The Shumaker Family’s Blog

When we began our construction at our church in Cissin we had to dig the foundation. I felt it was best for the members to dig it together. Most of the time the men dug while the women moved the dirt outside of our church property. Well, we finished the foundation. I asked the women to forgive me and not hurt me because all of the dirt that we moved outside now needed to come back inside. Once more, we have had many women and men show up to help with the work. We have had to move the dirt with wheelbarows and shovels. It’s not easy work, but it brings great unity and makes the people a part of the work. We started yesterday and will need to work for a few more days before this stage is completed.

Please pray for a young man named Omar. Mamata, my wife’s very good friend, got saved in 2005. She came from a devout Muslim family. Since that time she has brought different friends and family members to church. One of them is her brother, Omar. Omar came to a special meeting and then the following Sunday he got saved. He was baptized a few weeks later. At church he always sang with great joy. He even expressed an interest in Bible training after he finished his current studies. A few months ago, his missed church, which is rare for him, but I didn’t think much about it. The next week, he missed again. He missed 4 Sundays in a row. We tried to find out what was wrong, and we were told things like, he is studying for final or he overslept. We finally found out that he is being pressured by other Muslim friends of the family to forsake his faith in Christ. His sister, who had already stood up to her father in the past, explained the situation to us. The father passed away back in December, but some of his friends have pressured both Mamata and Omar to leave our church and rejoin the Muslim religion. These friends happen to be related to a well-known Muslim leader who is in the process of constructing one of the biggest mosques in Ouagadougou located in Mamata and Omar’s neighborhood. The friends said that they are not respecting their father’s memory, and their mother agrees. Mamata told her mother that after a couple of years in our church, it’s hard for her to leave now, but we are certain that the pressure is getting to Omar. Despite our recent efforts to motivate him and keep him involved, he is still missing church. Please pray for him and others like him to have the strength to stand. Recently, Mamata had another friend who made a profession of faith only to quit coming when her family put the pressure on. Mamata has told this particular friend to be more bold in her stand for Jesus. We need more Mamata’s to help us win this country for the Lord.

I made it back from Ghana!  We had a great trip.  I traveled with my three African brothers.  We made plans with for our conference in September with about 20 African pastors and three American missionaries.  What a blessing to work with my African brothers.  We expect to have about 80 pastors/workers from all over West Africa to come in.

We had a great day this morning at church.  God really used the message.  We had one saved at Tingandogo and then at Cissin we had a pastors 19 yr old daughter come to Christ.  I said that you could be born in a Christian home and be lost.  She never  had realized that before. Praise the Lord for those saved today.

We are just about finished with the foundation.  The bricks masons will finish their work tomorrow.  Then we will build the baptismal pool in order to have our first Baptism at Cissin.  We have about 18 that have already finished the baptism course.

I will be traveling to Ghana tomorrow.  I will be with missionary Steve Volonte and a bunch of other African pastors.  We are going to makes plans for the conference that I will be hosting in September.  We are expecting to have a bunch of African pastors come in.  They will be from all over West Africa.  We want to inspire and challenge them to do more and do all that is possible to evangelize West Africa and beyond.

We are advancing with the Construction at our church in Cissin. We have been working for about 2 months now. God has really blessed and we are going to finish with the foundation this week. We want to thank everybody for their sacrifice to see this project advance. Last night, while I preached, God dealt with my heart. It is hard when you preach yourself under conviction. I have to admit that I have sometimes doubted and worried about having the money sufficient to finish this job. We have never attempted to do a building project this big but we know that it is necessary to accomplish the work of God here in West Africa. I believe with all of my heart that this is going to be the start of a major revival throughout the region. I am going to try to calculate what we will need to finish the bottom floor of the building this week. We are thinking that it should be at least $20,000-$25,000. Most likely a little more than that. Thanks again for all those who have prayed and all those who have given. Please pray for this great need.

We just finished with VBS at Tingandogo. God truly blessed us with a great crowd. We had about 380 kids Wednesday morning. We had a good rain on Wednesday afternoon so our crowd was a little done but we still had about 220. Bro. David Lundy did a wonderful job teaching for us. We had a good number of kids that prayed and trusted Jesus as their Lord. We had a great time and the kids did also. My favorite part is playing dodge ball with the kids. It is a blast watching them go crazy and hitting them with the ball. I know, I am carnal.

We finished our church building at Roungo and because of that we felt it would be good to have a church dedication. We have met under tress and grass hangars for two years. I felt it was the right time to help them build a building. They did lots of the work by getting all the water, sand and rock necessary for the construction. We were privileged to have David Lundy and David Velke here. Bro. Lundy is a faithful member of Vision Baptist Church where Bro. Austin Gardner is the pastor. He is in charge of the children’s ministry and also is very faithful with Businessmen Committed to World Evangelism (www.bcwe.net). He and BCWE has helped greatly with our construction needs.You can also check out their blog at: www.bcwe.wordpress.com

Bro. Velke is a 19yr old that is being trained by Bro. Gardner. He preached for us 4 different times and God used him greatly. Our people said that they were amazed to see a young man with a love for God and a great vision.

We arrived in Roungou on Friday afternoon. We built benches and painted the inside of the building, the doors and the windows. We also put our church logo on the outside of the building. We had well over 300 in attendance for the church dedication. We had many of the old men and chiefs from the area. I was also able to baptize 16 people.

At the end of last month(June 2007) I took a trip to visit a friend in Morocco. God truly blessed my time. We also had a conference with a number of different missionaries and Pastor Austin Gardner (Vision Baptist Church). It was a time to reflect on the direction of where the ministry is going and to make plans for the future.