The Sweetest Sound

You know how when you're talking with somebody you give them little cues to let them know you're tracking with them?  Like maybe you say "yeah" or "uh-huh" or even just nod your head at certain breaks in the conversation?  The way Malians do this is by clicking their tongues, usually accompanied by one quick little nod down and last Thursday that click was the sweetest sound I've ever heard.

We got out the phone and gave it to H-Mama.  We told her that it was for her and then we explained how our work when we lived here had been these Stories from God's Word.  We told her about how they were in her language, Sunny.  And we told her that they were on the phone.  Then Abby began playing the first Story, Creation, as H-Mama focused in on listening.  The first line played...click & head nod.  The second line played...click & head nod.  This was literally the moment that we'd been waiting and praying for for almost 4 years.  A Sunny woman, in the middle of the Malian bush, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, was hearing God's Word for the first time...and in her heart language.  She couldn't get over that it was in her language!  We asked her if she understood the Story and she said she did.  Then I asked if she understood it really, really, really well and she said, "Yes!  They're in Sunny!"  It was a relief.  Even with all the things these Stories have gone through to be crafted, back-translated, tested, tweaked, re-recorded, re-backtranslated, and tweaked again...even with all of the research and documentation and citing of resources...even with all of that, we still had to know for sure that our village would be able to understand.  There are different dialects and different expressions even just in the Sunny language.  And we weren't able to test the Stories in our specific village...so we just wanted to know for sure.  And those two beautiful clicks were exactly what we were waiting to hear.

While seeing the Stories in H-Mama's hand and being able to see with my own eyes her hearing it for the first time was absolutely the high point of our trip, there was another thing that was a close second.  H-Mama's daughter who we'd never met was there.  She was so excited she could hardly stand it.  She told us that she was so happy to meet us and that she was so thankful for us because we had been able to take care of her mom in ways she couldn't.  She said that she couldn't even eat the rest of the day...all she wanted to do was praise God and thank Him.  Then later she said that we were sisters and that we look just alike. :)

Family Pic

Then it was time for lunch.  It was the craziest thing!  On the way there I mentioned that one of the (few) things I liked to eat in the village was okra sauce.  We hardly ever ate okra sauce and I didn't even know it was okra season, but that's exactly what we had for lunch.  It was such an overwhelming feeling of being home at that point.  We went through the whole meal routine as if we'd been doing it every day for the last 2 years.  Lay a cloth down, put the food bowls on it.  Gather around the food bowl in a circle and pass around the water bowl to wash your right hand.  Then we would pray with our hands facing up to indicate that we were praying a different prayer than the ones they pray 5 times a day facing east.  Then you pour the sauce over the rice and wait for the oldest person to dig in before you start eating.

Praying before lunch.  In other news, check out her arms.  She could definitely beat you up.

Eventually it was time to leave.  We said goodbyes and they said the goodbye blessings.  We walked to the others in the compound and did the same.  Then they all walked us to the truck.  I was seriously struggling to hold it together at this point.  We shook H-Mama's hand again and then we shook her left hand, something that's usually highly offensive.  But when you're leaving somebody, it's customary to do this because it's leaving things "unfinished" so to say.  After that I just couldn't help myself and I grabbed her and hugged her.  Then I started bawling and climbed in the truck.  It really was a perfect day.  Thank you for praying.  God answered in ways that I never even would have thought to ask for.  He was so good to us, so faithful.  And I am so thankful that He has a plan.

She was happy about the left hands.
P.S.  That's Max behind my head.

Homecoming

We got closer and closer to Yosemite and I got quieter and quieter.  Rainy season ended not too long ago, so there was still a river we had to drive through before we were officially there.  I couldn't decide whether I wanted to burst into tears, laugh hysterically, or throw up.  Instead I just sat there until finally the truck came to a stop and it was time to leap out and run into H-Mama's arms.

We got out and had to greet all the men sitting outside the compound first.  In the meantime, some kids had run into H-Mama's hut yelling, "Your white people are here!  Your white people are here!"  That's right, kiddos, we are white, we are hers, and we are here.

We ran toward her hut and nothing could stop the tears when I laid eyes on her.  She hugged us and made the H-Mama "Yay!" gesture.  Then she hugged us again and just held our hands saying our names over and over again.

We greeted everyone in the compound, gave H-Mama the 10 watermelons, tea, sugar, and rice, and then sat for a while just chatting until it was time to give her the phone loaded up with 32 Bible Stories and pictures of us with her.

A Highly-Anticipated Road Trip

In my previous post I mentioned that we had bought H-Mama a phone to play the Stories on and that we would "get it to her one way or another."  What I couldn't tell you yet was that we were GOING TO GO SEE HER!!!!!!  We weren't sure if we'd get to or not with everything going on in the country, but ultimately we just knew that that's what we'd been told to do.  We prayed and prayed and prayed...Nafi made a few phone calls...and it was decided:  we would go.

