The Shumaker Family's Blog

Salif had invited a lot of his friends to come on celebration day.  One of them trusted Jesus.  Since then this young man has been very, very faithful.  He even came to visitation on Saturday.  I was told that his other friends are making fun of him and giving him a hard time.  What happened is that they all came to church but this one young man left changed and the others didn’t.  He used to drink and smoke with all of them but(without me saying anything) he has quit.  His friends don’t like it but I know that Jesus does.

God truly blessed yesterday. We had good services at Tingandogo. I preached on the veil that is between God and man. At Cissin, we had many visitors. We must have had 8 first time visitors. Our people are really working. I know that we had more than 60 adults. Somebody said that we had 79, but I thought that might be high.  We are growing and I am excited.  We also had three people make professions of faith yesterday.  One was a lady that has come for two weeks.  She was very sincere.

I have been working with several young men that are showing some great signs of potential. I worked last week on setting up our Bible College. I am excited about starting this fall. We should hopefully start with at least 6 men.  I am praying that we can also have some young ladies join.  We won’t accept just anybody.  They have to be a faithful member before we will even think about training them.

The construction is really moving now. The brick mason really went to town.  I had to tell him to stop because we are out of money.  The middle floor of the second section is about ready to pour.  They are putting in the iron and the bricks.  We lack the money for the cement.  My digital camera isn’t working or I would love to put some pictures up.  God has been so good to us, to allow us to get this far.  Thanks for all that have given and prayed.  Without you this wouldn’t be possible.

We went on visitation this morning. We normally have visitation on Sat. Morning at 8:00. Today, we had a great visit. We visited a man that has been coming for along time. His wife is religious but she isn’t sure of her salvation(she has never came to our church. We talked with her some. Then a friend of Faustin(the man we visited) came over. He said that he was in church before but hasn’t been faithful for about 5 years.  When we asked him if he knew where he would go if he died, he couldn’t answer.  We gave him the Word for about 40 min.  He told us he was ready to to trust Jesus.  Praise God, he prayed to accept Jesus as his Lord and Saviour.

My wife went with some of the ladies of the church and had a great time also.  Please pray for our services tomorrow.  I really want to see the power of God move on the lost and in the Saints.  We will pray for you also.

I was blessed yesterday by some news that Bado gave me. We have a piece of land on the outskirts of town. The area is called Tingandogo. This is were we started our first church in Burkina Faso. We bought close to 5 acres there. We lost our first piece of land because Kadafi wanted to place a hospital there. Long story, but we were forced to leave and take the current land that we have. We submitted the paperwork to the government. They rejected it the first time and we had to redo it because they said that 5 acres was to much for a church. We added on the paperwork, a Bible College and other things. They rejected it a second time and made us resurvey it because of where they want to put a road. We ended up losing about 2 acres but hopefully when they come out to do the governmental surveying, they will give it back to us. Anyhow, Bado called me yesterday and said that the last signature was on the paperwork. I know for most people reading this, you don’t exactly know what a process it is in a country like this but we have been trying to finish this paperwork for 3 years now. It is a miracle and God has truly blessed.

O.K., now I am going to give you the shock that I received today. Bado came today with some other paperwork for our church at Cissin. That is where we have been doing our big building project. We have made so much progress, and we are so thankful. Bado brought me some of the paperwork that has been completed. We are changing the paperwork from the seller to the buyer(me). Anyhow, I didn’t even know that we would have to pay something. For each lot, we need about $2,500, and our land is two lots. A total of $5,000. They told us that we need this by March 14th or it will double. We absolutely need your prayers. We truthfully don’t have an extra dime right now. We are already in some debt because of this project. I was a little shocked, or maybe I should say very, very shocked.

Oh yeah, we had one young lady get saved tonight. She came Sunday and didn’t respond, but tonight she made the decision to accept Christ. Her family is Muslim.

I teach a class, 4 days a week, to four men.  Two of them are my guards.  Maybe I have already explained this but we have a day guard and a night guard.  It really doesn’t cost much and it really helps.  We would for sure have thieves come, if we didn’t have a guard.  Anyhow, both of my guards have come to know the Lord Jesus.  I have talked before about Salif and Simon.  They are very faithful to my family and most importantly they are faithful to God.

