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PRAISE ANNOYING NEIGHBOR

Years ago we started a church in the remote village of Sebela after they had asked us to bring them the gospel and became believers. God has done so many things in that village since. Today a big part of the population are followers of Christ.

Kalifa lives there with his parents. He is his parents' only child which is unusual in Mali. His parents have become believers and are part of our church there. His mother sings praises to the Lord all day long which greatly annoys their neighbor. Finally the neighbor had enough and decided to destroy the family. She chose their son as the perfected victim to that end. So she went to a witch doctor to have a curse put on Kalifa. After that, all she had to do was to wait.

Some time later a donkey gone wild bit Kalifa into his arm. The wound was so bad that the doctors had to tell his parents that it was necessary to amputate Kalifa's arm to save his life. However, the parents had no money to pay for the procedure. Instead all the Christians of the village started praying for Kalifa, and the following weeks his arm got better and better. The neighbor was watching in complete disbelief how her plan was going up in smoke as Kalifa's arm was miraculously being healed. The fear of the Lord came over her, and she got deeply convicted of what she had done. She came to the next service and shared with tears what she had done. Kalifa's parents told her that they forgave her. The neighbor has now also become a follower of Jesus.

 

PRAISE IMPACTING IMAM

Mohamed was trained in the Arab world to be an imam, then returned to Mali to become imam of a mosque still being built. While waiting for the completion of the building, he was working for another mosque not too far from our center. The imam of that mosque gave him the task of spying on us, the Christians. So Mohamed started coming to our service every week. He'd stand outside our property wall throwing stones over it and through the window into the hall where the service was going on. However, no one got hurt and no one was even bothered by the stones which amazed him. How could these Christians stay so peaceful?

While outside our property wall, he could hear the praise and worship going on and was greatly touched by it. At his strict mosque, no music was allowed. He could also hear Paul preach, and one time he preached on loving and blessing your enemies and forgiving them which deeply impacted him. After several weeks, he decided to come inside to enjoy the music from close-up. Our guard wouldn't let him pass but Paul allowed him to come inside. Mohamed enjoyed the praise and worship very much and came again the following week. The next day he came to see Paul and asked him to explain the gospel to him. He knew that becoming a Christian would cost him everything so he left saying he'd think about it.

At home he started singing the songs he had learned at church, singing praise songs to Jesus. While doing so, he suddenly had a vision. He saw Jesus, surrounded by angels who were all singing praises to Him. Then He said to Mohamed, "My son, come to Me.", and Mohamed did. He's now studying the Bible and constantly asking Paul questions. He's left the mosque and is in hiding as his life is in danger. While fighting holy war was his dream before, he now dreams of becoming a worship leader.

 

OUR CURRENT SITUATION

There are countless testimonies like the ones I've shared with you today. People are choosing to follow Jesus every day and are being healed miraculously. Paul did a healing meeting in the village of Sebela recently, and 100% of the people being prayed for were healed! Wow! It was a small meeting, so we're talking about 70 people, but that's still very impressive. It is those things that keep us going even in the midst of attacks, challenges and financial troubles.

I'm embarrassed to show you the state our children's center is in. We've now been living there for 18 years, slowly adding building after building. We constantly repair everything but now the children's bunk beds are all broken and beyond repair. Once we have money again, we will purchase metal beds instead of wooden ones. The sofas in the kids' living room have also become unusable. Our solar energy system was destroyed in the floods during rainy season two years ago, and we've never had the money to replace it. We now rely on city electricity but the power only comes on from midnight to 6 am. Those 6 hours are not sufficient to keep our water tower filled so we do not have enough water and have to buy some regularly. We were told to get solar panels that are attached to the water pump to keep the tower filled. As for the street to our property, it's in such bad shape that the trucks carrying construction materials cannot make it to us. And once the next rainy season comes around this summer, it will be destroyed to the point of our own car not being able to get in and out of our center any more. We have to repair it for us to be able to move around and for construction to go on.

While we were given money for construction so it can go on for a little while, we have no money whatsoever for anything else - none of the things just mentioned can be taken care of. We're even struggling to pay the $20 a gallon (5€ per liter) gas for our car, buy all the food we need and pay school fees for the nearly 50 children in our sponsorship program. All the prices have gone up while donations have gone down. We're so thankful and excited every time some money is given so we can go on. Thank you so much.