Mrs. B. has seven children, one boy and six girls. Her son is in his late teens and her youngest two children are twin girls the same age as Amelie and Annika. She and her five girls sleep together on the floor in one room of their multifamily home. None of them had blankets until two days ago when I gave them two lovely quilts made by women in my home church.

Mr. B chose a very American colored quilt made by the same ladies for his bed. He currently has two very old, tattered, and dry-rotted quilts that are in such disrepair it would have been futile for me to piece them back together. Mr. B told me this morning that he gave his quilt to his son who did not have a blanket. I am not entirely sure of Mr. B’s salvation, and I know his wife and children subscribe to the religious beliefs of the Fulbe people; but acts of love like this surely draw their hearts closer to knowing Christ.

Please pray with me this week as David and I give another quilt to a neighbor who does not have a blanket. David will also share the Good News with her.

Drew Hayes, a WorldVenture mid-term worker just spent several weeks in Guinea filming to produce three documentaries for our team. He spent two weeks in Kankan {among the Maninka people} with our colleagues and four days with us. Meet Drew:

Drew filming at the crest of Saala Falls {a 200+ ft drop}

And this clip shows our team leader talking a little about solar panels:

We will be sure to share our documentary with you when Drew is finished with it. Please pray for Drew as he is flying back to the US today.

Tomorrow, we will be assisting in an eyeglass clinic in a nearby town.  During the clinic, people will receive vision screenings and receive glasses.  Even more important, they will have the opportunity to hear the Gospel and receive Scripture.  Please pray that God would open their eyes to his truth.

David sent out an email update this morning. If you did not receive it and would like to be on our mailing list, please let us know by sending an email using the “Contact” button on the upper right hand corner of the screen. See it up there?

Enjoy reading about our team, and enjoy your weekend!

Our New Ministry Center

As of this month, we have begun renting a facility to use for a variety of ministries and outreach-oriented activities.  To begin with, we are moving our Fulbe believer meetings there since the location is more easily accessible to everyone.  I also plan to begin teaching on various topics there, such as discipleship and leadership.

Our Round Hut for Believer Meetings

Another major use for the facility is English classes.  Once I get tables, chairs, and ESL materials, such as textbooks, I will begin teaching a number of English as a Second Language classes and seminars.  Many people here have a strong desire to learn English.  Through these classes, I will be able to meet many new people.

The future may reveal yet more uses for the ministry facility.  One long-standing prayer of ours has been that God would send more workers to share Christ here in Guinea.  If more workers come to our town, our ministry facility is also a house that they could move right into.  Please pray with us for God’s blessing upon this new ministry center.

No, not “to buy a fat pig.” For religious reasons, the Fulbe do not eat pork. Yesterday we set off to the market to visit friends and pass out these newly printed 2012 Scripture calendars:

David carried Annika while Amelie enjoyed the view from my back. The girls really like being tied to my back when we go out, because they can pull their arms inside the carrier and put their heads down so people can’t easily touch them. I tucked a stack of calendars under my arm so people would take interest in them and off we went. (I discovered that people take great interest in partially hidden items. If they can see into my shopping bag, just a little, then they ask me what I bought. If they think I am trying to hide something, it becomes intriguing).

First, we greeted our milk man, then our good friend in the “hardware” aisle, and on we went to find a new friend, Al, who had tried to help David find screws.  Last week, sitting in a small, dark market stall, huddled over a basket of used screws looking for the size David needed, Al noted that David was speaking Pular. “Can you read Pular too?” Al asked.

“Yes,” David replied.

The young man reached over and unlocked the small drawer of his wooden desk. “Can you read this?” He pulled out an old, dirt-smudged copy of Genesis.

“Where did you get that?” David questioned, surprised by the book the man held in his hand.

“Oh, I worked very hard to find this book. I had to search a really long time,” Al replied, “It’s the only one I have.”

As he opened the slightly tattered pages, David noted Al’s name written on the outside cover, the inside cover and the back cover. Clearly, that this was a prized possession that wasn’t meant to leave his shop.

“When you finish this one,” David said, “I will give you the second part of this book.”

When we arrived at Al’s stall yesterday, we gave him a calendar and David handed him a copy of Exodus. Al’s surprise was evident. He wondered why we would not only give him a calendar for free but the second portion of the Old Testament for free, too. Before we left, the guys set a date and time to visit, read, and talk about these books some more.

