The Kentucky folks in my village: myself holding Perdue our new chicken, Judy, Mary & Darrel

Mon & I with some of our peeps in our village!

Hello All!

How are you? I do pray that each of you are well and seeing how great our God is on a daily basis!!! This past week has been one of the craziest of my life… but the Lord is sooo good and proving Himself here daily!!! These would be the “highlights” of this week in the life of Krystal the missionary…

Monday- we get up and go to the village. (We were delayed from going on Sunday, thankfully by another missionary who gave us many great & wonderful insights and helps with our ministry among the Supyire!!!) Our village dad stops what he was doing and hangs out with us for a while- which is good b/c we hadn’t spent much time with him lately… here is something that should make you laugh… the literal translation for the word charcoal is “fire- poop” not kidding… we rolled… thank you Tower of Babble! We sit and talk, eat toe, the women come and we spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with them, spinning cotton, just talking, laughing, singing, dancing and such… good time! Thank you Lord for some quality time with our ladies!!! Then a man we know from town shows up looking for us…. immediately we both think our house is on fire… it was not but the electrician came the 5 hour bus ride from Bamako to check out our house. After leaving we find out what we thought was broken was not and what we thought was nothing was actually broken… now it is almost dark… another night out of the village. But we were able to get some French scriptures recorded for our stories… yay!!!

Tuesday- We head back out to the village- getting our truck stuck along the way so that a neighboring village had to come push us out, always exciting! Once arriving we sit back in the same location as the day before, chat, and hang out most of the day…getting our first story recorded along the way!!! It is rough- really rough but our first one is on the go… Praise God!!!

Wednesday- we get up planning to go to a neighboring village with one of our ladies, but one of our little ones with third degree burns was heading back to the clinic so we offer to take him/ them in the truck. (Pray for him, his name is Moodyboo.) Ok- the truck wouldn’t start- yeah- dead battery. So after the truck was pushed out of the middle of the village to the road- then down to road to give it a running start… that try and two village batteries later… it starts and we head to town! After going to the clinic and to town to find and buy a new battery, locking the keys in the truck, then accidentally breaking a window to get back in… we go back to the clinic to pick up our friends and head back to our village. After lunch we then leave to the other village for our visit…. 40k and an hour later we get there. We visit 2 important families receiving 2 more chicken gifts (5 if you are counting) then we head back! After asking our chief if we can have a volunteer prayer team come on Sunday… we eat…and passed out…

Thursday- we try to leave early from the village but that proved to be a bad move… it kinda everybody freaked out leaving one of our ladies running through the village in just a panya trying to get her stuff ready so that we can take her to town for market, who would want to walk 12k if you didn’t have to? We then drove a different “shorter” way to town to go through the village we visited last week… we meet our friend’s mom & dad! Very cool! These were truly some of the worst roads I’ve been on yet but we made it to town! Finally make it to the closest city to try and find a new window…. Yay… God is so good… just 2 hours later we had a window and we didn’t have to do hardly anything… just talked to the right people!!! Working the rest of the day one various things we return home and passed out…

Friday- we get up and work on our prayer network stuff (thank you guys!)… all morning until it was ready to send out! Change clothes and go out to our first wedding!!! We were told after noon- it really didn’t start until 9:30pm or so but don’t worry we found plenty to do… we got a flat tire! So we get off our spare, in our wedding attire, put it on… its flat as well… so after several different failed attempts to re-inflate the spare our language helper takes the original tire to a different town to get it fixed, on the back of his moto… it was fixed but he did not get back until way after dark!!! Now the wedding, well it was really the pre-party with dancing until 3am or later! We stayed until about 2am… but we did dance with our ladies!!! It was fun… you dance by age groups by village! Our ladies weren’t even supposed to dance that night but they made them dance so we could dance with them!! You start by dancing in a circle… then you back up and dance out by groups… I danced out with my Awa… I even got a scarf thrown on me (which is good) and at one point I was even given a bag of candy to give to the band!?!? It was fun… but … still…upon returning to our hut we passed out…

Saturday- We return to the city to get out our emails, have the spare fixed and as we are picking our spare back up another American gets off a bush taxi in front of us… this would be the Peace Corps girl we have heard rumors about since we moved here! Autumn! We have all been looking for each other since we had been here but kept missing one another because of her Peace Corps training and our OneStory trainings! We spent a couple of hours with her, thank you God! Prayer for her and our new friendship as well, she is not a believer.

Sunday- As Monica & I are under our mango tree praying together our volunteer team arrives! Literally shaking the walls, as they drove through our gate and tore the doors down! I could not help but laugh!!! We were able to sit and share with them about OneStory and what the Lord is doing here with the Supyire!!! Once we arrive to the village they again proved how amazing they are! Our guests were treated amazingly! We were able to pray with and for our chief who’s health is failing, many of our elders, and in different areas of the village. The meal prepared was very impressive, our dad even sent someone to town, 12k, to get cold cokes!?!?!? Not kidding! After our meal and prayer walking we were able to sit and worship the Lord in our language with the meaning translated for our friends to hear! Many of our friends and several elders gathered for a story prepared by one of the volunteers! The story of Joseph! Then we were able to share and pray together for our village!!! Thank you Lord!!

Monday- we were woke earlier than normal by a ruckus neither Monica or I recognized. As we walked out of our hut we saw what was left of a ram that had been sacrificed by one of our elders, who sat with us and heard the story & everything else the day before. Just another overwhelming reminder of how great the presence of the enemy is here.

My apologies to you all for the length of this update but as this wild week kept going I knew I had to share with each of you what was happening. Our Lord is so much greater than our enemy just as we have seen this week. In great blessings and glimpses of what He is doing and has planned for the Supyire we have also been attacked and distracted. Thank you all so much for your prayers. I have felt them in a very real way this past week… in ways that I know kept me sane from one moment to the next and able to smile and praise God for the opportunity I have to serve Him here in Mali!

Please continue to take these requests to the throne of our Father:

~ A FIRE, PASSION, & SUPERNATURAL ability to learn Senufo Supyire quickly! It is coming… lutania, lutania (slowly, slowly)

~ Ask the Lord to CONTINUE to work and stir in the HEARTS of the Senufo Supyire in our village of N, that they would be deeply impacted by the Word they have heard.

~ OPEN doors with the wisdom & boldness to do as the Holy Spirit directs!

~ For opportunities to meet with the Christians in our village!!!!

~ For the Lord to constantly knit Monica & I together as a team. Protecting our team from the enemy and providing the wisdom we need when we are attacked!!!

~ For the Love of Christ to shine though me in every action I take and word I speak

~ Good Health & Protection over our bodies and minds as hot season comes!

~ A Strong & Powerful walk & talk with JESUS!!!

~ Healing for many as our village has been suffering greatly with sickness. Pray for peace, pain relief, and a quick healing for our dear little friend Moodyboo.

~ Pray for our sister team in Niger, Tara & Seng. They have been sick for a while now partly because of the bad peanut butter from the states!

~ For lost luggage to return to KY where it belongs!!!

Through all these great blessings and trials the Lord knows what we all need, “For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.” Luke 12:30-31

Again, thank you all for your prayers! They were a great part of what got me through this past week! I love you all and am praying for you as well! Let me know how I can pray for you and what is happening in your lives…. Believe it or not news travels rather slow here in the bush!

Christ’s Love & Mine,

Krystal



My blog: www.xanga.com/maligirl01

Krystal Hutchinson
Silah Mali
BP 2017
Bamako, Mali