The Shumaker Family's Blog

Tonight we started French class at Cissin.  We felt that teaching French has two goals.  #1) To help our people read their Bible and songbooks.  #2)  To reach out into the community with the goal of winning the students to the Lord.  We had about 15 for the first class.  I think that this will really grow and help our church.  This is just one of the many ministries that we want to implement into our church.

We have a night guard by the name of Salif.  He has been my guard since I came to Africa.  He has been very, very faithful to my family and is is also faithful to the Lord.  He grew up in a Muslim home.  At a young age he was sent away to learn the Koran.  His father was the leader of the Muslims in his village.  Salif became my guardian by the grace of God.  He was with my for two years before he got saved.  I need to write this whole story one day.  He is now faithful to teach the kids, lead singing or whatever I ask him to do.

He hasn’t been feeling well the last few days.  The great problem is that Africans, when not feeling well, tell you they are o.k.  We always say that they can have a gun to their head and say that there isn’t any problems.  Tonight he didn’t come to church which I am not sure when or if there was a time he hasn’t come since being saved.  He came to work and couldn’t even walk straight because he is so sick tonight.  I looked for a pharmacy, which can be hard to find one open at night, and it took us 35 min.  I bought him some medicine for Typhoid Fever.  He had already started a treatment for malaria.  He is on our couch this very minute sleeping.  Please pray for his health.  He is a great friend and brother in Christ.  He gave a testimony the other day that he didn’t look at me as his boss but as his brother.  Nothing could have made me more proud.  Amen!

I know that I have written about Omar a few times now but I wanted you all to know what is going on. Omar is a very nice young man, and he loves the Lord. He doesn’t have the best singing voice in the world but that doesn’t seem to bother him as he is the loudest in the whole church. Last week he came to Bible Study, Youth Meeting and church. When we dropped him off from church Sunday morning another young man approached him. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew he was giving Omar a hard time because he came to church with us. He was playing with his face like he was a kid. I guess he was trying to humiliate him. My heart broke because I know that it is hard for somebody to undergo such pressure from family and friends, but he will be stronger in the end if he rests faithful. Please continue to lift him up in prayer.

At 2 AM it started raining. It didn’t stop until 11:30 AM. Man, did it ever rain. Ouagadougou became a big lake. It was good for the fields as they desperately need rain, but for the church service it wasn’t really great. (Most of our people walk to church, some coming from at least a mile away. Some of them have bicycles, and a very select few have mopeds. It is very difficult to go anywhere in this type of weather, and most people stick close to home when it pours.) We showed up at Tingandogo, with my family and 3 others. I thought that it might just be us at church because of the mud, rain and new rivers everywhere, but we had 5 others show up. I was truly amazed because when they got there they looked like they had jumped in a lake, but they still came. We had a great service and God really touched those that came.

At Cissin when we showed up, we had a few present. By the time I started preaching we must have had about 20. People continued to wonder in throughout the service, most of them completely soaked. I was again amazed at those who came. My heart was really encouraged because of the faithfulness of the people.

We also had our first teachers and workers meeting tonight. When I announced the meeting, I told the people that we are going to require certain things for them to be leaders one being arriving on time. When I showed up for the meeting tonight, there were already 20 in the church. Man was I ever surprised. God is forming a team. He is building a model church here, that He will use mightly. I was told by other missionaries that the Africans can’t come on time. I told them tonight that we wanted to take boys and make them men.

The message this morning dealt with the children of Israel and Moses. They complained because they thought they were going to die. They were trapped with no way out. Moses told them, not to have fear because God was going to deliver them and fight for them. God made a way and He will make a way for us. We must learn how to have faith and confidence in our God and wait for Him to work. If you are like me, you don’t have much patience and move before God can work.

I had a great day serving the Lord today! I couldn’t imagine doing anything else in the world than what I’m doing right now. God’s work is always exciting! Nine of us left early this morning to go to our village work, Roungo. It takes about 2 hours and 15 min to get there. Rainy season started late and I really didn’t expect many to come because they are in the process of planting. We still had a great crowd of over 100.