With Annika leading the way, off we rambled through the open air market with life to give, free for the taking…

Math teachers, eat-your-heart-out! David used math (in real life!) to teach well workers how to calculate the amount of broken tile they needed to purchase to cover our well. Guineans waste very few resources, so even broken tile is sold and used to finish everything from showers to driveways. It was quite an exercise for the two men who probably never finished more than 8 years of elementary school (source).

For weeks, a few men worked by hand in the blazing sun to dig our well wider and deeper. Hand over hand they hauled up water, dirt, and rock in a bucket dumping it in front of our house to fill huge ruts the rainy season had carved into our road.

Finally, the well was ready to be capped, fitted with a hand pump, and tiled.

Everyone needs water to live, and toward the end of the dry season water can be especially hard to find. Fortunately, our well has never run dry and neighbors know they can come and draw from our well anytime. Just as we needed a well for water, the workers who dug the well needed living water.  During the weeks the men were in our courtyard, David shared the Good News with them under the shade of a banana plant although no decisions for Christ were made. I wonder how they will respond when God points not to the times they provided water through their hard work, but to the time they were freely offered living water.

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14)

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Of course it started raining. What I didn’t expect was for people to start arriving ten minutes early. That is not typical African behavior. One by one they entered the gate, wiped their feet on the towel by the door and chose a seat in the circle while liberally spreading warm greetings.

The small room in the annex of our courtyard wasn’t anything special. A bare light bulb hung from the ceiling, and the paint on the walls was beginning to show its age. Still, everything was clean. And there was a tray with water, cups, and cookies. It seemed as though the environment was a total understatement. It didn’t come close to conveying the magnitude … the eternal significance … of the meeting that followed.

The girls and I walked over in the rain to introduce ourselves. We met some of the Christians in our town before, but not everyone. After a few minutes, I took the girls home and careened my neck out the window every few minutes to try to catch a glimpse of the deliberations. After about two hours, we heard familiar Fulbe praise and worship being sung to the Only True God.

It was amazing. In a tiny room in the middle of a random neighborhood, in a Muslim city, thousands of miles into the interior of Africa were a group of indigenous Christians singing to Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.

Most beginnings are humble. We pray God will meet with our small group of believers and use them to plant a church that will reach the Fulbe of Guinea, West Africa with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

A few years ago, we introduced you to Mr. B. He and his daughter were featured in a video we complied and shared with supporters while on home assignment. Mr. B is primarily our guard; but he is a language helper, a community liaison, helps with the laundry, washes our floors once every week or two, and since he loves flowers he is our gardener too. We are extremely blessed to have him as part of our family, and he is completely trustworthy, a rare moral attribute in this part of the world.

Mr. B is about 72 years old. He isn’t exactly sure of the year he was born, but he knows he was born when the French governed Guinea. Mr. B is married to one wife and has seven children; the oldest an 18 year old boy and six girls. His youngest girls are a set of twins just two months older than ours.

Life is difficult in Guinea. If a Guinean lives past childhood, he or she may very well live to be elderly. Poor healthcare and inadequate education cause a 6.1% infant mortality rate in Guinea. Mr. B is privileged to have worked for expatriates who provided good medical care for him and his family for more than 20 years.

In early 2008, the Lord impressed upon my heart the need to be very proactive in sharing the Gospel and took every opportunity I could to share Bible truths with him. I wasn’t sure if I was saying goodbye to Mr. B for the last time when we left Guinea in 2009 for home assignment.

Thankfully, God enabled Mr. B to faithfully watch our house and tend our garden while we were in the States. But we can see the years starting to show on his wrinkled face. He moves more slowly, he often falls asleep in his chair on the porch in the hot afternoon shade, he is often ill, has carpal tunnel syndrome, and cataracts have taken most of his sight.

Tomorrow morning, David plans to take Mr. B to Sightsavers; “an international charity which works with partners to eliminate avoidable blindness and promote equality of opportunity for disabled people in the developing world.” Their initial appointment was more than a month ago. Mr. B was given eye drops to prepare his eyes for surgery, and told to return after Ramadan.

Will you pray for peace through the process, a successful surgery, and for salvation for Mr. B? We know that God is able to give him sight in more ways than one.

For your consideration:

Kesso: An Autobiography of a Peul Princess by Kesso Barry gives a glimpse into life in Guinea during a time of tumultuous transition from colonization to independence from France in 1958. Email me if you are interested in adding this to your winter reading list.