Wedding Day

Our family just returned from a trip to our friend's wedding in Savannah. Jula weddings take place on a Thursday, but the celebration lasts for almost a week. First, we were in the bride's village for dancing and fellowship. Then the party continued in Savannah where Elaine, Elizabeth and Alex helped prepare food for a hundred people or so. What an exciting time, yet sad as all the questions started coming in about our upcoming departure for America. We were told by many that we are now African and should not be returning to America. We were deeply touched by comments like these.
Our emotions are all over the place....we are still counting down the days (57) till we are with friends and family in America. Some nights we are so excited that we can't sleep with the thoughts of AC and college football dancing in our heads. Yet, we will miss our life and friends here. Elizabeth and Alex handle change differently....one thrives with constant change and motion. While the other mourns over any change at all.

Please continue to be in prayer as we say our goodbyes and pack up our home. Stephen leaves in less than two weeks for several weeks in Abidjan. He will be attending two weeks of seminary classes and then we will be together for our annual regional meeting. We are thankful for this time to say our goodbyes to other m friends from all over West Africa. We will then be moving out of our home within days of returning to Burkina.
We appreciate all of you and your prayers for our family and our work over the past four years!
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Blinded to the Truth

We sat in a hot, cramped, dark room visiting with one of Andrew's father's wives (he had four.) M. has been sick for a very long time now. The woman that used to greet me with a song and dance-literally-every time I came to visit her courtyard could now barely sit up straight. She looked at least 25 years older than her 50 or so years. She was fading away before our my very eyes. I knew that her time, just like the rest of us, on this earth was growing shorter and shorter. I prayed and asked the Lord to give me the strength to tell this woman the story of His Son. So in the company of two of my friends from the USA and Andrew, I shared with her the Truth. Also in attendance was her mother. Both women have been enslaved by a false religion all their lives. Both women listened intently as I told them that because of our sins, our time on earth was numbered, and that the time to decide where we would spend eternity was now. I explained to them how Christ came and conquered death, and that if we would just choose to become one of His followers we can be sure that once we left this world, we would spend eternity with God. Unfortunately, M. and her mother were and still are blinded to the Truth. She said that she was tired, and that she could not think of such things now. She only wanted to rest. I prayed for her and her mother and left them there in that dark room, knowing that the god of this world has them and millions of others blinded to the One True God.

New Life

This past week, I headed down to Savannah to help the team from Arkansas wrap up their time there. The mood amongst them was somewhat subdued; I could tell that they were ready to get back to the friends and family they left behind in the US. However, I also sensed the sadness they had in leaving their new "famliy" behind. I was pleased to see the bonds and the relationships that had been formed between these five twenty-something Americans and a whole village of Africans, who ranged in age from just a few months to well into their sixties. What they lacked in language ability they made up for in a desire to communicate the love of Christ. Even after a month of eating village food and living in very close proximity to a lot of people, the spirit of this team had not been dimmed.

My other reason for going down to Savannah was to baptize some of the new belivers. A few days earlier the team reported to me that there was a desire amongst the new belivers to follow the Lord in baptism. So, I went down to the village with great expectancy. My plan was to baptize all of the new belivers in the village together. However, the Lord had other plans and my plans quickly did not come to fruition. I only had the opportunity to talk to three of the belivers about getting baptized the next morning, and one of them said he was not ready. So, the next morning, we got in my truck with two of the belivers to head out to the lake. As we were pulling out, one of the belivers that I had NOT talked to the night before asked where we were going. I told him what we were going to do, and he said "I want to be baptized as well." "Get in the truck" I said. We all headed to the lake, and right there, In a place were cows came to dirnk and people came to wash their clothes, we witnessed three new members of our "family" make a public profession of their new life in Christ.