The Shumaker Family's Blog

Tonight, we started our first discipleship class. (I just read what I posted.  It is definitely not the first time that I have discipled somebody here.  I have done it many times, with it being one on one most of the time.  We just have lots more than we can handle in a one on one setting.)  We had 14. We are going to divide the class next week and I will let my wife teach the ladies. She is fussing me out right now because she doesn’t have a book. They say blogs are a daily journal so I am just telling you what is happening right now. I was thrilled to see a good turn out. God is really moving and we are excited about the future. Please pray that God call some men to work in His harvest.

I thought that I would send you a picture of our animal trucks. This is a common site. I am amazed at what they haul with mopeds. From what I can tell from these pictures, this man is hauling at least 8 goats and a few chickens(I counted 5). I have seen them when they must have had  50 or more chickens on a single moped.

Tonight I taught on what the Bible teaches us about fornication. I really didn’t know how it would go over, but I knew that I needed to deal with this subject. Unfortunately, fornication is everywhere. Very few people are actually married. Some have done the custom marriage but those who have satisfied the requirements for the civil marriage are very few and far between. The thing that I discovered today is that in order to do the civil marriage, somebody from the wife’s family must sign, saying that her family is in agreement with the marriage. In order to do this, the man must pay the dowry which can be very costly. Sometimes the man has to buy three cows or something to that effect. Most people here don’t have the money to buy three cows. Do you understand where I am going with this? We have a mess. I was extremely encouraged by one of our men after the service this evening. He has three wives. They have been together for a long time now. Their family has been extremely faithful to our church since we started it at Cissin. I hardly ever have somebody comment on my message. Very few tell me if it touched them or not, but this man told me thanks. He said that he was ignorant before he got married, but he appreciated me telling the truth. He said the people here need the truth. That was a blessing to hear. Then last night another member of our church sent me a text message. He told me thanks for the message. That the truth was preached and that I preached it in love.

We made a bunch of visits on Friday. They all went well and we had the opportunity to witness to some people. We made one visit to a telephone cabin. There was a young lady about the age of 18 there. The last week, during the conference, a pastor had shared Jesus with her and she made a profession. I found out that she was a Muslim and that her family is very devout. I asked her if she could come to church and she told me that most likely it wouldn’t be possible because of her father. She said that if she left her house on a Sunday, that her father would most likely try to follow her and it would be very bad if he caught her at church. That breaks my heart when I hear stories like that. We will continue to visit her and she if we can help her grow in her faith.

I have written about Salif many times. He was a former Muslim. His dad was and imam(religious leader in the Mosque) and he was one at different times. He has been faithful in many areas and always ready to help but he had never been faithful to give his tithe. This is a major problem in African churches and from what I understand it is a problem anywere in the world. I have taught on it and taught on it but only a few have really been faithful. Salif has never talked to me directly about it but he supposedly has told others that he doesn’t think that there is any reason to give the tithe. I am not sure where he got this, but I know that he hasn’t really been faithful to give. The other night he came to me and said, “Pastor, Here is my tithe.” Amen. Our offering at Cissin is getting better and better. Yes, these people are poor, but there are principles in the Word of God that are for everybody, no matter how rich or how poor. In order for the work of God to really flourish here in Africa, they must learn how to give. This might not sound like much to you but it is a step in the right direction. We will be having our first missions conference in November.

We are advancing on our construction work. This week we are preparing the iron posts and next week we will pour the cement to form the posts. As you can see we have finished with the floor also, except where the altar will be.

I thought that these pictures of my sweet girls were too good not to share. Maybe I am biased but they have to be the most beautiful girls in the world. We thought we would put them in preschool here, so that they could learn French well and make some friends before they are home schooled next year.

This morning, all of our visitors left and went back to their home countries. I took down the tent, with the help of some of our men. After finishing, I saw where we had left a little trash. I told the men that we needed to pick up the trash since we were borrowing the land. I was told that we had already cleaned up the land greatly and a few sacks wouldn’t be a big deal. I told them that maybe in your culture it wouldn’t be bad or abnormal to leave a few bags and trash but we aren’t normal. We are Christians and we should be a step above the rest. After explaining to them that I felt that if the owner comes and looks at his land, he will be amazingly impressed and that would leave a great testimony for the Lord. I truly believe that we should always attempt to a cut above the rest. I will go and see the owner tomorrow. We will take a small gift to him and invite him to church. Please pray that we can reach him.

God has truly blessed our conference. We have had a great time of fellowship and stirring of souls. I was able to talk with many different pastors and see what God is doing in their lives and also in their churches. I think that we must have had over 70 different pastors or leaders with us. I think that between the three different locations that we evangelized as a team and had services in, we had had over 100 people profess Jesus as the Lord. There was a new church that was started by our efforts. This is not my church but we helped in starting this new work. I was told that they had over 50 adults in the service and had 60-70 children. It was great to be able to help and assist in starting another work. I know others wouldn’t have wanted to help because it wasn’t for them but I praise God for the privilege we had in helping start another lighthouse that will preach the Word.

Missionary Steve Volonte was the moderator of the conference. He is a missionary in Ghana and has done a great work. He taught last night on church organization. Wow do I need to do some work. What a shame on me to be so disorganized. That is killing our churches here once the missionaries leave. We can be the glue to hold it together while we are here, but once we leave or move to another work it becomes difficult for the nationals. We will be visiting many of the new converts this week.

I was so proud of our young church. We are only 8 months old and our people let God use them. We had about 12 women that worked together from 7 am to past 10 pm each day. One lady told us that they never had an argument. What a miracle that is! They fed between 50-70 each meal. I do want to say that food preparation here isn’t easy. The way that they have to cook is hard and takes time. They didn’t go to the supermarket but to African market(which is much different). The don’t cook in or on a stove but over a hot fire in over 100 degree heat.  Below is a picture of the women working.

Go check out the blog of my friend.  http://projectnorthafrica.blogspot.com/  He is a missionary to Northern Africa.  He has been with me for the conference.  He has preached for us 3 times and God has really used him.  His message this morning was great.  The thought that he gave was, “When you die, what kind of hole or void will you leave?”  It was powerful.  It was taken from Act 9, talking about Dorcas.  Due to his work in a closed country, I am not at liberty to use his name.  I have great respect for him and I love the work that he and his family is doing.