Our day and the children.

Our door!

The theme of our Children's Program.

Hebrews 12:1-2.

All of our activities are focused around this scripture.

Fun in our room.

Our Missionary Children. Ages 2-13.

We had our first full day (8:15-5:30) with the children. It was a great day! What a privilege it is to serve this community.

This week the conference is entirely in French (for the adults!) as there are guests from the Ivory Coast. So every lunch and dinner is African food. Today's lunch was rice with peanut butter sauce. Dinner was a variation on what we would be our spaghetti and meatballs.

Both very good!

First Full Day of the Conference

We are learning a great deal about safe food preparation. We must bleach all of our fruits and vegetables before using them. All water must be filtered or bottled in order to prevent Malaria.

We purchased the fruit at a local fruit stand. The mango is the best that we have ever tasted!

Fruit is very inexpensive in Bamako. Meat, cheese, yogurt, and other "staple" items are very expensive here. Mr. Heiskell would be SO pleased to know that there are only Coke products here. We haven't seen a Pepsi product in all of Bamako!!!

These are banners that the children are coloring. Julie drew these as backdrops for the production that the children will present next Wednesday. The banners tell of the walk of Jesus.

Shopping in the Markets of Bamako

Sewage is not underground or closed in Bamako

Shop Entrance.

Fabric Shop

Us with fabric shop owner.

The views from our apartment

Our next door neighbors - view from our porch.

Front of our apartment

The compound play area.

Our Apartment in Bamako

This is our bedroom - note mosquito nets!

Living room.

Kitchen.

Front door to our apartment

We are in Bamako

We are in Bamako, Mali. We had uneventful flight and arrived at 10:30pm yesterday evening and God provided a wonderful person to carry our bags the MINUTE that we got off the plane! We were surprised to find the temperature at 87 and rainy. This is not the rainy season – they don’t get rain out of the rainy season.
Laurel, our SIL contact, picked us up and after a bumpy drive, we arrived at the SIL Guesthouse. Last night we turned on the Air Conditioner in our bedroom and slept underneath our mosquito nets .
Our two days in Paris were wonderful. We stayed by the Eiffel Tower, toured the Louvre, ate in cafes, saw the Arc de Triomphe, walked the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was a wonderful way to rest before arriving in Bamako. Everyone was so gracious and kind to us!

Today we have and orientation to Bamako and they will be reviewing with us the schedule and activities for the week. This conference is once every three years.

Sunday we will attend a church service in English. This happens only one a month and OF COURSE it happens when we are here!

We are looking forward to seeing what God is going to do through us and we are believing for our time to be effective for Him.

As you have noticed – we have sporatic internet and please feel free to email us. We are four hours ahead in Mali.
jcrawford@dayspring-online.com
shelly.boardman@cmich.edu

Thank you for your prayers for we have truly been blessed at EVERY turn. Please continue to pray for the missionaries and for their families.

We will post pictures soon!

Love to all!

Our departure time is fast approaching! We have received our Visas and are ready to go! We depart Atlanta tomorrow evening at 9:50pm via Air France. We arrive in Paris on Thursday morning. We are eating our last "American meal" tomorrow evening at the Okay Cafe! Nothing like great Southern food for our final meal before we depart for West Africa!

Getting Ready For Mali

We will be meeting on Friday night to begin packing for our trip. We have supplies for the Missionary Families.