literacy teacher took the lower class, and Joannie, our tutor from Quebec, took the upper level class. Everyone was excited, especially when a visitor showed up interested in the class and stayed for prayer. She is not yet a Christian, but is a good example of how we might be able to draw in others from the community as an outreach possibility.

My goals for this ministry are threefold: that we can build up the Ladies' Ministry and begin to work for the Lord by praying and encouraging one another's faith, that new women will come to the church and find the Lord through this ministry, and that next year many ladies will have enough reading and writing ability to
start a correspondence Bible training course. Some day, we want to see trained women effectively leading their own ministry and reaching out to their community in the Lord's name.
--Lisa

We don't have pics of the women in this ministry yet, but will upload them ASAP.
Please be praying for these ladies as they struggle to do something we take for granted everyday!


Answer to prayer! Lisa's papers were found. Her purse was stolen about 3 weeks ago. Well, we recieved an email from the embassy saying that papers with her name had been turned in! So her drivers license, and other papers were returned! Thank the Lord. Lisa was praying for her drivers to be returned, but
Bamako is a big city, the odds of them turning up again were very small.
Our digital camera was not turned in, of course. We'll be replacing it, but we weren't able to get new photos into this blog edition. Sorry.
Still, Big thanks to the Lord, who cares about even small details in our lives!

Second day of Evangelism Campaign.

Second day of Evangelism Campaign.
We had a lot more people last night.
Our evangelist estimated 1500 in the audience. I would say we were over 1000 people, but maybe not more than 1200. It was amazing, it was advertised that we were showing a film on a big screen. We showed the Jesus film in Bambara. Everyone could hear Jesus speaking in their own language.
While some of these people had seen the film before, few had seen it on a big screen.
The impact of watching Jesus heal the sleeping daughter, raise the son from the dead, and his other miracles is astonishing.

Here is a pic of me in front of the screen we had set up.
I'm using the projector that South Church in Lansing helped us to buy.


Here is a pic of the crowd that came last night. (the light bubbles in the picture are dust particles reacting to the flash of the camera.)



Here is a pic of the singers who preceded the film. The girl singing in the foreground is Sarah. She is a friend we knew back in Cote D'Ivoire, and is a key player on the Jula Drama Team.
Singing and dancing is a great way to say "Hey! come look at what is going on!"



More people came forward again to give their lives to Christ. We pray that those decisions are ones that are serious, and that the church will be able to follow up the new contacts! We are grateful to God that He still does the greatest miracle of all- changing hearts and minds.

God Bless,
Tom & Lisa

Evangelism Campaign Jan 06

Last night we participated in/hosted an evangelism team from Cote d'Ivoire.
They came ready to sing and preach. We had them set up right in front of our study room at the bus station. Lots of people come in Wednesday night because Thursday is market day, and they want to be ready to buy and sell.

This kind of thing always goes late but is fun to be a part of. The team went out all morning door to door inviting people in town to come out and hear the gospel. The CMA (Christian and Missionary Alliance) church in town partnered with our church, and both churches had a big turnout. The crowd was amazing; a lot of people, so many that my night pictures had spots on them. The spots are dust particles that were kicked up by the crowd, and then responded to the camera's flash.
Here is a pic of the crowd last night.


Here is a pic of Hilary with some of the youth group girls



Lisa got to participate more than expected. They asked her to sing; so she recruited Joannie, and two short term girls who are visiting for a while.
They did "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High." Then our youth came alongside, and sang it again in French and Bambara. (Its something they've been working on for awhile.) Also, you can't have evangelism without dancing. As the teams sing the praise songs, the Christians dance to show their joy and pleasure in those songs.
So Lisa got into it again with the ladies.





Here is a pic of Hilary with some of our silly girls. They had a good time together, but the girls couldn't get Hilary to dance with them. :-)

I was asked to project the Jesus film. I had everything setup, and was all ready.
They had sung and danced for about an hour and a half. Pastor 1 preached, Pastor 2 preached. They had an altar call, about 4-5 responded. Then they had an altar call again, about 4 more responded. Then about 15 moslem kids responded, (they thought there was money...).
Then they told me it was time for the film. So I get ready to project, and my power strip for the 110 projector died. So instead of miming the movie myself, I said that the movie was off, and that I would do it tonight instead.

We are thankful for the 7-9 people who responded seriously last night. We pray that the faith they acted on in response to Gods' Word would take root in their lives. We pray that they take part in one of our local churches, either our church or the CMA church.

Thanks for praying and giving. This makes it possible for us to be here to help with events like this one!
God Bless,
Tom & Lisa Seward