We are lucky to live within walking distance of a supermarche and a great produce stand. Here’s a new meal I tried today and it was a hit–it’s a bean salad with kidney beans, white beans, corn. I added chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, avocado and some Italian dressing. We found some local tortilla chips to eat with us. Hurrah for something new!!
For dessert we had banana cream pie, without the cream.
Sometimes I feel a little panicky to think that a day will come when we must leave this place. I try to memorize what things look like and I will myself to remember these places. I’m grateful to live in a day when my camera fits in my pocket and I can use it without drawing attention to myself. I love being here and I love watching life around me. I want to capture as many of these images as I can.
This batch of “In Our Neighborhood” pictures was taken between our apartment and the church, a route we travel all the time.
A general store.
A shoe repairman. 
A typical table. 
A hardware store, and a closer up. 
The black innertube bags are for pulling water from wells. 
Making something. Love the colors.
Flat wire pads to put in small cookstoves to save coal and heat.
Listening to tunes the the shade under a tree full of stuff.
A drink shop.
An electronics store.
A car wash.
A tailor.
Typical street.
Kids coming home from school at lunch time.
Selling brooms and grateful for shade.
Used car parts.
Tarp, tin and mud walls.
Waste water flows in the streets.
Constructions sites everywhere. 
A green gate.
Children’s clothing for sale. 
Used shoes for sale.
A new mosque under construction.
A tire shop.
A fast food shop.
A welder at work.
Too hot to man the shop.
Colorful soutramas.
On the street where we live. Love this. 
Fixing a handcart wheel. 
We join Elder Koffi and Elder Bah every Tuesday morning for our Bamako District Meeting. These are great meetings and they give us a chance to talk about each of the friends we are teaching and helping. We love serving with these Elders.
After the meeting, we showed the Elders a video the public relations folks in Abidjan made of the installation of the Angel Moroni on the Abidjan Temple! These are historic times!
Here are some of the things I saw from my taxi window today as we drove from Bamako to Binabougou to go to church. This is such a bright and vibrant world. We drove through the narrow market place where the huge trucks come in to unload their produce into carts and wheelbarrows and baskets. We drove on through some urban villages, and then off road up a mountain side into a more remote area with local vendors and a local market place. Come take this ride with me. Pay attention to the details and see how hard these good people work to provide for their families. It’s incredible!
Mangoes are still in season here. They come in so many varieties and colors from red to yellow to orange to green. 
If you have wheels and a strong back, you can hire out your services transporting goods.
Waiting for customers.
The bigger the load, the more the pay.
So much happens on the ground here.
Chickens and guinea fowl for sale and a moto taxi.
Not needing plantain today.
Girl finding shade under a truck. 
Sorting lemons.
Baskets too big and too heavy to lift. 
Ginger root and dried greens.
It’s going to be a long hot day!
Off loading the big trucks.
Leaving the market now and entering some more urban villages and towns.
A colorful establishment.
I love the local brooms displayed here and the boy with his toys.
A local market on the roadsides. 
This woman carried the load of firewood on her head, unloading it here.
The people are under the tree, grateful for shade. 
It’s a hot barren world. Kids doing chores. 
Locally made and grown goods: soap balls and bars, scratcher pads, brooms, firewood, garden greens and bags of charcoal. 
A yellow bucket.
A local barber.
Always laundry.
A bridal shop.
Another market day. In some villages, markets are on certain days.
Fabric for sale!
The power lines! 
Then after church, we headed back. Here are a few more shots of the big market on the road surrounding us as we made our way through stop and go traffic.
Shorts for sale.
Women with loads. 
Loved following this underwear lady along!
With so many goods to move, ramps are always a better option than stairs.
We are seeing a lot of potatoes and onions today. 
Okra is another favorite for soups. 
More unloading. 
In this break in the traffic, you can see how close these trucks are to the road. When we drive by, you can almost pluck the produce from the vendor’s baskets.
