God is alive and well in Mali

Some of the encouraging signs of this as reported to us recently from our local church colleagues are:

• The leader of a local youth group said, "Let's not spend money on ourselves this Easter to celebrate and dance. Instead let's use that money to go out to the village and go door to door sharing about the real meaning of Easter."
• Another pastor told us that he has a vision to see the Good News shared in every village between Bamako and the Guinea border. He and his local youth went out to one village and played a soccer game and did evangelism. The team lost the game but many heard about the One who came and will win against all odds.
• One church spent the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before Easter fasting and praying and then reported that their Easter services were amazing! That's what happens when we prepare our hearts to receive what God has for us.

• In January the district baptized 321 people but the leaders sensed that more had "missed the boat" and wanted to take this important step so they held another baptismal service last month - another 321 candidates did the required classes and showed up that Saturday morning. There are much larger districts in the US with far more believers in their churches who have not seen 600 baptisms in a year for a long time. Benjamin Koné, a young pastor who is attending our English class was concerned that few of his congregation had been baptized so he did some teaching on it. Two thirds of his congregation were baptized that day.  A highlight of the service was watching a mom's face glow was she saw her two teenagers come out of the water.  
• Sometimes we get frustrated with requests for funds but how exciting to hear that 3 churches have done evangelism and built walls for a church but need help roofing it. Another 2 churches have finished buildings for themselves. 

We've been reading a book together called WHEN HELPING HURTS by Steve Corbett and Brian Pickert. We're so excited about what God is doing in Bamako we want to be sure that our helping truly empowers God's people here and in no way creates a dependency that limits what they can do in God's strength.