« May 2007 | Main | July 2007 »
June 30, 2007
Burkina Faso Photos
I have just uploaded a few photos to my Flickr account in preparation for updating my website. Here are a few of my favourites among the new ones (As usual you can click on a photo for a larger version):
Tags: africa burkina burkina faso photos gorom-gorom fulani
June 27, 2007
Wanderer's return
Thanks for your prayers during these last few weeks. I had an excellent time both in France and in Burkina.
France
My visits to the two churches in France were very encouraging and I received a warm welcome everywhere. It was a privilege to spend time sharing fellowship and vision for the work in Burkina Faso with Christians and church leaders in both towns. I hope that we will have groups from both churches come out to visit next year. I also especially enjoyed an evening at a cafe gathering organised by one church, where we spend several hours in friendly but animated discussion with some Arabic Muslims who had come along.
Burkina Faso
The time in Burkina was short, just 10 days, but was very encouraging. Here are a few highlights:
- Barke Alla: Christians in the north of Burkina Faso have formed an inter-denominational association, called "Barke Alla", to work together in evangelism, support for churches in the area, and community development. This is a great encouragement and reflects the growing vision and commitment of the church there. The name "Barke Alla" means "God's blessing" in the three local languages.
- Fulani Christians: Two Fulani who became Christians following the flood in August last year are continuing to follow Christ and are involved regularly in church. The Fulani Christians in Gorom-Gorom have also started a mid-week Fulani cell group in order to pray, worship, and study God's word in their own language. They are from the different churches in Gorom.
- Food Aid: Following on from the joint efforts by the two churches in Gorom-Gorom for the Muslim population there following the floods, they have two further joint ventures planned. One of these is the distribution of further food aid in the coming months, the most vulnerable time, following the failure of last year's harvest. According to Reuters: "A recent OCHA evaluation mission in the Gorom-Gorom commune of Burkina Faso showed that the 6,000 people there would need humanitarian assistance "at least" up to the next harvest in September 2007."
- Kids Camp: The other joint venture is organising a Kids' Camp for local children, to be run with support from my home church, Glenwood Church in Cardiff in August. They expect about 100 children to join the camp for a week.
- Business and Mission: Paul and Tim, from Cardiff, accompanied me on this trip and were a great blessing and encouragement to have along. They were primarily there to look, listen, and learn. But they were also looking at possibilities for what role business might have in supporting the mission of the church and community development, and have come back with lots of interesting ideas.
- New Pastors: A new pastor has moved into Oursi, north of Gorom-Gorom, and is doing well. And up to 4 more pastors are seeking to move into the area. These "pastors" are in reality missionaries, working cross-culturally, and are men of great commitment and vision.
- More Fulani Encouragement: During the trip down from Gorom-Gorom to Ouagadougou, we picked up a young Fulani hitch-hiker. We stopped off to visit a pastor on the way. The young Fulani man asked the pastor a lot about the story of Jesus, and finally said he too wanted to follow Christ. He is now in touch with a Fulani pastor in Ouaga. In Ouagadougou itself, we visited a gathering of Fulani Christians and pastors from different churches, who are meeting to pray and join together to reach out to Fulani throughout Burkina Faso.
It has been a very encouraging time. Please pray for all these things. I hope to be heading out again to Burkina Faso at the end of July for a couple of months.
June 03, 2007
Still too busy
Just a quick one to ask for your prayers over the coming weeks.
Life is good, but still really busy as I try to help churches in northern
Burkina Faso establish two-way partnerships with churches in the west. It is exciting, and I think has huge potential not only in empowering the Burkina churches as agents of transformation in their communities, but also in bringing a challenge to the western church as we seek to nurture a healthy spirituality in the busy-ness and pressure of 21st century life.
1. France.
I am off to France for a week tomorrow (Jun 4th), where I will be meeting up with churches to talk about the vision for the partnerships, and about what God is doing in Burkina.
Please pray that we have a meeting of hearts, and that I manage to communicate effectively in my “African French”!
2. Burkina Faso.
I have about 2 days in the UK after France, before heading off to Burkina Faso (Jun 14th) for just 2 weeks with some business guys from my church. As part of our church's partnership with the church in Gorom-Gorom, we will be looking at how business might contribute to the vision of the church there for impacting the community through holistic mission.
I will also of course be meeting up with many friends, visiting the people we built homes for following the flood, looking at the need for further aid, and also preparing the ground for a children's camp this summer.
There are some exciting stories of people coming to faith in Christ following the church's response to the flood, and it will be great to catch up with it all. Please pray for a fruitful time.
3. UK
I will then be back in the UK for a month, including being best man at Steve's wedding, before heading off to Burkina again for a couple of months. During this time in the UK, I will be continuing to try and develop the vision for these church partnerships.
One of my big needs at this time is for a helper who can take some of the administrative tasks off my hands, and free me up to focus more on developing the work. Would you please pray for God's provision in this for me?
Many thanks.
