The Shumaker Family’s Blog

I would like to ask you to pray for us.  God has greatly blessed the ministry here in Burkina Faso.   He has opened up many doors for us.  The ministry is growing; souls are being saved and young men are being called into the ministry.  It is absolutely amazing, and it is a privilege for us to serve God here in Africa.  I was asked today by an American embassy worker, “how long do you plan on living here?”  What can I say to that except, as long as God wants.  God could change our plans or call us to another place but as of right now, I plan on dying here.

About a month and a half ago, I went up on the 2nd floor of Living Water Baptist Church.  I noticed after a rain that the rain and the intense sun here in Burkina Faso were beginning to destroy the floor.  This floor is the ceiling of the first floor.  The men of the church and I worked a whole day to put up a temporary structure to protect this part of the building.  It was working great until the massive rain last week.  Water got under our structure and made a mess.  Monday we took it down and in the process destroyed it.  There was no choice.  I wasn’t planning on building this section of the building until a later date but it seems that we can’t wait.  I don’t want to ruin the investment that was already made.  We probably have more than $50,000 in the first floor and foundation.  The second floor will take between $15,000 and $20,000.  I don’t have an exact total.  I praise God that He has already provided $1,000 of this need before it was even mentioned.  Please pray with us.  God has greatly used this church.  We support 4 missionaries out of this church and two of them are sent directly out of this church.  We also will be starting another work out of this church in November.  The church members have promised about $700 for the bricks of the second floor.  This is a lot for our people.  I am proud of them for giving and wanting to do their part.  We, some of the men of the church, made a couple hundred bricks today.

The second prayer request is for a piece of land that the government is giving us for a church.  The only thing that they require is for us to pay some taxes.  We applied for this about 2 years ago and by the grace of God, we have been granted this land.  The taxes are about $4,500.  This is really a good price for a piece of land in the city.  This land is 37,000 square feet.  A normal lot for a house is only about 4,000 square feet and normally costs more.  I have to pay about $1,500 before the end of this month and the rest I have two months to pay it.  If we don’t we will lose it.

Here are some old pictures.  As you can see God has greatly blessed.

Below:  Our church people digging the foundation in 2007.

Below:  I am on the second floor with a missionary that we support to Liberia.

Below:  This is the first floor.  This was our 2nd Anniversary. We had over 500 people.

I wrote about the flooding in the previous blog.  Here is some interesting pictures from the heavy rain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8237546.stm

They said that we had about 10 inches in 12 hours.  Really we had about 9 and a half inches in about 5-6 hours.  The last few hours wasn’t much.

Here is a short video also:

Rain started at about 3:30 A.m.   It finally stopped at about 2 P.M.  The Burkinabes told me that they have never seen rain like it fell today.  Rebecca tried to go out this morning.  She was taking the kids to a home school group but had to turn around as the water got to deep in places.  There are bridges that have been washed out.  Cars were washed in ditches.  Many of the mud brick houses fell down.  There were two different church families that had their houses fall.  Praise the Lord, they weren’t hurt.  I took a few pictures of our road that was flooded and wanted to share them with you. 

Last Friday night we went to an Independent Baptist Meeting.  There were 9 different churches represented.  Two of our young men preached.  Talibala and Salif were invited to preach, and they both did a tremendous job.

What amazed me about this fellowship meeting was that a few years ago this wouldn’t be possible.  Just a few years ago there were no independent Baptist Churches in Burkina Faso.  Now by the grace of God we have some.  God has been good.  I am thrilled about what God has done in just a few years and what God is going to do in the next few.  God is working, and this is an exciting place to work.  There are opportunities all over this city and our country.  The potential for the work of God is absolutely amazing!  Please pray for laborers.  Would you even consider coming to join us and get in on what God is doing in Burkina Faso?