God can even use Cheetos

We arrived in Bamako about 9pm local time on Sunday night (3pm Omaha time).  It took another 2.5 hours to collect all our bags and clear customs.  The Lord protected our 14 bags FILLED with medical supplies, equipment and medications.  A customs official spotted a 'blue stamp" on one of our baggage tags, which means that the bag needed to be refrigerated because it has food or fruit or medicine.  The bag was loaded on a cart with other bags and he wanted us to bring the cart over to the inspection area, but his accent was so thick that I must have misunderstood him and only brought the bag with the blue stamp on it, and sent the rest of the bags on the cart to the other side of the large in-processing area while he turned and walked towards the inspection area.  So Tami and I followed him into the inspection area with the one bag with the blue tag (which was laden with bedside medicine pumps, supplies, injectable drugs essential in the OR, bags and bags of tablets, and derm ointments--all requested by the hospital staff) to open the bag expecting to find the styrofoam box with sensitive lab kits that HAD been designated for cold storage. But it was in different suit case. Why was this one bag marked and not every single one of them?  On top of all these medications was a box with a medium bag of Cheetos, requested by one of the families who missed them (since they are not available in Africa) laying on top of the pile of our payload.  I said, "Ah, here it is.  You are right, a food item."  "What about all those drugs?" he asked.  "Oh, those aren't drugs; they are medicines for the hospital in Koutiala," I answered.  This guy wasn't stupid and I figured my lame assessment about the reason for the blue stamp would go about as far as I could throw this 50# bag. They talked in Bombara (the language of Mali).  Our mission-escort was not with us (he can't come into the customs area) so we had no idea what they were saying for those few minutes, but it didn't sound good.  Suddenly, for no reason (that would be apparent to the casual observer, but we immediately knew better) they said, "Okay, you can go."  I offered to sacrifice the Cheetos, but he declined.  We zipped up the bag and Tami and I took off without further discussion, thinking, "Praise the Lord."  They may never know just how 'good' those Cheetos really are.

This was just one of the "God things" that we've experienced in the first 36 hours. We are looking forward to many more.  VW