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November 30, 2007

Making friends

“I am the main man in this village, and if anyone here wants to follow Jesus, I will not stop him,” Hamidou said to us as we were about to leave.

The night before, Hamidou, Pastor Samuel, Billy, and I had been lying out on the mats under the stars with a group of men from Hamidou’s small Fulani village just outside Deou where Samuel is pastor. We had come to spend a day and a night getting to know Samuel’s Fulani friends there, and had been talking of all kinds of things, including the good news of Christ. Hamidou and Samuel have known each other for a long time, and when Hamidou invited us to stay, a large group of men gathered at his home to welcome us among their scattered huts among the cows.

Friendships Without Borders
Billy had come with a small team from Hatteras Island Christian Fellowship, where he is pastor in North Carolina. They have been praying for and supporting the work here for several years and have become good friends. So it was great to have them come to visit for a couple of weeks. Deou was a challenging place for them to come to – with unusual food, untreated water, pit toilets, draining heat, foreign language, and different culture, all in an unreached Muslim context. Yet, through the stretching times and across the differences, God has been building real friendships between these two groups of people from such very different communities.

There were many highlights of the trip, including playing games with the children, helping Samuel put a roof on his house, joining Samuel in preaching at market, and climbing the hill behind Deou to pray for the town stretched out below us almost as if we had travelled through time to a village in Biblical times. But the visit to Hamidou’s village was the high point for me. The good news of Christ had never been heard there before, and yet these Muslim men were welcoming the story of Christ. There was no big evangelistic campaign, no music or drama, and no emotional altar call. There was just a group of men sitting under a simple shelter and sharing their stories and faith in God with one another.

Samuel and his lovely family have been persevering in a difficult situation for several years now, and it was a privilege to be able to get alongside him in his efforts to bring the grace and love of Christ to his community. Short-term mission teams can never begin to do what he is doing there. But we do have resources that can support him in his mission. And we can always – if we are willing – be challenged and changed by such trips, to see our lives differently and be led deeper into God’s heart as we see it lived out by families such as Samuel's.

We need this challenge, and the witness of committed African Christians, as we seek to work out lives of faith in 21st century post-modern society.

Tags: africa sahel burkina burkina faso deou

Posted by Keith at November 30, 2007 06:21 AM