The Shumaker Family's Blog

This is a little bit more of Bados testimony.  It is my version of the story.  I hope that it has been a blessing to read what God has done.

Bado has been a great help and a blessing to the ministry. He has become not only a member of our church but also a great friend of mine and my family. Due to some marital problems, he is not able to be a pastor, but he has devoted his life to serving God. He has greatly helped to advance the ministry in Burkina Faso.

I will never forget the day that Bado accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. Bado had argued with me about salvation. He felt that his good works could get him to heaven. He was very unique is that he has always helped others. When people were in need, he helped them. He also created an organization to help children in need to go to school and to be able to have school supplies. He honestly felt that this would be good enough. I had invited him numerous times, but finally he came to church. After the message, I gave the invitation, asking for people to raise their hands if they wanted to be saved. He suddenly announced to the congregation that he had always put his faith in his works, but that he realized that his works couldn’t save him, and that he was ready to trust Jesus to save him from his sins. As we baptists say, he got gloriously saved.

He has been very faithful to give his tithe and to support missions. I truly feel that God has blessed him because of his faithfulness to give. He is a businessman that is being used greatly of the Lord. He is very faithful to me, as his pastor, and to the church.

I have written a few times about a man named Bado.  I call him my African twin brother.  He really isn’t much smaller than I am.  I thought that I would give his testimony in two different posts.  Well here is post #1.  This is his version and tomorrow I will add a little more:

    I met missionary Keith Shumaker through a national pastor in March 2005. Bro. Shumaker wanted me to survey some land that he had bought for a church. After I finished surveying the land, the missionary talked to me about Jesus. He asked me if I went to church. I told him no and that my good works were sufficient to get me to heaven. He said that I did not convince him, and we went our separate ways.

About two months later, the missionary called me and told me that he had a problem with the land that I had surveyed. The government decided to take the land because Khadafi wanted it in order to build a hospital. The missionary asked me if I could help him find a solution to the problem. I was on my month of vacation so I had free time to help him. We went from office to office and finally found a solution, but the church had to move to a new site. When we had finished the work, I realized how much Bro. Shumaker loved me. With much compassion, he spoke with me about God. He told me things that I had never heard. He asked me if I knew that salvation was by the grace of God and that someone had paid for my sins. He said a person could not lose his salvation. At this moment, God opened up my heart to the gospel. I realized that I was a sinner. I confessed my sins and was saved this day. It was a great day for me.

I worked for the government until God spoke to my heart about my job situation. I could not serve Him and continue to work for the government. It is corrupt. In July 2006, I left my job with the government and became self-employed. Since that time I have been able to build my own house. My parents are very happy with me today because they think that my God is a God of love. Lots of my family members are ready to accept Christ. My current salary is higher than the one I received from the government. I thank God and Brother Keith Shumaker. To me Brother Shumaker is not a foreigner but a family member.

I really didn’t go anywhere but I haven’t written for a few days. I seem to do good at blogging and then I seem to disappear for a few days. We had three men trust Jesus last Sunday morning. We keep advancing. I can’t say that we are advancing by leaps and bounds but little by little. A famous phrase in French is “little by little the bird builds his nest.” I feel that this seems to be true in our ministry.

Last week, I also had 2 men come and tell me that they want to be trained for the ministry. Great, right? I suppose that in a country where people have lots(materially speaking), it isn’t a natural desire to want to enter into the ministry. Here, in one of the poorest countries of the world, people will say they want to be in the ministry for their own interests. If they can get attached to the white missionary, maybe they be better off. Of course, I can’t really blame them. I get requests like this often, but it is exciting when it comes from those in our church and young men who show promise. I will be working with the two of them on Monday nights to see their faithfulness before we are totally engaged. I am currently working with four men each morning(Mon. – Thurs.) I also have two other prospects, plus the two already mentioned. Please pray for us, as we need men.

