“Rain, rain go away, come again another day.” Remember this little ditty from your childhood? Well, this is certainly not a rhyme we have been repeating here in Mali. Rainy season began here about a month ago, and it is our favorite time of the year. The Kangaba area turns lushly green and beautiful. The rains also lower the temperature into the “frigid” (to us) 70s, which makes for better sleeping at night. The dry-season dust is washed out of the air, and our house stays cleaner. As you can see, there is not much we don’t like about rainy season.

Most people in our area are subsistence farmers, so the rainy season is very important to them. We were on furlough during last year’s rainy season, but our friends tell us that not enough rain fell, so crops did poorly, and many people were hungry.

This year, the rains seem to be plentiful. Many women have already planted fields of peanuts. As we drive around the area, we see fields of millet and corn growing as well. People who haven’t planted their crops yet are busily clearing their land, anxious not to miss out on the rainfall. We haven’t been getting as many visitors as usual at our home lately because so many are busy working in their fields.

This rainy season, Neil has been looking into getting some land for a garden. His search has not been easy. People value their land very highly here. Before the rainy season started, Neil met a man from Bamako named Samare who was living in Kangaba with his brother’s family. Through a family connection, Samare had borrowed some land from a village several miles down the road and was growing onions, carrots and lettuce on it to sell at the market. Neil was hoping that Samare’s connection might enable him to get some land, too. However, this hope evaporated one day when he traveled to the village with Samare and saw him and a man from the village almost come to blows over the land. Neil checked that village off his list and decided to search elsewhere.

On his early morning walks, Neil became friends with a man named Yusufu, a subsistence farmer from one of the dominant families in the area and he had family ties with another village not far from us. Yusufu told Neil he would see what he could do. We didn’t hear anything for several weeks and figured nothing would come of it. In this culture, people don’t come right out and say, “No.” Instead, they show it in non-verbal ways. But we were mistaken about Yusufu. One day, he set up a meeting between Neil and the headman of the neighboring village, and Neil was granted a piece of land. It even has a well close by.

I recently traveled out to our garden with Neil and the kids. Neil had hoed up the dirt and planted cucumbers, tomatoes and corn. While there, we helped him hoe up more ground and plant some okra. It is good to finally have a garden. We hope it will give us some produce to share with those around us, like they so often do with us. More than just vegetables, we want our garden to help us grow relationships.

Please pray with us that many redemptive friendships will sprout up between us and the people of this village.

• Twitter