Burkina newsletter #23

Greetings from Burkina Faso! Two more successful volunteer teams have come and gone. Bartlett Baptist’s third trip to Karankasso-Vigue helped us to continue to develop new relationships and strengthen already existing ones. Still we know of no Vigue believers. Karim, the chief’s son, continues to learn about and consider Christianity but is still not ready to follow Christ. Please continue to pray for Him and the rest of the Vigue who don’t know salvation in Christ.

This weekend we said goodbye to nine students and their leaders from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. They ministered among the Lyele who are the only people group we work with that has a number of established Baptist churches. We spent about nine days visiting and encouraging these pastors and believers. We had a number of opportunities to teach in the churches, prayerwalk in the villages, and show both the Jesus Film and The Passion. In the village of Dolo, where there is no church, 29 people indicated a desire to follow Christ. Please pray for these people and the churches in the follow-up work that remains to be done in Dolo.

Up next: In the next four days I plan to squeeze in a short research trip on the Bimoba and possibly a couple other people groups of southeastern Burkina. On Friday, volunteer Wade Whynot arrives. Wade is coming having thoroughly studied a method of evangelism (the CAMEL method) specifically geared towards Muslims. The CAMEL method attempts to reason with Muslims using verses from the Koran which point to Christ and the Bible. Wade and I will travel among the Dogose and Komono peoples trying to implement this evangelistic strategy. The Dogose and Komono are mostly Islamic groups who I last visited among in December and January. Like the Vigue we still know of no believers among one of the two Komono groups. Wade, David, and I will also offer a training session for pastors in the Bobo area to try to share this method of evangelism.

As Wade leaves on June 8^th we will welcome two more volunteer groups. One is a group from the International Sports Federation and the other is the youth group from my home church, Hardinsburg Baptist. I’m super excited about seeing those kids again. I hope to write again before they arrive to give you the heads up on what they’ll be doing as well as an update on my time with Wade using the CAMEL method. In the meantime . . .

Praise God for:

* Bartlett Baptist, the students from UMHB, Wade Whynot and the many other volunteers who are coming to make an eternal impact here in Burkina.
* the response to the Gospel in the village of Dolo.
* relative health and safety for all of us in recent weeks.

Please pray for:

* God to break through among the Vigue people.
* the Lyele pastors and churches as they attempt to be lights for the Lord, particularly in the follow up work in Dolo.
* Wade and I was we attempt to share the Gospel with Dogose and Komono Muslims. “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation” (Romans 10:1).

As always, thanks so much for you prayer support and interest in the unreached peoples of Burkina Faso. God bless!

kerry spencer

final thought:

We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times. Our approach to life is conventional and static; theirs was not. The thought of “safety first” was not a drag on their enterprise as it is on ours. By being exuberant, unconventional and uninhibited in living by the gospel they turned their world upside down, but you could not accuse us twentieth-century Christians of doing anything like that.

~J.I. Packer