We arrived at the women's prison with enough time to receive instructions from Carina and to meet her partner, who was formerly in prison in the Ivory Coast, and was also formerly a strong Muslim.  Her partner was released from prison and found Christ as her personal Savior and now returns to the prisons with Carina with a message of hope.  We spent time in prayer before we entered the metal gates held by a very high gray stone wall.

When we arrived Sean thought that there were just way too many women.  We put our belongings, Carina's guitar and bag, and some mats to sit on, in the class room then went to greet the women.  We saw a girl that looked about 12 years old.  Carina said that she was new and Carina had not had the chance to talk with her yet.  We met a woman from Liberia who spoke English, many women who spoke Bambara, and a few women who spoke French.  We learned that the prisoners were in prison for such things as stealing bread all the way up to killing their husbands.  The prison was for juvenilles as well as adults.  There had been a set of twins born to a woman in the prison and the twins are now four years old, growing up in the prison with their mom.  You will see in the pictures below, the little boy in blue whose name is Adama, and the little girl in red, whose name is Hawa.  In English the twins names mean Adam and Eve.  When our kids saw the little kids, Danae started playing soccer with them and Sean also got involved and forgot that he was with "all women".   He played soccer and basketball with the kids until it was time to leave.  Danae played with the kids then befriended the little 12 year old and brought her into the service later.  Nadia and Stephanie, a friend of the girls that was staying with us while her parents went into the bush for a week to work on some translations, went into the service and started collecting babies to hold.  I was so proud of all of them!  We had prepared three songs to sing for the women.  One they already knew and we sang the English version in between the Bambara and French verses.  Nadia, Stephanie and I got up to sing "I'm inright, outright, upright, downright happy all the time!"  We got a lot of smiling faces as they watched us do the actions.  Then I shared Hebrew 13:5 with them and we taught them the Bambara song "Ala be ne nye."  The song says,"God is in front of me, God is behind me, God is beside me, hallelujah."  We started singing this song in our small skeleton voices and when Carina caught the tune she started playing and brought life to the song.  So we ended up singing it in Bambara and French before we were finished. Carina gave a great message then prayed.  As we were leaving we passed out an African favorite of little cough drop candies.