Outreach Weekend

Hi. I just came back from 4 days of evangelism outreach in three villages.
The drama team planned it all, and had a live theatre piece ready to perform.
(they even had a part for me to play. Don't be impressed, it was nearly a non speaking role) Mostly my role was chauffer, tech video advisor, and pastor.

By chauffer, I mean that we loaded up the truck in such a way that the Beverly Hillbillies looked organized. Here is a pic of our Pajero loaded to the gills.

My job as tech video advisor was to make the video equipment work, as well as the generator we had to bring along. Village ministry usually means no electricity.
We were gone four nights, like I said. And although the drama team was prepared, they had planned Thursday night, and Sunday night as drama nights, with the other two nights as video evangelism. Every night of the four, we showed the film the drama team made on Aids Awareness. The two other nights we still showed that film, but then added a double feature. One evangelistic film in Senoufo, and one in Bambara. So those nights I worked harder.

My role as pastor was that as there was no church in Woroni, (where we stayed was in the one Christian's courtyard), I was asked to preach in french, mostly to our group.
So I did, I also felt really close to the team, and thought communion together would be neat way to close out the weekend. My friends were a bit agast as we had communion with simple iced tea and bread. I talked a bit about how communion is done differently all over the world, and explained that our local church requires baptism for communion. I said we would respect that as we were representing that church body in evangelism.
So here is a pic they took of me with my lipton tea and bread for communion.

Saturday nights event was huge! The whole side of that village turned out EARLY.
(Anything done early in Mali is a miracle!) About 500 people came out that night.
Here is a pic of part of the crowd. The man and woman in the chairs in the centre are the village chief and his wife. He was 100% welcoming to the group.

Lastly, I took some crowd pics of students who were chasing me yelling toubabou (White Guy!!) I stopped them, told them to greet me in Bambara, and took their picture.

Fruit in these kind of events is hard to see. Rarely does someone choose to follow Christ the night of a film showing, and if they do, it is because of prayer and witness that has gone on for a good time before that night. Of course the Gospel goes out, and that is never a waste, because God uses it to change lives.

This young man stayed in our courtyard with us all weekend. We included him in our serious times, and our game times. (for Canadians, we played a constant tournament of crokinole or pichnotte during our down times.) I really think allowing this young man to take part like one of us helped him to decide to accept Christ. Because that is what he did. He asks for prayer because all though he is a young man about 24-26 years old, he is afraid of what his parents' reaction will be. Pray that he will continue to grow in Christ. He is the center one in the picture, the man on our right is Isaaca, a part of the drama team, and someone we've known since Bouake days.



Thanks again for stopping by!
Tom & Lisa Seward