Women's Visit to Gninasso

This is Lisa today....How do you combine an official village visit to celebrate God's healing someone you prayed over 3 years ago, plus a "funeral" visit that's a year overdue, plus a new funeral visit from last week? You just go, ready to sing and dance, with lots of snacks!

This was our women's group yesterday in the rented bus, on our way to the village of Gninasso, about 5 miles outside of Kadiolo, where one of the rural pastors lives and is working on starting a church plant. A couple of years ago, we went there and prayed for a widow, named Bintu, who had been struggling for months and was dependent on Pastor Salif's family to help raise her children since her husband had died. We had intended to return later when she was healthy again to praise God for answering prayers on her behalf and to witness to the watching villagers. But then when Lisa got sick and we left on medical leave last year, this return visit was delayed.

And during that year, Pastor Salif's wife, Chiata, lost her mother. Since we weren't around with our car and no-one could afford to rent transportation, a group visit was never done then, either. As we were evaluating ministry opportunities for this year, the ladies wanted to do this visit to Gninasso, so Tom and I agreed to fund the transport for the group, since we have recently sold our car. Then, last week at the end of this planning meeting, word came from this village than one of the young women had just passed away and they were trying to get word to Pastor Salif who had been preaching at another church that morning. So, we were glad that we were already "on our way", so to speak, to encourage the believers there.



We arrived and greeted the villagers, shared our "news" (why we were there), had some singing time and I shared some Bible passages, and then the food! Various women had prepared donut holes, popcorn, peanuts, and drinks, and then there was more singing and dancing at the end. The women were so pleased to be able to go. The village church really enjoyed their visit, too.


Just as we were leaving the village, the van blew a tire, and it became apparent that the driver and helpers' tools were tired out and not doing the job. Getting very little phone network signal, I called Tom and asked him to help us. He found the van owner in town and let him know the situation. They scrambled around with the other car owners, came up with a wrench, then sent it off with Pastor Youssouf on a motorbike so the guys could fix the tire. Rescued and back to Kadiolo just as dark was falling. In the picture above, Pastor Salif is the man on the far right; he would covet your prayers as he is working on two very different church plants many miles apart, the one where he lives, and also the church in Misseni, at the gold rush.

Back to Tom...
You may not know we've been having severe power cuts. Ivory Coast provides our electricity via 2 giant turbines in a hydro electric dam. One of those is broken.
So they announced we'll be on half time electric until May.

We have been pleasantly surprised to find the generator we bought in August in Bamako does not use a lot of gas. It has been such a blessing to be able to pump water with our electric pump, run the freezer, and fridge, and do lots of the other things we need to do with electric, all without consuming a lot of gas. What a blessing! Last night we were supposed to have our power cut from 1 pm to 5pm today. Monday. Well for some reason we enjoyed electric all night last night. Another blessing from God. He is so good to us...

Thanks for stopping by,
Keep on praying for us.... we know you do!!

Tom & Lisa Seward