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