Busy Week in Kadiolo

This week has been a very busy one in Kadiolo.

We started off last Saturday with a executive committee meeting for Pain de Vie.
(Pain de Vie is the name of the local church association we work with. It means bread of life.)
Our meeting went from 9am to 5pm. There were a lot of important issues to discuss/resolve.
3 hours of it exposed a serious personality conflict between executive team members.
Every night since then I've been meeting with members helping them work towards healthy reconciliation.
Please continue to pray that this happens in a Godly way. I'm encouraged by the direction things have been going in these counseling/encouragement/exhortation meetings... but there is more to do.

Several tough issues were on the table in this executive meeting.

Two of our young village believers would like to move towards pastoral training.
They would like to start right away. But they wanted to go to a non-evangelical Bible school.
(Actually the leader of this school was asked to leave the association of evangelical protestant churches of Mali.) We encouraged these two young men to change their plans and go to the more evangelical school, explaining that they are limiting their future possibilities of serving in a local church. Since most protestant churches in Mali are members of the association of evangelical churches.
We also were concerned about the theology at this other school. They accepted to change their plans, and go to the more evangelical school.

Another issue was related to the drama team. Should the drama team remain independant or should they belong to the Pain de vie association?
It prevailed that the drama team remain autonomous, but that the members of the team continue to be members of the local church, and under local church authority.
(this was a 2.5 hr discussion.)

Another tough issue is related to a church member (not a leader/elder) who has two wives, and is now preparing to marry a 3rd. This is not acceptable in Christian culture, though Mali allows a person to have up to 4 wives. So approaches have been made to him to not go ahead with the marriage. It is looking like discipline will be necessary, sadly enough.

You may know that I (Tom) am not a meeting person. Formal meetings make me nervous. However, God gave me peace & grace to deal with some of these very HOT potatoes,
and all decisions were agreed upon by concensus... although they took a long time debating.
What was neat to me about the meeting was that they treated me like a brother, an insider who knew a lot of the skeletons. They were not shy about
voicing their opinions strongly. (Almost too strongly because some feelings were hurt, and we're working on reconciliation now...)
But it was not a case of "we can't speak in front of the missionary, what will he think of us?" Definately not like that... :D lol.

Other events this week included a visit from our africa director and his wife from Littleton, Colorado. It is always such an encouragement when they come.
We also had our first full team meeting since we've come back, with Requadts and Frazees. We are currently 3 families on the field, with one in the USA hoping to come back to join the work.

We also have people visiting us hoping to sell us cars. We are looking for an older model mercedes. (Used diesel mercedes come down from Europe, after they have 100,000 miles on them. A mercedes in Mali is considered a durable workhorse, a taxi, not a luxury car. Rich people drive toyota... :D Anyway, we're interested in a mercedes because parts are available. As we found out with our last car, a mitsubishi... parts were very hard to get, and very expensive. Imagine a starter motor for $900???? Anyway here is a picture  of one of two cars that were brought by. One is a 1993 and the other is a 1997. We're hoping to get something closer to a 2000-2002. We'll see what God brings... :D

Thanks for praying for us. We could not feel more useful with the church association at this time. OUr relationships are strong from our previous term, and in africa,

relationship really is everything. It is so important, that it cannot be overstated.

Thanks for stopping by today
Tom & Lisa




Tom and Lisa work with Worldventure in Mali, West Africa. If you would like to donate online to help this ministry, click this link: http://worldventure.com/Give/Give-Now.html?id=4569 If you would like to email comments, our email is: tlseward@gmail.com