A little over a week ago, several of us from APSU sat with a group of men in a small village in southern Mali.  As I sit here in my house in Clarksville, I don't have the ability to explain or describe to you the distance between that village and here. 

Our group went to survey this segment of the Dogon people in hopes of gaining information that would be helpful in forming a future team that might one day share Jesus with these people.  We were told before the trip began that this area represented the line where Islam has been rapidly advancing southward in West Africa. As we sat with these men I found that what we were told was true.  Most people in this village claimed to be Muslim.  Their great grandfathers decided more than one hundred years ago that they would accept this identity.  Traditionally, the Dogon are a very animistic people, and we were curious where they actually stood in their beliefs.  So we asked these men a simple question, "What does it mean to be Muslim?"  The question caught all of them off guard.  They looked at one another waiting for someone to explain.  One man finally spoke up and said, "Being Muslim means that you do the prayers."  That would be the only response we would receive.  It was very apparent that these people had no idea what this faith was about, or what it meant to be Muslim.  Later, we asked these same men what they could tell us about Jesus.  They told us that they didn't know very much about him.  They had seen the Jesus film in a language they didn't understand.  They saw only images on a screen.  One man explained that he had tried to get a Bible in French (the Bible has not be translated in Dogon yet) but has been unable to.