An African Believer.....

Passion…Burkinabe Believers have passion for Christ. They boldly profess their faith. A young woman and I were paired up together after the service Sunday to walk around the neighborhood and share about Chist and Bon Burge Baptiste L’englis (the Baptist church).

Friday night we heard church would start an hour earlier Sunday, so after the service they could go out into the neighborhood and evangelize. Of course the pastor had told the congregation all this last Sunday…but in French. None of us had picked this up. Guess we have a ways to go! Needless to say – we were very thankful Kathy had understood and told us or we would have walked in an hour late to church!!

I didn’t know if the church would want four Americans to go with them to tell the neighborhood about the church…but they did. The pastor came up to us after the service and paired us up with someone from the church who knew a little English.

She knew a little English and I practiced what little French I remembered! The first house we stopped at rejected her and told us to leave. So we walked on – speaking broken English and French, learning a little bit about each other. She is studying communications at the university and was excited when I told her I studied journalism in school.

In the third compound the men invited us in to talk. They all gathered around the burkinabe and the white girl. I told her to not worry about trying in English…to talk with them, not me. Most of them were Muslim. I followed the conversation fairly well. She started off with the story of Abraham and Isaac moving to the power of the Holy Spirit and then finished with the story of Jesus. She then asked if they had any questions.

One guy asked her to explain the differences between Catholics and Protestants. I thought “Good luck!” I didn’t understand her answer…it would have been interesting to know what she thought.

She didn’t back down from there questions, challenging them with her answers and even stopped to pray over one guys food. (He was a Muslim—but understood the blessing!) So we prayed in the power of Jesus for the food to be a blessing to him! She left a note card about the church with them and got their names so the pastor could do a follow-up!

She is coming Thursday with another girl from the church to help us with our French.

Here are some more random pictures from Africa!



Me sweeping African style. They do not have wooden handles for the brooms so they bend over and sweep everything…even dirt. (Every morning at 6 a.m. I hear the night guard sweeping the dirt outside my window)

My African afternoon snack…crackers and cheese. The cheese is called The Laughing Cow and is really good with crackers that are almost like ritz…but not quite.

Thought requests….

Emily is sick…we think with sinus’

Deron is also sick…a head cold.

We leave for Lome, Togo on Saturday for a regional leadership conference. We will meet the Regional Leadership Team and learn and plan the coming year. I hope our flight is smooth and our week off from French does not hurt us.

Blessings to you all from West Africa!