Sunday Night

It's hard to believe this ia our last night in Mali. The trip has gone by so fast...especially the retreat time with the precious women of Mali. We have been forever changed by the stories and faith of these women of God.

Today started with preparation for communion and quickly typing more music slides (thanks, Lori!). The women love to sing praises and so we decided to add more songs to our set today. Cori shared a message on David, the team shared our "blessings" from Scripture, and Jen led worship and communion time with word and song. It was a very meaningful time for these women, many of whom have not had the chance to participate in a communion service for months if not years. The time ended all too quickly with lunch at the hotel. In the short time we have had here, we have quickly grown to love and appreciate these sisters in Christ. We exchanged email addresses with some of the ladies and plan on connecting through Facebook as well, for those that have it. One of the women shared this weekend that a missionary's life is full of goodbyes. We understand that a little better now as we have shared our own goodbyes with them.

Please pray for these women of faith who serve Jesus here in Mali without fanfare, and often in isolated, desolate places.

After the retreat, Elaine took us back to the guesthouse to rest until the worship service. She told us about a store just down the street that sold ice cream and diet coke (called coke light here), so several of us went. We enjoyed sharing our experiences of the weekend and then the Clarks picked us up to take us to the English speaking worship service and then out to dinner. Nicki was not feeling well today and has spent most of the day in the room resting. Jen is still having mouth pain, and from speaking to the husband of one of the missionaries who is a doctor, he thinks she is having side effects from the malaria medication. Elaine brought her some different malaria med that we hope will alleviate her side effects.

Tomorrow we spend the day with the Clarks sightseeing and just enjoying being together. We plan to do early check in of our luggage so boarding will be smoother. Please pray there is no disruption in our flight as we have heard that Air France is having an "industrial strike". Not sure how that will impact us.

We are so blessed to have this opportunity to be here...we pray that our lives will be forever changed by our time here.

Love to All,

Nicki (for the team)