Abidjan, finally!!

Our first Christmas tree in Africa!

Snowflake

Day at the beach

It feels great to finally be in the city that God has called us to! We really like Abidjan. It is much different than Bamako. When we got off the plane we saw grass, it was great! It is much hotter here because of the humidity, but they say we will get use to it someday! ;-)

As many of you know, Jon got sick the second day we was here and spent most of the day in the emergency room. He had malaria symptoms but the test came back negative. The doctor said it sometimes takes 24 hours for the results to show so he went ahead and treated him for malaria. After losing two days (he can't remember much about that weekend), he was doing much better and we had a good Christmas with the other missionaries.

It was a very different Christmas this year. We were homesick to see family, but God was faithful to send us a great group of people to spend the day with and Autumn even got a rabbit for Christmas! On Christmas eve our guard found one roaming down the street so he put it in the yard to see if anyone came looking for it. Well, no one has and now Autumn has her first pet in Africa! She named it Snowflake (wishful thinking!), and the silly thing is already spoiled!

The day after Christmas we headed to the beach for the day! I bet most of you didn't get to do that! ;-) Abidjan is a coastal city on the Atlantic Ocean.

Abidjan is huge and the driving is just as crazy here as it was in Bamako. Jon says it is better because you don't have all the motos, but there are many more vehicles here! And there is no lines on the road...people just drive where they feel like it. I just don't know if I will ever get use to this! We have been learning our way around (with the help of our teammates) and can finally get to some places alone. We will start back with a french tutor next week, this week we are shopping around for all the things we need to get settled in. I was amazed the first time we went shopping! Abidjan has malls and they have about anything you would like!

When we get our home set up we will post some pictures. Leave us a comment to let us know what is going on with you.

Happy New Year,

Teresa

Moving to Abidjan

This seat gets really hard after about three hours!

Lipton, citron, and beaucoup sugar (delicious!)

Making tea, a true art in West Africa

Our village sunrise

Hello everyone,

We will be moving to Abidjan in the morning (Thursday) which will be about a 90 minute flight. We hope to get settled in before Christmas and start making this city our new home. However, I want to update what has been happening here in Mali.

The weather has been nice with much cooler temperatures. This past weekend, our family went to a village with our leadership to spend time with the village pastor and a couple of missionaries who are living in the village. It was good to spend a couple of days and experience village life and fellowship. We stopped and picked up two live chickens on the way and the pastor's wife did an excellent job preparing meals of chicken and rice. The pastor and his family are a very small minority of believers in the village. There were less that ten people at church service Sunday morning from a community of around five thousand people. It was a blessing to see this pastor's faithfulness in a less than accepting environment of the gospel. (See Autumn's blog for pictures and more info on our village trip)

Teresa had her first experience of a moto hitting the vehicle she was riding in. Teresa wasn't driving but she had gone to a village with two other women and was returning home when a moto smacked into the side of the vehicle. The driver of the moto was not hurt so he kept going and did not stop. If you could experience the driving here in West Africa, you would wonder how we are not in an accident every day. Thank you for your prayers of safety.

I am posting a picture of my friend Joseph making tea. Joseph is a believer and has been so helpful and graceful in my cultural transition. It's hard to explain but he has suffered a certain amount of cultural rejection because of his association with me. Joseph makes sure that I understand the motives and hearts of people, both good and bad. There is so much potential for Joseph to be such a powerful witness to his own people. Please pray that God will continue to work in his life and Joseph will become a faithful laborer in the field where God has placed him.

Other prayer request:

1.) For our travel and transition to Abidjan

2.) For God to send more laborers to West Africa.

Lastly, we want to thank everyone (especially our parents and Emmanuel Baptist) for the care packages that were sent. We feel so blessed to be supported by all of you. Our ministry is truly a ministry of the entire body of Christ.

Blessings,

Jon, Teresa, & Autumn

First village experience

Sorry we are late blogging this week, our internet has been very sporadic. Our time in Mali is coming to an end soon, we will arrive in Abidjan next week. We are excited to arrive in the city that God has called us and get settled in our home. We will miss the friends that we have made in Mali and continue to pray that they will seek the truth.

I had my first village experience this past Saturday. Along with two other ladies, I went to a nearby village to do a storying group. It was harvesting day for the village so we were not able to tell a story, but we spent three hours building relationships. Of course, I couldn't understand a word they said because they do not speak french in the villages. The local language of Bamara is spoken in most villages. It was neat to sit under a tree and talk about what is going on in their life. I got my first village tea experience (yes, we all drank out of the same glass!). As you see, I got lots of pictures of the children. They were so excited to get their picture taken. I also posted a picture of the machine that was in their village that day to harvest their rice. We will go as a family to stay overnight in a village this Saturday. We are excited about the experience!

Continue to pray for our language learning and our move next week. We will try to post some pictures of our new home and neighborhood next week.

Enjoy the cool weather ;-)

Teresa

Weekend at Segou

Not for sure how long this has been here

A picture of one of the mud huts we saw in a village along the way

yes, that is a goat on top of that truck....crazy!

fishermen on the Niger River

Autumn enjoying the pool.........

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We got to enjoy the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with ham, turkey, dressing and pumkin pie on Wednesday. I would have never thought we would eat this well in West Africa! Of course on Thursday things were as normal, we washed clothes and then ate tacos. For some reason the people here don't celebrate Thanksgiving! ;-) I have to admit it was a little hard talking to family on Thursday when they were all together enjoying the time eating and watching the football game, but God was faithful to give us His peace. We have to remember during these times that God has a work in store for us here and we are to be faithful to that call.

On Friday morning, us and two other couples packed up and drove 3 1/2 hours to Segou. This was a great accomplishment for us since we aren't fluent in French yet. We made it thru all the roadside police stops without any problems. The only problem is there wasn't any rest stops or gas stations with bathrooms on the way!! This made for an interesting trip. The things we will do in Africa that we wouldn't never thought about doing in America! ;-)

We stayed at a hotel that had a pool and a restaurant with American food. The rooms was very nice, not as nice as Ramada but nice for Africa. They even had wireless internet, I was impressed! They also had satellite tv, of course there was only 6 channels and 5 of them was in french! We ended up watching a lot of CNN. The pool was a nice getaway for Autumn. We got to eat all the cheeseburgers, fries and pizza that we wanted. I was actually getting tired of french fries by the time we left! We went shopping at the market by the Niger River. It was nice and we bought us a wall hanging for our bedroom. I am really excited to start decorating our house when we arrive in Abidjan! (Which is just a little over 2 weeks away!) We got to practice a lot of our french this weekend while we were out. It was really encouraging to see where we have come in 6 weeks! I have attached some pictures from our weekend.

Enjoy the cool weather for us because it is still hot here! I am wishing for a white Christmas, but some reason I don't think I will get it! ;-)

Prayer Requests:

1. Continue to pray for our french learning. I know you hear this every blog but this is the most important thing right now. Without being able to communicate in french, we can not share the story of what Christ has done for them.

2. Pray that we will stay healthly.

3. Pray for the people that God has placed in our life here in Bamako. We only have a short time left here, so pray that we will be able to communicate clearly the hope we have in Jesus.

Miss you all,

Teresa