This evening we had our first youth meeting. Youth here is considered 18-35. Weird, I know, but that is how it is. We made many plans for the future. I am extremely excited with the direction we will be going with them. A young man by the name of Emile lead the meeting tonight. It was his idea, so I told him to run with it. He did a great job. Emile is in university. He is in his 6th year of law. He has been approved to go to a University in Switzerland and is trying to decide what he needs to do. I hate to lose him as he is a great asset to the ministry, but I told him he had to do the Lord’s will. Please pray that he will make the right decision. He could be a tremendous pastor or missionary, but it has to be the call of God.

I just finished having Bible Study with Omar.  I felt that we might lose him, a few weeks ago, due to pressure from family and “friends”.  He is a young man that I feel has great potential.  He seems to be on the right track.  Please continue to pray for him that God would use his life. 

I used the exemple of a daba.  A “daba” is like a little hoe that is used for planting.  They don’t have many tools for planting their fields but they always have a daba.  I asked him if the daba had a great value if it was on the table.  He said, “no.”  Where does it have great value, I asked.  He told me in the field.  That is true but only if the master of the field takes it and puts it in his hand.  The daba has no will of its own, only the will of the master.  I told him that we needed to be like a daba.  A tool in the hand of the Master.  Let go of my will and He will use me in His harvest.

When we began our construction at our church in Cissin we had to dig the foundation. I felt it was best for the members to dig it together. Most of the time the men dug while the women moved the dirt outside of our church property. Well, we finished the foundation. I asked the women to forgive me and not hurt me because all of the dirt that we moved outside now needed to come back inside. Once more, we have had many women and men show up to help with the work. We have had to move the dirt with wheelbarows and shovels. It’s not easy work, but it brings great unity and makes the people a part of the work. We started yesterday and will need to work for a few more days before this stage is completed.

Please pray for a young man named Omar. Mamata, my wife’s very good friend, got saved in 2005. She came from a devout Muslim family. Since that time she has brought different friends and family members to church. One of them is her brother, Omar. Omar came to a special meeting and then the following Sunday he got saved. He was baptized a few weeks later. At church he always sang with great joy. He even expressed an interest in Bible training after he finished his current studies. A few months ago, his missed church, which is rare for him, but I didn’t think much about it. The next week, he missed again. He missed 4 Sundays in a row. We tried to find out what was wrong, and we were told things like, he is studying for final or he overslept. We finally found out that he is being pressured by other Muslim friends of the family to forsake his faith in Christ. His sister, who had already stood up to her father in the past, explained the situation to us. The father passed away back in December, but some of his friends have pressured both Mamata and Omar to leave our church and rejoin the Muslim religion. These friends happen to be related to a well-known Muslim leader who is in the process of constructing one of the biggest mosques in Ouagadougou located in Mamata and Omar’s neighborhood. The friends said that they are not respecting their father’s memory, and their mother agrees. Mamata told her mother that after a couple of years in our church, it’s hard for her to leave now, but we are certain that the pressure is getting to Omar. Despite our recent efforts to motivate him and keep him involved, he is still missing church. Please pray for him and others like him to have the strength to stand. Recently, Mamata had another friend who made a profession of faith only to quit coming when her family put the pressure on. Mamata has told this particular friend to be more bold in her stand for Jesus. We need more Mamata’s to help us win this country for the Lord.

I made it back from Ghana!  We had a great trip.  I traveled with my three African brothers.  We made plans with for our conference in September with about 20 African pastors and three American missionaries.  What a blessing to work with my African brothers.  We expect to have about 80 pastors/workers from all over West Africa to come in.

We had a great day this morning at church.  God really used the message.  We had one saved at Tingandogo and then at Cissin we had a pastors 19 yr old daughter come to Christ.  I said that you could be born in a Christian home and be lost.  She never  had realized that before. Praise the Lord for those saved today.

We are just about finished with the foundation.  The bricks masons will finish their work tomorrow.  Then we will build the baptismal pool in order to have our first Baptism at Cissin.  We have about 18 that have already finished the baptism course.