The Shumaker Family's Blog

I had a previous post about how kids eat a lollipop here in Burkina Faso. If you missed it, you can read it here, everybody gets a lick.

Rebecca’s aunt, Anne Land, read the post and said that she was going to send some lollipops, so that each kid could get their own lick. Well a few weeks ago we received them. We wanted to take pictures but our digital camera gave up the ghost. Just a few days ago I was thinking, I have an old digital camera. One from the dark ages, maybe Moses had it at the red sea. It is a 1.3 Mega pixels. That was only a few years ago, but it seems like longer since technology changes so quickly.  Anyhow, I am sending a few photos of the kids at Tingandogo. We gave them out at two different churches yesterday. They didn’t have to share for once but got their own. Aunt Anne, thanks.

I am awake at 4 a.m. Our power has been off and on for the last few days. Last night, it was off so I decided to go to bed at 9:00. I thought I would get a good nights sleep for once. Isaac woke me up at 3:30 and I can’t go back to sleep. Funny how that works. God has been so good to us lately. We have been challenging some of the young men to give their all to the Lord and they have been responding. We will be starting our Bible College in September. I am thrilled about that. I feel that we have a great group of men, women, young men and children at the church at Cissin.  God is preparing a group of people to do an amazing work.  Thanks so much for your faithfulness to pray for us.  We really need it.

I saw this photo the other day.  It is one that I really like.  This was at a work that Jason Hamby started in the Ivory Coast.  We took the work over and God really did great things there before we left to come to Burkina Faso.

Salif had invited a lot of his friends to come on celebration day.  One of them trusted Jesus.  Since then this young man has been very, very faithful.  He even came to visitation on Saturday.  I was told that his other friends are making fun of him and giving him a hard time.  What happened is that they all came to church but this one young man left changed and the others didn’t.  He used to drink and smoke with all of them but(without me saying anything) he has quit.  His friends don’t like it but I know that Jesus does.

God truly blessed yesterday. We had good services at Tingandogo. I preached on the veil that is between God and man. At Cissin, we had many visitors. We must have had 8 first time visitors. Our people are really working. I know that we had more than 60 adults. Somebody said that we had 79, but I thought that might be high.  We are growing and I am excited.  We also had three people make professions of faith yesterday.  One was a lady that has come for two weeks.  She was very sincere.

I have been working with several young men that are showing some great signs of potential. I worked last week on setting up our Bible College. I am excited about starting this fall. We should hopefully start with at least 6 men.  I am praying that we can also have some young ladies join.  We won’t accept just anybody.  They have to be a faithful member before we will even think about training them.

The construction is really moving now. The brick mason really went to town.  I had to tell him to stop because we are out of money.  The middle floor of the second section is about ready to pour.  They are putting in the iron and the bricks.  We lack the money for the cement.  My digital camera isn’t working or I would love to put some pictures up.  God has been so good to us, to allow us to get this far.  Thanks for all that have given and prayed.  Without you this wouldn’t be possible.

We went on visitation this morning. We normally have visitation on Sat. Morning at 8:00. Today, we had a great visit. We visited a man that has been coming for along time. His wife is religious but she isn’t sure of her salvation(she has never came to our church. We talked with her some. Then a friend of Faustin(the man we visited) came over. He said that he was in church before but hasn’t been faithful for about 5 years.  When we asked him if he knew where he would go if he died, he couldn’t answer.  We gave him the Word for about 40 min.  He told us he was ready to to trust Jesus.  Praise God, he prayed to accept Jesus as his Lord and Saviour.

My wife went with some of the ladies of the church and had a great time also.  Please pray for our services tomorrow.  I really want to see the power of God move on the lost and in the Saints.  We will pray for you also.

I was blessed yesterday by some news that Bado gave me. We have a piece of land on the outskirts of town. The area is called Tingandogo. This is were we started our first church in Burkina Faso. We bought close to 5 acres there. We lost our first piece of land because Kadafi wanted to place a hospital there. Long story, but we were forced to leave and take the current land that we have. We submitted the paperwork to the government. They rejected it the first time and we had to redo it because they said that 5 acres was to much for a church. We added on the paperwork, a Bible College and other things. They rejected it a second time and made us resurvey it because of where they want to put a road. We ended up losing about 2 acres but hopefully when they come out to do the governmental surveying, they will give it back to us. Anyhow, Bado called me yesterday and said that the last signature was on the paperwork. I know for most people reading this, you don’t exactly know what a process it is in a country like this but we have been trying to finish this paperwork for 3 years now. It is a miracle and God has truly blessed.

O.K., now I am going to give you the shock that I received today. Bado came today with some other paperwork for our church at Cissin. That is where we have been doing our big building project. We have made so much progress, and we are so thankful. Bado brought me some of the paperwork that has been completed. We are changing the paperwork from the seller to the buyer(me). Anyhow, I didn’t even know that we would have to pay something. For each lot, we need about $2,500, and our land is two lots. A total of $5,000. They told us that we need this by March 14th or it will double. We absolutely need your prayers. We truthfully don’t have an extra dime right now. We are already in some debt because of this project. I was a little shocked, or maybe I should say very, very shocked.

Oh yeah, we had one young lady get saved tonight. She came Sunday and didn’t respond, but tonight she made the decision to accept Christ. Her family is Muslim.

I teach a class, 4 days a week, to four men.  Two of them are my guards.  Maybe I have already explained this but we have a day guard and a night guard.  It really doesn’t cost much and it really helps.  We would for sure have thieves come, if we didn’t have a guard.  Anyhow, both of my guards have come to know the Lord Jesus.  I have talked before about Salif and Simon.  They are very faithful to my family and most importantly they are faithful to God.

We were talking about the responsibility of a preacher.  That he must always be ready to learn and to be an example.  Simon, began laughing and said that he and Salif were talking about what they were two years ago.  They were our guards and saved but they weren’t really serious about being used of God.  Since that time, they have become serious and really interested in learning and giving the Word of God.  Simon told me that two years ago, their life consisted of guarding and on their free, they would make tea.  It is normal for a group of young men to make some tea and shoot the breeze.  This isn’t normal tea.  It is powerful.  You actually take it in a shot glass.  I like it the second time they make it, not the first.  He said now they don’t have time to make tea anymore but they study the Word of God and now they really have something to talk about instead of just shooting the breeze.  It blessed my heart to hear this.

God blessed our services yesterday, in spite of us not having anybody come to Christ.  I thought for sure we would have had somebody come to Christ, after the message that was preached and how many visitors we had.  We had over 60 adults at Water of Life Baptist Church(the name is beautiful in French – Eglise Baptiste de L’Eau Vive).  That is our church at Cissin.  I am not sure how many kids we had.  Thanks for your prayers.