Drinks for sale on this hot day. 
Sports jerseys displayed for sale here.
That was fun! Thanks for coming along!
We came back to our school room after visiting Famoussa’s family to set up for our sacrament meeting. Chiaka is one of the partners who direct this private school where there are about 8 small classrooms like this one. The bench desks are small and uncomfortable. Many are falling apart. The classroom we use is for grade 4A. Judging by the calculations and math on the chalkboard (below) these are pretty bright kids. Chiaka is a chemistry and math teacher here.
These are the other class rooms here at this private school. Education is the key here to escaping from poverty.
Looking over the school wall:
Well, no one else made it to church here today. This is a hard reminder of how difficult live is here in a place where every day you must earn the money needed to feed your family that day. Getting to church is difficult. Most have to take transport of some sort. Sometimes it’s discouraging for us too. We know that living the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ will help bless the lives of our friends here. We also know that it’s hard to trust and have faith when your children have no food or when family members are sick. It’s all so hard here. It’s hot, dusty, broken and hard.
Even so, we had a sweet and reverent sacrament meeting, just the 3 of us. We sang together, listened to the sacrament prayers, remembered how Jesus died for us, remembered our promises to Him and His to us, and we listened to our prophet’s voice.
My heart and my mind and my soul love what we are doing and why we are here. On days like today, I remind myself what it was like in Nigeria when I lived there from 1984-1987, working in small branches out in remote villages. We were so few, we and our few our member friends. Today there are missions and stakes and temples in Nigeria. All in my lifetime! It’s miraculous.
Our friends in Mali and Pioneers. We are their cheerleaders. I am so grateful to be here right now, in this exact place. Things just take time and lots of love. We have both.
This is another thing I love about church here. It fits in a box. We don’t need all the bells and whistles. We just need a few things–scriptures, hymnbooks, and trays to pass the sacrament. That’s all. 
These young boys were curious and dropped by afterwards.
Carrying the box back to Chiaka’s compound:
Chiaka Traore is a Stalwart Pioneer. We are grateful to him for his service and his great faith. He will help the church grow here in this nethermost corner of the vineyard.
This morning we drove out to Binabougou for church. We were a little early, so we made a few phone calls to make sure everyone was coming. When we called the Balo family, Famoussa told us he had to go to the village today to visit family there, so we asked if we might come right away to greet him and the family before he left. The last missionaries we had here were teaching Famoussa and two other related families here. We wanted to help re-establish that connection so the Elders can come back to teach them again.
We walked up the mountain side to the Famoussa’s compound. Several families share this compound. They are a happy bunch and were excited to see us. The children loved the Elders and gathered around us. They were all busy getting ready to go sell at the small local market. Everyone here helps to support the family.
Chiaka came with us and we had a wonderful visit with Famousa and Nicole. They have 5 children. Famoussa is a teacher at the public school in N’gomi. We talked about Catherine’s death 2 weeks ago. Famoussa is her uncle. We read a few verses from Alma 11:42-44 about what happens when you die. It was a beautiful little lesson that comforts all of us.
Here’s a look around the compound at all the industrious things going on this morning–
This young boy was in what I’ll call the blacksmith’s shop. He was surrounded by tools and things being repaired.
Here’s the cooking area:
These girls were getting ready to take some piles of laundry to a small stream quite far away to do the washing. They bundled everything up and put it on their heads. The youngest carried the washboard. Everyone helps.
Here are the heads of the 3 families (from the left): Chiaka, our group leader; Famoussa’s 2 brothers whose names are Pascal and Ungolo; Famousa and Nicole with their youngest and oldest and Elder Lewis. Pascal, the brother next to Chiaka is the father of Catherine, who died.
Here is a gift they shared with us–peanuts! Our favorite!
We love being with these families and know the peace and joy that comes from the gospel of Jesus Christ. What a gift we have to share!
