The Shumaker Family's Blog

I just realized that this blog was left on draft and never published.  It is from a few months ago but in my opinion it is still worth posting.

 

My family and I started out the day by leaving the house at 6:30 am. The plan was to travel to Pissila and find pastor Salif who would then lead us to the Village of Ying Toako for the first baptismal service to ever happen in this village. The road to Pissila is mostly good, but after we get to Pissila there is no real road to Ying Toako, only small paths for bikes or pedestrians. It takes roughly 2.5 hours to get to Pissila. After meeting up with Pastor Salif in Pissila we followed him while he drove the motorcycle. After about 45 min of winding around trees, scraping bushes, and bumping up and down, we saw a large group of people gathered under a tree.

 

When we arrived they had already began to sing. You could feel the excitement in the air. Just a few months earlier we were privileged to be the first people to ever preach the Gospel to these people. Many had made professions of faith and now they had a great desire to follow the Lord in believer’s baptism. After preaching we made our way to the baptistery. I decided to climb on top of my car so that I could get some good pictures and video. After getting on top of my car I realized that Pastor Salif wasn’t the one baptizing, but that it was Dominique. Dominique is the disciple of Salif, and he is currently in our Bible College that we have started in the tribal language. The joy that gripped my heart when I saw Dominique baptizing was great. I have been asked a few times if I don’t like to baptize. I love it but I got so much more joy out of seeing my disciple’s (Salif) disciple (Dominique) baptizing. I can’t wait until the day when I see Dominique’s disciple baptizing another.

 

The youngest girl baptized was 8 years old the oldest woman was around 80.  There was a total of 34 baptized on this wonderful day.  In spite of being poor, no running water anywhere close, and no electricity they made a feast for us. Even though I have seen God work miracles many times and he has done great things, I am still amazed. It is amazing to hear people sing and praise God in their tribal tongue when just a few months earlier not one of them was saved. For those of you who pray for us, thank you. For those who support us, thanks. You have such a big part of what God is doing in Burkina Faso.

 

Pastor Salif and Dominique with all those who were baptized.

The oldest and the youngest who were baptized.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2015 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.