The Shumaker Family's Blog

Last weekend I took a trip to Roungou.  Salif continues to amaze me.  I don’t think anybody can use the excuse, “God can’t use me” or “I don’t have any talents”.  God is using Salif in tremendous ways.  Salif wouldn’t impress you as one that is full of natural talents nor has he been greatly educated in this world.  He didn’t go to school as a kid but God is training him.  I wish I had 100 guys just like Salif.  Give me zeal, desire and a love for God over talents any day of the week.

Emily and Meredith went with me.  They love to sleep in the village.  As you can see they loved climbing the trees.

God is doing wonderful things in Burkina Faso.  Sure we have our struggles and our trials, but God’s blessings far outweigh everything else.

We have been able to give out many school supplies to needy kids.  Bado Neblima and I went to his village to give out notebooks, backpacks, pens, pencils, etc.  I have watched many children carry their school supplies in an old rice sack.  Can you imagine being so poor that you can’t justify the need to buy a backpack?  It is a great blessing to be able to help these children with their school supplies each year.  My mother is the one that deserves a lot of the credit.  She works hard promoting the need amongst her friends and also family members.

Church has been going great.  We are seeing visitors each week.  A young girl came up to my wife after children’s church the other day and said she needed Jesus in her life.  Praise the Lord, she accepted Jesus as her Saviour.  We have seen other professions of faith during the past few weeks also.  Thanks for your prayers.

 Last week, we had a new missionary family come to work with us.  Vicente and Gabriela Garcia are their names.  They have been here since last Wednesday.  They have already been a blessing to us and they are working hard at getting the language.

They lived in America for 6 years.  During that time they both received Jesus as their Savior.  God called Vicente to preach the Word of God and he felt led to train in Peru.  He did this while knowing that if he left the states he would most likely never be able to come back.  He trained in Peru for 5 years.  While there, God placed a desire on their hearts to come and work with us in Burkina Faso.   We are so excited about their arrival.  They are good people and God is going to use them greatly.

Yesterday, we had youth day.  The youth lead the morning and evening services.  I am extremely proud of our youth.  Youth here can be anywhere between 15-35 years old.  If you aren’t married you are considered a youth.  They did a tremendous job.  We had a wonderful crowd in both services.

Last night, a teenager named Natasha sang.  She is an orphan.  She lives with some relatives, but they really aren’t nice to her.  Sometimes they won’t let her come to church and force her to do housework during church hours.  Their other children do nothing around the house, and Natasha must do a lot of the work.  The situation is hard on her, but last night when she sang, I got goosebumps and it wasn’t because it was cold.  She sang from her heart, and it was absolutely beautiful.  She was singing with another faithful young man named Koffi.  I could feel a tear enter into my eye as I began to think, if I didn’t obey God and come here this wouldn’t be possible.  Sure it is God who has done everything but God has greatly blessed our obedience.

Most of the older people that have come to our church have fizzled out.  They just have a hard time changing everything.  They aren’t willing to sell out 100%.  I am encouraged about the faithful youth.  I believe that the youth are crazy enough to sell out to the Lord.

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?

God has allowed us to do lots of different things since arriving in Africa.  We have seen God move, souls saved, churches started, been through two civil wars,  lived in three different African countries, and the list could go on.  The one thing that we haven’t been able to experience first hand is a wedding in our church.  We have been to a few, but never one in our church.

It is hard to understand the challenges to marriage, if you don’t live here.  There are three different types of weddings here.

#1 — The customary wedding — This is very diverse because it changes between the customs of each tribe.  When a man wants to buy a woman(sounds harsh, but that is the reality) he approaches the family.  They will tell him what he must give in order to have her.  The dowry can be anything from some special cloth, money, sheep, cows, etc.  After you give the things requested, she is yours according to customary laws.

#2 — Wedding at the Mayor’s office or the legal marriage —  This is the only marriage that is truly legal in the country.  The government doesn’t recognize the customary wedding nor a church wedding.  The catch is that you have to have a testimony from the wife’s family and one from the man’s family.  If you haven’t paid your dowry, you can forget the testimony from the wife’s family.

#3 — Church Wedding — As stated, the government doesn’t put any importance on this wedding, but  we encourage it because it is good to make vows  and celebrate with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Not to tarry too much longer on this blog, I wanted to say that on August the 8th, God allowed us to celebrate our first wedding in our church.  A brother in Christ, Konate, has been very faithful to God and the church.  He actually is one of our young preachers that is in training.  He has left a good paying job to go into the ministry.  It has to be hard on him when he is newly married, but I know that God is going to greatly bless his new family and ministry.  If everything works out, he will become the assistant pastor of Living Water Baptist Church and will run the church while we are on furlough next year.

Our internet has been down and still isn’t working really well.  I will try to do better with some updates but I wanted to say thank you for those who pray for us.  God is doing a great work and we know it is because God’s people are praying.

We hold a kids club in an area where we want to start a church.  We would like to start this new work in a few months.  Last week, we had one profession of faith there and this week we had three.  This area is called Sanre.  God gave a piece of land here a few years ago.  We would like to build something so that we could begin services in this location.  We have a young man capable of leading the work.  Please pray for this need and God’s wisdom.