Abby and I pretty much leapt out of bed on Thursday morning and waited (patiently, even though Nafi says Abby was waiting outside her bedroom door tapping her feet) for 6:00 to roll around so we could go.  I was so excited and also nervous, maybe even a little nauseated, the way you get when you're about to see somebody you haven't seen for a long time and you're not sure how it will go.  Even just driving on the road toward Yosemite (what we call our village, where H-Mama lives) brought a rush of memories...good and, well, not so good.  The plan was to stop in Bread Town to grab lunch, buy some rice, tea, and sugar, and to meet Max for him to go to Yosemite with us.

Nafi dropped us off on the side of the road so that we could hop out and run the errands while she got gas.  Abby stopped off to get the egg sandwiches started (yum!) and Shasta and I started looking for a boutiki so we could buy the other stuff.  As I was struggling to communicate with somebody, not being sure of whether to use French, Bambara, or Sunny...and not being all that great in any of them...someone tugged on my sleeve.  I spun around (honestly, ready to give someone what-for) and landed face-to-face with Max!  I screamed and fought the urge to hug him...and slapped hands instead.  We went through all the greetings and he came to the boutiki with us...which didn't hurt the negotiating either. :)

We got in the truck, distributed the sandwiches and drinks and began the trip north to Yosemite.  During this part of the trip we covered up as much as we could with our shawls and even sunglasses.  The more we could blend in in this particular area the better.  We gave Max the phone we had purchased for him and he was SO EXCITED.  He actually kissed it at one point!  We showed him how the Stories were on it and how he could share them when he came in contact with Sunny people.

Nafi can't pass up a roadside watermelon stand.  We bought 10.

Egg sandwich and Coke from Bread Town, yo!

Abby showing Max how to play the Stories on his new phone.

We love a covert op :)

This non-functional "bridge" means we're about halfway to Yosemite!

Answered and Then Some

Late last night, Abby and I discovered that we had one tiny re-recording for Nick to do.  We asked him to come over at 8 am.  We dragged ourselves out of bed (we were exhausted from going to bed super late and this bed is super comfy!) and went into the room where we have our little sound booth set up.  For some reason everything just felt a little uneasy, which is why I'm glad that G-d is powerful enough to wake up a friend on the other side of the world to pr-y at the exact moment you need it.  This would happen from time to time when I lived here and it always just left me in awe.

Several things were already looking sketchy.  Nick was running late, which wasn't really a surprise.  And we couldn't get a hold of the man at the Chr-stian radio station, which wasn't really a surprise either.  Nafi probably called him like 15 times.  Nick came and we recorded so at least that was done.  When Nafi came back from doing sport, the 3 of us just pr-yed.  So, so, so many things had to fall into place.  And they all had to fall into place TODAY because mine & Abby's last chance to go distribute  is tomorrow.  So we just pr-yed that the L-rd would order our steps.  We gave Him our day and started listening.

We needed the radio station because they are the ones who duplicate the cassettes from our master copy.  So we went to the radio station even though we didn't know if we'd get the guy we needed.  We walked in and greeted everybody, then Nafi started asking for the certain guy we needed.  As they were telling us that he wouldn't be in because he was on vacation, he walked in!  We went into his office and Nafi began to tell him what we needed.  She told him that we had just completed a B-ble Story Set in the Sunny language and they must be put on cassettes today so that we could give them to Sunny people tomorrow.  He looked so joyful and looked at us and clapped his hands together all excited.  He said it would be very late before they would be ready, but that they could do them today.  As we were making the final arrangements, one of his co-workers walked by and asked him what he was doing at work since he was on vacation.  He said that we must have prayed for him to come...to which Nafi said, "oh, if you only knew."

We then went to find one of our company's translators to see if he would run an errand for us.  We wanted to purchase a radio that would play cassettes as well as the SD cards so that we could leave it in the village where the women helped us test our Stories.  He didn't know how much something like that would cost and neither did we, so Nafi just gave him enough to cover whatever it might be.  It was about a fifth of the price we thought.  Then we went to the phone store to get SD cards and a phone for Max with a SD slot as well as Bluetooth so that he could share Stories with people as he travels.  The phones ended up being so inexpensive that we bought 4 of them.  One for Max, one for Nick, one for Bryan...and one for H-Mama.  We loaded hers up with all 32 Stories...and a bunch of pictures of Abby, Sarah, and I with her. We'll make sure it gets to her one way or another.  Even though she doesn't have electricity, they always find a way to charge phones!  And Nafi said that it was a very African "child" thing to do to buy a parent something like a phone.