We were talking about the responsibility of a preacher.  That he must always be ready to learn and to be an example.  Simon, began laughing and said that he and Salif were talking about what they were two years ago.  They were our guards and saved but they weren’t really serious about being used of God.  Since that time, they have become serious and really interested in learning and giving the Word of God.  Simon told me that two years ago, their life consisted of guarding and on their free, they would make tea.  It is normal for a group of young men to make some tea and shoot the breeze.  This isn’t normal tea.  It is powerful.  You actually take it in a shot glass.  I like it the second time they make it, not the first.  He said now they don’t have time to make tea anymore but they study the Word of God and now they really have something to talk about instead of just shooting the breeze.  It blessed my heart to hear this.

God blessed our services yesterday, in spite of us not having anybody come to Christ.  I thought for sure we would have had somebody come to Christ, after the message that was preached and how many visitors we had.  We had over 60 adults at Water of Life Baptist Church(the name is beautiful in French – Eglise Baptiste de L’Eau Vive).  That is our church at Cissin.  I am not sure how many kids we had.  Thanks for your prayers.

This is a little bit more of Bados testimony.  It is my version of the story.  I hope that it has been a blessing to read what God has done.

Bado has been a great help and a blessing to the ministry. He has become not only a member of our church but also a great friend of mine and my family. Due to some marital problems, he is not able to be a pastor, but he has devoted his life to serving God. He has greatly helped to advance the ministry in Burkina Faso.

I will never forget the day that Bado accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. Bado had argued with me about salvation. He felt that his good works could get him to heaven. He was very unique is that he has always helped others. When people were in need, he helped them. He also created an organization to help children in need to go to school and to be able to have school supplies. He honestly felt that this would be good enough. I had invited him numerous times, but finally he came to church. After the message, I gave the invitation, asking for people to raise their hands if they wanted to be saved. He suddenly announced to the congregation that he had always put his faith in his works, but that he realized that his works couldn’t save him, and that he was ready to trust Jesus to save him from his sins. As we baptists say, he got gloriously saved.

He has been very faithful to give his tithe and to support missions. I truly feel that God has blessed him because of his faithfulness to give. He is a businessman that is being used greatly of the Lord. He is very faithful to me, as his pastor, and to the church.

I have written a few times about a man named Bado.  I call him my African twin brother.  He really isn’t much smaller than I am.  I thought that I would give his testimony in two different posts.  Well here is post #1.  This is his version and tomorrow I will add a little more:

    I met missionary Keith Shumaker through a national pastor in March 2005. Bro. Shumaker wanted me to survey some land that he had bought for a church. After I finished surveying the land, the missionary talked to me about Jesus. He asked me if I went to church. I told him no and that my good works were sufficient to get me to heaven. He said that I did not convince him, and we went our separate ways.

About two months later, the missionary called me and told me that he had a problem with the land that I had surveyed. The government decided to take the land because Khadafi wanted it in order to build a hospital. The missionary asked me if I could help him find a solution to the problem. I was on my month of vacation so I had free time to help him. We went from office to office and finally found a solution, but the church had to move to a new site. When we had finished the work, I realized how much Bro. Shumaker loved me. With much compassion, he spoke with me about God. He told me things that I had never heard. He asked me if I knew that salvation was by the grace of God and that someone had paid for my sins. He said a person could not lose his salvation. At this moment, God opened up my heart to the gospel. I realized that I was a sinner. I confessed my sins and was saved this day. It was a great day for me.

I worked for the government until God spoke to my heart about my job situation. I could not serve Him and continue to work for the government. It is corrupt. In July 2006, I left my job with the government and became self-employed. Since that time I have been able to build my own house. My parents are very happy with me today because they think that my God is a God of love. Lots of my family members are ready to accept Christ. My current salary is higher than the one I received from the government. I thank God and Brother Keith Shumaker. To me Brother Shumaker is not a foreigner but a family member.

I really didn’t go anywhere but I haven’t written for a few days. I seem to do good at blogging and then I seem to disappear for a few days. We had three men trust Jesus last Sunday morning. We keep advancing. I can’t say that we are advancing by leaps and bounds but little by little. A famous phrase in French is “little by little the bird builds his nest.” I feel that this seems to be true in our ministry.

Last week, I also had 2 men come and tell me that they want to be trained for the ministry. Great, right? I suppose that in a country where people have lots(materially speaking), it isn’t a natural desire to want to enter into the ministry. Here, in one of the poorest countries of the world, people will say they want to be in the ministry for their own interests. If they can get attached to the white missionary, maybe they be better off. Of course, I can’t really blame them. I get requests like this often, but it is exciting when it comes from those in our church and young men who show promise. I will be working with the two of them on Monday nights to see their faithfulness before we are totally engaged. I am currently working with four men each morning(Mon. – Thurs.) I also have two other prospects, plus the two already mentioned. Please pray for us, as we need men.