Thanksgiving in Africa

Hello everyone,

I hope all of you are fine in America as we are doing well in Mali. I (Jon) have had a sinus infection due to the winds and dust of the Saraha desert, I am told this is not uncommon for many people this time of year. In Mali, you do not need a prescription for medication so I just walked a couple of blocks to the pharmacy and bought what I needed. However, you do have to consult with the right people and make sure you are getting the right kind of antibiotic. Teresa and Autumn have not had any major sicknesses and are fine.

French is going as well as can be expected. I have been told that a person will only learn as much of another language as they need and I believe that. There must be some sort of motivation other than just wanting to know another language because of the difficulty in learning. In our case, the motivation is being able to share eternal truth with others in a language that they will understand. Some day, the fruit of our learning and your prayers will be evident.

Thanksgiving will soon be here and we will be celebrating with other missionaries here in the city. It sounds like we will be having somewhat of a traditional dinner as everyone is bringing something to the table, we are taking a couple of homemade coconut pies and cranberry sauce that we brought in our suitcases from America! As to the weather, it does not feel like Thanksgiving here because of the heat but we have so much to be thankful for. A few years ago we started a family tradition on Thanksgiving where we have a time of prayer, the prayer only includes thanks to God for His blessings. It can be a challenge to pray without asking for something but I would encourage you to try it with your own family this year. It is amazing how the Lord inhabits our praise of thanksgiving and reminds us of his blessings.

The day after Thanksgiving, we will be traveling about three hours to another town with two other missionary families for two days of relaxing and hopefully a pool for the kids. It will be really good for Autumn because her time is so limited with other kids her age because we do not see each other except for once or twice each week. It will be quite the adventure because we are all amatuers in the language and you can forget about mapquest helping you over here! We will be back to the city on Sunday afternoon and then I will be taking my first trip to the village on Monday morning with a missionary who has several years experience. I am looking foward to the experience of sleeping under the stars and my first introduction to eating typical village food. If the Lord brings it to your remembrance to pray on Monday afternoon, I will probably be sitting around a campfire with several West Africans from about 3:00pm to 6:00pm your time as the other missionary shares the truth of the gospel in their heart language.

Lastly, I just want to tell you that I had my friend over for dinner last night (supper is not a word here) and afterwards we watched ICE AGE (in French). It was quite entertaining to see him laughing so hard over an animated movie. I am not a big movie person but ICE AGE ranks in my top ten favorites.

Well, that sums up what we have been doing here in Africa. Please keep praying that God will open up a door for witness, I was able to share a few nights ago for a couple of hours with a man who believes Jesus was a good man and prophet but nothing more. I was able to communicate because the man spoke and understood quite a bit of English. It is not uncommon to catch myself speaking back and forth between both languages, they call in Frenglish!

Hope you have a blessed day in Christ,

Jon