When you exit the church compound (the door in the top left corner), the first vendor you’ll meet is an older gentleman who sits here every day, dawn to dusk, selling charcoal. A few weeks ago, the large bags of charcoal by the church compound door were as tall as I am and they came out into the street. He’s sold all but a few bags now. He sits by the top of this photo and bags the charcoal into the small black sacks which he sells to women passing by to use in their cooking fires.
Here are the sacks that are taken apart to make the dusters shown in the last post.
We walk down that dirt road to a main paved road to flag down a taxi. It usually only takes a few minutes for one to pull over and we negotiate the price to take us home.
Today we went first to the Pharmacy at Ponte 2, not far from our apartment. John needed to pick up his last COVID meds. I waited outside with these street boys while he went in. There are thousands of street boys in Bamako who carry their tomato paste cans and beg for food or money. I talked to these boys (who were very hungry) about Ramadan. I’m not sure they were fasting because they simply had no food, or because it was Ramadan.
The pharmacy only had 1 of the 2 meds John needed, so we started walking to the next pharmacy, a mile or two away. Pharmacies are spaced throughout the neighborhoods where most people can get to them within a half-hour walk or so. Along the way, we passed the ATM we frequent at the BDM Bank. There are very few working ATM machines in Bamako and each has an armed guard to keep you safe.
When we eventually found the next pharmacy, they didn’t have the medicine John needed, so we carried on to find the next pharmacy. Here are a few pics I took along the way.
The ice cream man’s delivery bike: 
A clothing and shoe store: 
A gas station for motorcycles: 
Asking to make sure we were still on the right road to the pharmacy. John’s got our church-cleaning brooms on his shoulder.
Oranges for sale: 
A Malian drinking fountain equivalent:
It’s still mango season. My mango allergy has returned, so I have to pass on these for now. Last week my face and hands were covered with rash from a mango reaction. The sources I read say it’s the skin of the mango that causes the problems, but when I eat certain varieties of mangoes my lips also swell up.
Here are a couple of pics of the gutter/trenches that line almost every street. Sometimes they are cleaned out. I’m not sure what will happen during the rainy season.
And finally we came to the 3rd pharmacy! The medicine John needed had almost doubled in price since he bought it the first time last month. Wow.
Pres Sekou and a small team of helpers are working on the translation of church materials into Bambara. This morning Kara Moko Diarra was here helping go over some of these materials. They are working on The Living Christ right now.
You can see here what the Bambara language looks like.
Slowly and surely, the stone cut out of the mountain without hands will fill the whole earth and the gospel will be taught to every nation, kindred, tongue and people. We are seeing that prophecy fulfilled here, now.
The amount of dust in the air here is unbelievable! The windows at the church are usually closed to keep it out, but the dust Still Comes In. Every Saturday morning we clean the church to prepare it for Sunday. It’s a labor of love.
Today the power was out because the electric bill needed to be paid, so we worked without lights or fans to keep us cool.
Here’s the duster for the window screens and the posts outside.
I found these old bags outside as we left today. This is what the dusters are made from. Everyone uses these dusters, especially street vendors who have their goods displayed near the traffic in the dust.
President Sekou is amazing. He’s always quick to help. He’s so busy with medical school and studying at the hospital and his new little family. He spends a lot of time at the church and we love him. He’ll drop everything to do anything that’s asked to help the church grow and be strengthened.
Today we had fun (it was so hot) cleaning the courtyard too!
Here is the traditional outside bathroom. We have a guard at the church compound 24/7 and the rotating guards use this bathroom.
This morning Doctor Souleymane came by for his last visit. We’ve missed him! Last week John went to the hospital for a lung scan just to make sure everything was OK there. Today the doctor came to read the scan results. It shows lesions on 30% of his lungs, but he didn’t seem too worried about that–it’s what COVID does. He gave John another round of antibiotics and blood thinner and said that should take care of the end of his recovery. We’re so grateful for the medical help we’ve had here, far from home.
Our Cote d’Ivoire Abidjan East and Bamako, Mali Mission 