We put the Stories on all of the little SD cards and tested them on the radio all evening.  And then, around 10 Nafi & Abby went to the radio station to get our cassettes.

I just can't believe it's finally here.  Every moment of the two years I spent here was working toward what will happen tomorrow.  Every ping of homesickness, every frustration with language, every sweaty night in a tent, every bout with malaria was to see G-d glorified among the Sunny people.  Every dance party, every laughing fit with H-Mama, every crazy exciting time we could see G-d at work was to see His Word made available to the Sunny people.  Today was a day of answered pr-yer.  He always answers in so much more amazing ways than I could even imagine!

Thankful for this today:
Psalm 72:18-19
"Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel,
Who alone works wonders.
And blessed be His glorious name forever;
And may the whole earth be filled with His glory.  Amen, and Amen."

Please pray...

...that these Stories would fall on open ears and soft hearts.
...that we would have wisdom & discernment as we distribute.
...for language recall as we spend time with Sunny people in the next few days.
...for Bryan to see G-d's love for him.

Thankful For All The Thumbs In My Life

While we were back-translating with Bryan today, we had a bowl of peanuts on the table.  Peanuts are a huge staple of the Malian diet.  They'll eat them raw, sometimes roast them, and almost every sauce that we ate in our village was peanut-based (and we ate sauce almost every meal).  A lot of people have peanut fields, our village mom being one of them, and we helped work in the fields during planting season.  During hot season we'd literally sit outside on the ground shelling the harvested peanuts all afternoon.

One of our co-workers who knew what we'd be doing this week brought by 2 bags of roasted peanuts for us to serve during our work time.  This is certainly the polite thing to do and is a snack that appeals to all nationalities involved. :)

While Bryan was listening to one of the Stories, I looked over and saw that he was running his finger all through the bowl...you know...touching every single peanut in there.  He saw me looking at him and I'm sure I had a what-in-the-world-are-you-doing look on my face.  He said, "Can you pick it up like this?"  (meaning with one finger)  I tried, and sure enough I couldn't.  He said, "Here we have a saying: 'One finger cannot pick up the rock.'  Do you understand?  It means you can't do things alone, you should let somebody help you."  I said, "Well then you're our thumb!"  He thought I was crazy, but he agreed.  :)

So if you're reading this...thank you for being one of our thumbs!!!  Thank you for joining us in pr-yer and thank you for your support and encouragement along the way...it means so much.



Pr-yer Updates:

- We finished all of the back-translations this morning and then finished all of the re-recordings this afternoon!!  This is huge...something only G-d could do.  We will start the technical process tomorrow of putting these Stories onto something that is distributable, reproducible, and useable in the bush.  Pray once again for multiplication of time!

- Keep pr-ying for Bryan.  Today when he was back-translating, he couldn't think of the English word for "convert."  He said, "You know...it's like...when I become a Chr-st-follower, what would you say I did?"

Dreams

When I was at training a few years ago before I moved to Mali, I was encouraged to pray something for my people that (honestly) kind of weirded me out at the time.  I'd never really been out of the country before...so even though I knew that there were people out there with different worldviews than me, I'd never experienced it.  We learned that there are a lot of other cultures who believe God clearly speaks to them through dreams and visions.  So we were encouraged to pray that our people group would have dreams and visions about J-sus.  So like I said, it did weird me out just a smidge.  But then it happened!

There was a lady that we befriended while we were here.  She was pretty interested in learning more about the J-sus Road and Abby & another girl went by her house to practice telling her a Story during a training.  She told them that she had had a dream that 2 foreign women came to tell her about J-sus.  When Abby asked her about the dream, the woman said that it happened just as things were happening now.  They were sitting in the same place, talking about the same things.  She really seemed to take that as a sign from God and she ended up helping us test our Stories up until she left the country.  So now I'm a pretty firm believer that this is the way some people groups hear from God.  After all, He knows how to really get our attention as individuals.  He knows what makes us tick.  He knows what breaks our hearts and He knows what excites us.  So He definitely knows how to communicate with us in a way that will be meaningful.  And I believe that He often sends dreams and visions to people in order to prepare them for His message.

And that is just what we're praying for Bryan, our back-translator right now.  He is so close to finding the J-sus Road.  He has studied the B-ble and he has heard our Stories (in great detail!).  We have had many, many conversations with him.  

We found out last night that he stopped "pra-ing" a few months ago (as in, he has stopped participating in the Mslm prayers).  Since he stopped, he has had two dreams that Jesus came to visit him.  In the first dream J-sus was looking at him and Bryan waved.  In the second dream Bryan was studying the B-ble and J-sus came over and wanted to help him understand it, but Bryan refused.  Nafi challenged him last night to sit down and ask God to show him what is true.  Please pray for him!

