The last thing you could say about our year in Mali is that it was boring - far from it! We went from one delight to another - and also one crisis to another. This many missionaries from so many different countries are bound to have some disagreements, and we stepped into the middle of all that. We tried our best to be impartial to all and to keep the peace. But situations that had developed long before we got there came to the surface as we settled into life in Mali.
One Dutch couple and one American couple were at constant odds with the director and this was not a pleasant situation to live with - but we made the most of it. The great part of our staff were friends and we enjoyed being with every one of them. We made trips around to visit each of our stations where there were missionaries living and that was challenging. Some of our Mali folks happily live and work in pretty primitive condtions in order to take the Gospel to these largely Muslim populations.
Perhaps the most remote spot where we had missionaries was in Bako, the region out from Ségou. We travelled miles of not more than a dirt path, in a bumpy Landrover to get to the residence of two of our single ladies. Dad got so motion sick that we had to stop for him and put him up front! The two women - one German and the other Swiss - entertained us in their little mud brick home, serving us a fablulous meal, including a gorgeous European decorated cake! The temp outside was 105 and of course there was no electricity so no fans. After lunch we took a brief siesta on their beds and managed to rest thanks to the wet washcloths we placed over our faces to cool off! My hat is off to courageous women like these! We learned to love the Mali missionaries during our year there and were glad we had said "yes" when Bob Fetherlin called.
At the end of the year we were part of one of the most difficult conferences we had ever attended. There was terrific disagreement on the part of a tiny minority to the idea of a hospital in Koutiala. These wonderful doctors had left lucrative practices in the U.S. to establish this hospital and were terribly hurt by the comments made about the new hospital. We tried to be a catalyst in all of this, which was a very difficult time. I was also doing a lot of the interpretation into French for the Chilean folks, and had to carefully choose what I said to them so as not to totally scare them back to Chile! We still look back to that year in Mali as being a good year, in spite of difficulties. We would probably do it again as the good times outweighed the hard situations we faced. I guess this was among the most difficult mission discipline situations we had ever faced in forty years in West Africa.
Our experiences with the Mali church were all positive. Dad was often asked to preach and I was also asked to address the women. We attended various churches in Bamako, usually trying to hit a church where the preaching was in French so Dad could enjoy it. As for me, I was happy to be back hearing and speaking Bambara again, one of my childhood languages.
There were some very nice "get away" places there in Bamako. One was a huge modern hotel, with a beatiful swimming pool and a class A restaurant. Sometimes we would go there and spend a day off reading and swimming and just enjoying the luxury of our surroundings. There was another oasis just outside of the city limits at a little inn. They had rooms to rent and an excellent restaurant and very large swimming pool. What a great place to take a day off - swimming, reading, talking without interruption and eating some good French cooking. Our whole team of new missionaries spent a day out there once for orientation sessions in that delightful setting.
So there was a hard side to our year in Mali, but at the same time our memories of our year there are mostly positive. We were needed to help guide the thirteen new missionaries who arrived that year. And it was a time when Dad could get the church and the mission talking to each other again. Mali is full of good missionaries and also a host of wonderful, godly church leaders. And it was a privilege to serve there for that one year.
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