Mali Missions Trip

It’s Friday evening... the conference in Segou is now over. It was hard to leave. The 3 little children that Neisha watched for 6 hours each day fell in love with her! Vickie developed a very real connection with the 6 kids that she worked with… as did Amy with her 5 middle school aged teens. Vickie and Amy taught the kids a couple of fun songs about missions and Africa that they sang for us during the morning’s session.

The challenge I gave this morning was from Nehemiah 6:3… ‘you are carrying on a great project, do not come down!’ During the late morning session, Amy shared her heart regarding some thoughts on the cross (When did He know the full weight that He was to carry?; Jesus was forsaken by God – Ps. 22:1 – God promises to us that He will never leave us nor forsake us, but Jesus did not receive this promise – rather, it was the Lord’s will to crush Him – Is. 53:10) and then we shared communion together around the table. Our time concluded by Josh and Teresa leading us in the song ‘How Great is our God’. Our worship experience (thru song, word and communion) was very sweet this morning. As a church back at CHAC, if you could have observed the team in action here in Mali, you would have been very proud – I know I sure was. I believe our prayers were answered in that God used us to bring renewal and refreshment to the missionaries and their families… so thanks for praying!

Needless to say, there were many hugs (and tears) as we said good bye. But we know that though we are 1000’s of miles apart, we are one in the Spirit and we are working together to build God’s church all over the world.

After lunch we packed up the van and made the 3 hour drive (it took us 4 hours since we drove thru driving rain most of the way – it is rainy season here) to the capital city of Bamako with Bob Braafhart serving as our chauffeur. Bob took us to a fun little Italian restaurant for supper – we had pizza and then splurged a bit with some fun desserts.

We are staying at the guest house here in Bamako for the night. Tomorrow morning we’ll be visiting a prison and the Rahab House which ministers to prostitutes. We’ll have lunch at one of the missionaries houses here in Bamako and then head to the Artisan / Market area in the afternoon. After packing our suitcases we’ll head to the airport at midnight in order to catch our flight out of Mali at 3:30A. In case I’m not able to update the blog again, our scheduled arrival into the Des Moines airport is 9:30P on Sunday evening. Prayers for sleep on the plane, transfer connections and for all our luggage to make it are appreciated.

Thanks again to all that have blessed us on this trip thru your financial and prayer support; and also thru your comments on the blog. We truly feel like we are part of a much bigger team of people… a body of Christ that is together attempting to bring back the King.

Together for Him,

Pastor Cory