Greetings from Burkina Faso! Exciting times are coming! We are down to our last day of Jula study (Monday)! I am very pleased with how the class has gone and am happy with the level of Jula language we have attained. It has come much quicker and easier than the first African language I attempted to learn (Bisa). Thanks for your prayers concerning that.
Even more exciting news: Our summer ministry begins this coming week. On Tuesday and Wednesday (May 30th and 31st) we will receive our first batch of summer volunteers (14 of them). Then on June 2nd, a team of six more arrive. It would be fairly difficult and time consuming to tell you all that we will be doing with these volunteers this summer. I would, however, like to tell you what I’ll be up to for the next six weeks or so. Once the first group arrives I will be assisting in their orientation and will help get them to their villages. The second group (the group of six) is the first group I will be working alongside. That team is a sports ministry team from the International Sports Federation. I will be accompanying them to the village of Karankasso-Vigue. There we will be working with the Vigue (Vee-gay) people group for just over a week. The Vigue are an ethnic group of only about 8,000 people, and there are no known Christians among them. They are strongly Islamic and animistic. Ministering among them will be a challenge. However, David and Tami have visited this village and found the chief to be very welcoming. He even mentioned that if we built a church he would send his children. Please pray that God would build not merely a building but a community of believers among the Vigue. After the ISF team leaves (on June 14th), I will travel around to visit some of our other teams in their various villages. On June 21st, we say goodbye to another group of volunteers just before yet another group arrives. I will then take a few member of this new group (college students) back to Karankasso-Vigue. Thus, I will have an extended period of ministry among the Vigue people with two different groups this summer. I would appreciate your prayers for me, these two teams, and the Vigue people.
And as I mentioned, this is only a small part of our teams’ summer ministry. Other groups will be in other villages ministering among four other people groups: Northern Toussian, Northern Lyele, Senufo Senara, and Tiefo. All this requires a lot of planning and preparation which has been on-going for a while and will not stop until the end of the summer (actually around July 12th for us). We and the volunteers will need patience, endurance, wisdom, guidance, and health, all of which God can supply. Besides engaging these unengaged people groups with the Gospel, we hope that their ministry in Burkina will have a lasting effect of the lives of these volunteers.
Praise God for:
* the completion of a very productive month of Jula language learning.
* bringing so many volunteers to aid us in the task of the Great Commission.
Please pray for:
* God to open up a door for the Word, so that we may speak forth the mystery of Christ (Col. 4:3).
* the Word of the Lord to spread rapidly and be glorified (2 Thess. 3:1) among these people groups.
* patience, endurance, wisdom, guidance, and health for us and the volunteers.
* our understanding of Jula to continue to grow as we use it in life and ministry.
Thanks again for your support of our ministry through prayer. God bless!
No comments:
Post a Comment