Mali, West Africa
As I have said before I have a young friend that is serving the Lord as a missionary in Mali, West Africa. I subscribe to a blog that she writes detailing her experiences. If you would like to read her blog, and perhaps subscribe yourself you can click the following link – Resolving… I recieved this from her yesterday, and felt I needed to share this.
Since we have moved to our new city. There have been many changes. As you know we were given two volunteers to help this fall, but because of all the changes we have decided to let them join Scott’s team. Scott is one of our partners works in a village pretty much doing what we do in the desert.
So, this past week we have been training the volunteers and getting them ready to join Scott. As part of their orientation we had them participate in storying training. Here, our evangelism strategy is Bible storying, telling stories from God’s Word in the narrative form. During this training we were just teaching them the importance of it and how it works. In the morning we would have a time of teaching the new girls and then in the afternoons we would go out and share the stories that we learned. The second day of the training we learned the story Creation to Church, which is basically a 7-8 minutes concise presentation of the Gospel in story form. That afternoon Sarah, Michelle, and I went out to share. A translator accompanied us and it was her very first time to translate. She hopes to secure a job with our company as a translator, so this was kind of a trial run for her.
As we were walking we came upon three ladies who were sitting in front of a boutique (store). We sat down with them and started to have a lively conversation. The women were so nice and welcoming. We were immediately asked if we were fasting for Ramadan, which is a Muslim holiday that is taking place this month. We told them that we were not fasting for Ramadan but we do fast but there are some differences. We began to explain that we follow Jesus. Michelle then asked them if they would like to hear a story from God’s Word. The women gladly accepted and Michelle began. At the beginning of the story all three women were listening intently. About half way through we lost two of the women but the one, Mary, was still listening.
As soon as the story was over Mary immediately told us that what we were saying was truth and that she wanted to be a follower of Jesus! We were very excited and began to ask her questions about the story. As she answered the questions we could see that she was authenticate in here belief. She asked us if we would come to her house and tell more stories from God’s Word to her and her family. So today we have a NEW SISTER, WELCOME!!!
Afterwards, we were talking to our translator, who is a muslim woman. She told us that she could not believe that Mary was convinced by the story. She kept on saying that it was very interesting and she needed to go home to think about everything that had happened. Please remember to keep her in your prayers!
So that night I was thinking about all the ways that God had answered prayers that day! God had brought a new sister into the kingdom through using the first story Michelle told in Africa! He got the wheels of a devout Muslim’s mind turning! And he showed us that even though we had to leave our home God can still use us where we are!!
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Father, I thank You for missionaries, foreign and domestic, who have heard Your call; and answered, “Here am I send me Lord. I ask that You would be with them all to guide them in Your path, and to comfort them in sorrows. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Yes, You Can Ministry 