Reunited

We landed at 10 am with all of our luggage.  And thank goodness, too, because one of those suitcases was filled with 2 frozen turkeys, a frozen ham, some frozen hot dogs, and some Beaver Nuggets from Bucee's (thanks to my small group on that last item :)).

Nafi talked airport security into letting her come in to get us so we got out with no problems...didn't even look twice at our bags.  We went straight to the tailor's shop to pick up my 2 new outfits.  I had to try them on in a little area that was about 100 degrees while Nafi & Abby held up a piece of fabric to guard me.  I'd already worked up a pretty good sweat at the airport, so wrangling those clothes on was interesting.  But they fit and I love them!

On the way home to Nafi's, we called Bryan (our back-translator) and told him to come at 1 pm.  He did and we pretty much got right to work.  We were able to back-translate 6 of our 32 Stories that afternoon before we took him home.  We came back to eat dinner at Nafi's house then went to greet Nick, our crafter (the one whose voice tells the Stories).  He just got married last week, so Nafi helped us to know what to bring as a gift.  She uploaded tons of pics from his wedding to the Lake Jackson Walmart and I picked them up.  We put them in a photo album and gave that to Nick and his wife, along with some new sheets (a very nice gift :)).  We spent about an hour over there and came home a little after 9 pm.  I told Abby we'd done pretty well for our first 12 hours back in the country!

Yesterday, Bryan was able to back-translate 14 more Stories for a total of 20 out of 32!!  We were excited, but we also knew that we needed to pick up the pace a little.  We stayed up late last night going through the back-translation and prepping the minor changes that we would need Nick to re-record today.  It was so much fun.  I actually find the whole process thrilling.  Yes, thrilling.

It has been so wonderful to be reunited with Nafi, Bryan, and Nick.  I just couldn't stop grinning like a weirdo for the first 2 hours we were with Bryan.  Abby and I have been talking about how it's such an odd feeling...it kind of feels like we never left.

So...please, please, PLEASE continue praying with us!  There are, of course, all the project-related things like finishing the back-translations, making tweaks to the recordings, and being able to distribute them.  But the biggest thing on all of our hearts right now is Bryan.  He is so close to the Jes-s Road.

New clothes...

Obviously there are LOTS of reasons that I'm excited to go to Mali.  But one of them is that I get new clothes.  Actually...it's kind of embarrassing.  Well, now that I think about it it's really embarrassing and I should probably talk myself out of posting this, but I'm probably going to anyway.  I was Skyping with Nafi (our supervisor) the other day and I told her I had an issue.  My issue is that I only brought home two Malian outfits with me.  And even though the vast majority of the time, Malian outfits are big flowy shirts and wrap skirts...I brought home two outfits that were a little tight to begin with.  And well, I've gained weight since being back in America.  At this point, Nafi says, "Oh, America.  You taste so good."  I said, "I know!!  It's killing me.  I have to keep trying to convince myself that Chick-Fil-A and Mexican food will still be there next week."  I'll work on that when I get back.  But for now, Nafi's getting me new clothes.  Which means she went and bought me fabric and then took it to the tailor and told him to make me some outfits.  I'm sure I'll hear all about how "healthy" I am and how good America must be to me.  I gotta start Doing Sport again.  (That was for you, Ash!)

The Inbetweenies

When we left Mali, we had finished the parts of the process that we needed to finish while we were still in the country.  There were a few things that needed to be done, but there were people in Mali who were going to be able to tie up those loose ends and I would be able to finish the Excel work from America.  Long story short, there was a coup in Mali shortly after Abby and I left and all of that changed.  Soooooo the Stories have just been sitting there...almost finished, but not able to be distributed.  For the last almost 2 years I have felt like I have unfinished business over there.

So we're going back.  For a week.  And a LOT has to happen in that week, but once again we're ready to get out of the way and watch what He can do.

Each of the 32 Stories needs to be "back-translated" again.  This means that one of our friends, Bryan, who speaks both English and Sunny, will listen to the Stories in Sunny and repeat them back to us line-by-line in English.  This ensures that all the necessary changes have been made to the Story.  After researching, testing, and consulting various resources minor changes were made to each Story before the final recordings.  We just have to make sure that all of those changes are the way they should be.

Then we'll have Nick, the man who actually tells the Stories, re-record any corrections.  Abby has been learning how to splice that all together and edit everything.  So she'll do that while I continue to update the Excel documents.  Then we'll work on putting the Stories on cassette tapes and microchips that can plug into a cell phone.  Then we'll make sure that the Stories make it where they need to go.

Once again, I'd like to ask for your prayers!  Please pray...

...that Bryan will be open to God's Word and hear the truth of Jesus.
...that time will be multiplied.
...that we will have wisdom about Story distribution.
...that Sunny people will receive the Stories and their hearts will be softened and eventually that they will choose the Jesus Road!!