The Shumaker Family’s Blog

I will be taking a trip to Mali tommorrow.  I guess we have three reasons to go.  #1– I want to take Bro. Jason and Bro. Paul with to see Mali.  #2 — Our church supports a national missionary there and we want to encourage him.  #3 — We have a Macedonia Missionary there and I wanted to go and spend a little time with them.

By the way, we had over 70 adults last Sunday.  Things continue to climb.  We don’t take huge steps but little by little we are moving forward.  I praise God for this.  He has done it all.

We had a great first Bible Club.  Bro. Jason taught on creation and did a wonderful job.  We had over 65 kids.  What  a great number for the first Bible Club.

We have another visitor with us.  His name is Paul Taube.  He was in North Africa for a few weeks and he will be with us for a month.  We are looking forward to spending time with him.  I am sure that God will do great things in his life and through his life in this trip.

We are getting ready to leave to do a kids club.  We are starting this in a new location and I am excited about that.  I will report back with the results.

In a former post, I mentioned the fact that the people here eat termites. They call them flying termites. I am sure you were wondering how they tasted. Well they aren’t too bad. I think they kind of taste like bacon. I was thinking that since we didn’t have bacon bits here we could just add termites to our salad and that would do about the same thing. What I really like is adding bacon bits to baked potatoes so maybe next time I will just add a few termites and see what that does. It amazes me how much of a treat it is for the people in town to get them. It is like Americans having their favorite flavor of ice cream.

Below is a picture of a bowl full of termites and then a picture of Dean Hamby, the Assistant Director of Macedonia World Baptist Missions, eating termites. Yummy!

I didn’t make it to the church services last night as my fever was really high due to the malaria.  I praise the Lord that He allowed my fever to break about 8:00 last night.  I feel better this morning.  A little worn out and tired but better.  Thanks so much for your prayers.

I had most of this written last week but never got around to posting it. As far as I know, this is the first independent Baptist Camp that has been done in Burkina Faso. That was exciting in itself. Leading up to the camp, I was like a little kid waiting on Christmas. I got more and more excited as it approached. I was expecting and praying that God would do great things and He did just that. We arrived on Monday Afternoon and left Thursday morning.

I took a group of young people from the church. On the way back to get another group, the car began to make an awful noise. We ended up being car-less for the whole camp.

Rain had fallen Monday morning. A few times a year after the rain falls, flying termites come out. So termites really disturbed the service, but God worked in spite of that. The only real benefit we got out of the termites was that we were able to eat them the next day. Yummy!

After the disturbance of the first night. God began to move in a great way Tuesday Morning. We had missionary hour, where we had two young men read a missionary biography and talk about it. Wow, it was powerful. I really want our people to get a hold of missions, so that we can give and go.

I know that I can’t talk about all that God did, but He greatly moved. We had many of the young men give ten min. messages and others preach about our theme: Joshua 1:9. Bro. Jason and Bro. Stephen where greatly used during this time. Each message was perfect and God used it. Here are a bunch of pictures of the camp:

Below is a young man studying to preach.

We formed a choir.

We had a friend visit our room. Yes it is what you think.

Bro. Stephen getting a gift from the church.

Bro. Jason is preaching, and I am translating.

We had many altar calls, and God really moved.

Here is a group picture. There were about 30 of us.

I woke up this morning and my legs were aching a little but I thought maybe that was from planting peanuts and exercising last night.  After our first service this morning, I realized what I had: yes my friend came to visit, malaria again.  I am not to bad because I caught it early and took medicine but I hope this will inspire all of us to pray for missionaries all across the world.  Its not easy suffering but I have come to realize that many times it is necessary.

I went to our main work (Cissin) and preached even though I didn’t feel good and feel like preaching.  God blessed and we had one profession of faith.  Amen!  I am often reminded about what the Apostle Paul said, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”  I have often experienced how true this can be.  God moved in a wonderful way this morning.  Just goes to show you who is actually doing the work.  Not ME!  Amen!

We just got finished with our summer camp.  God did amazing things and I will update you in a blog a little later about that.  Bro. Stephen Knickerbocker has been a great blessing to us over the past month.  He has preached, taught, sang, taught the children, etc.  Anything I asked, he was ready to do it.  It is rare to find a young man with this type of character and integrity.  I am glad that he had the opportunity to be with us.  He truly got his hands dirty, got right into the work.

He never backed done even when things got different or strange.  He ate termites, ate sheep insides and other things.  We need more young men with a desire and a passion like this.  We would love for him to come back and work with us, but we are praying that he will follow the will of God.  Stephen the door is open for you here.