God blessed in a great way yesterday.  We tried to visit as many visitors as possible in the last week.  It is a challenge to find many of them as their address usually isn’t clear.  We ended up with 56 Adults and 43 kids.  We were just one short of 100. We also seemed to have many people out.  We had three adults who made professions of faith yesterday, with also 5 children, whom my wife lead to the Lord.  It never gets old to see men, women, boys and girls come to know the Lord.

This is a video from yesterday. Bro. Austin Gardner is preaching in English, I am translating in French and my assistant pastor is translating in Moore.

This other video is a baptism:

God did much more than we asked. He is good! Our church has been working hard. We have given out over 4,000 invitations in the last few weeks. We had no idea how many people would actually come but I was praying that we would at least have 200. The people started coming and I knew that we would easily reach our goal. We had more than 300 people. It was an amazing site. We also had eight men trust Jesus Christ. We baptized 7 people. Bro. Austin Gardner preached an amazing message. Our people really stepped up to the plate. They came together and got the job done. I was and am so proud of them.

Last night, we had 65. We were again challenged by the Word of God. The altar was full of people after the message. Bro. John Pearson and Bro. Austin Gardner have been a blessing. They have loved my people, they have encouraged my people, they have eaten their food(and liked it), they have laughed with my people and because of all of that, I am very grateful.

This picture was taken at the beginning of the service. If was much fuller.

Bro. John Pearson did a tremendous job with the devotion. Pastor Austin Gardner did a wonderful job preaching. I don’t know the words to sufficiently describe what God did tonight. He really moved in the hearts and lives of our people. We had three professions of faith. We also had about 30 come forward to pray during the invitation. God really did a great work. I don’t believe our church will be the same after this meeting.

Bro. Austin really challenged me today or should I say that he really put me in the hot seat. Everything that he said was absolutely true. I felt overwhelmed and really didn’t know what to do. I was thinking that I can’t do this work. There is no way that I can really accomplish what needs to be done. While translating, I was touched and challenged. It’s tough to translate when God is putting a dagger in your heart. God said, “Hey big boy, you can’t do the work, don’t worry, I will do the work through you.” It’s not an easy work. Some people think that missionaries are missionaries because they can’t pastor in America. I don’t feel that is true at all. Actually the work here is more challenging in many ways, but in my opinion, it’s more rewarding. Fruit doesn’t come because it’s easy; it comes because of hard work. I have been greatly challenged and I am praying that I will never be the same again.

God really blessed tonight in the service. Bro. John Pearson gave about 10 min. on how God wants everybody involved in the work of God, not just preachers, pastors and missionaries. Check out his blog at http://bcwe.wordpress.com/

My daughter Emily didn’t enjoy his message too well though. While he was talking she told Rebecca that she was sick. As Rebecca was trying to take her out of the building, she threw up, right in front of the pulpit .

Bro. Austin Gardner brought a great message about our need to turn the world upside down. Our church was really challenged. We had about 65 at the service tonight. God really blessed, and we are expecting great things tomorrow night.

We had many people come forward during the invitation. I really believe that God is going to do great things in our church because of this week.

Pastor Austin Gardner and Bro. John Pearson arrived at 2:30 this morning.  The church people came together to clean up our building.  We are preparing for our services tonight.  Please pray for our services.  I will give you an update after the services.

This past Sunday God blessed. We had three people make professions in Christ. We had a number of new visitors on Sunday. One of the new visitors introduced himself. We had all new visitors introduce themselves, tell where they live and who invited them. This man wasn’t really clear where he was from and the name he gave of who invited him was someone none of us has ever heard of. After the offering he asked somebody where the bathroom was. He left and never come back. We never thought anything of it until a young lady in our church went out to get her bike, and you guessed it, it wasn’t there. This man stole the bike while we were in services. I was shocked that this happened in broad daylight and not at night but I guess a thief doesn’t really care, as long as he can get away with it.  Losing a bike to us might not be much but to the people here it is almost like getting our car stolen.  The young lady was shaken up as it wasn’t her bike but we decided it would be best to replace it for her.