Church Partnership
Evangelism

Disciples Making Disciples

Ministry Highlights

               Stories from Around the World
Many heart-warming stories are told from ministries around the world.  Following are several of the highlights.  To read these stories, click on the links listed under "Ministry Highlights" in left-hand column.

Burkina Faso:
Far More than a Soul Safari

For eight days, thirteen Canadians worked side-by-side with four national pastors of the Evangelical Church of the SIM and about forty people from their congregations.  Our mission was to plant one new congregation and strengthen a second in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso.  The Canadians teamed up with their Burkina counterparts and went door-to-door with a Gospel presentation developed for a Muslim context. The majority of the homes in the one area were Muslim.

Each day began before 6:00 am.  After breakfast, the Canadian team would begin the ministry day in one of the host churches with a discipleship training time, and then we would disperse in the targeted area for door-to-door visitation from 8:00-12:30.  Then we went back to the host church for a debriefing time and an African meal.   Visitation was not advised after this time because the heat became too uncomfortable even for the Burkinans, often over 40-degrees Celsius. From 2:00 – 5:00 pm, we usually slept before returning to designated communities to prepare and participate in the evening rallies at 6:30 pm.  These events had traditional music and Gospel preaching and/or films, followed by altar calls for a public profession of faith.  We often did not arrive back to our accommodations until 10:30–11:00 pm. 

During this intense week of ministry, we saw 143 individuals profess faith in Christ during the daytime door-to-door evangelism, and 183 responded at altar calls during the evening evangelism rallies.  Each day, we would seek to return and disciple those who had come to Christ during the previous day’s visits and begin a 10-step follow-up Bible study prepared for new believers.  Almost 100 follow-up visits were completed with the new adult believers, and most of these visits were with multiple individuals that took on the complexion of a small group.

A personal highlight for me was to work with Ashley and Abdul, two of my spiritual children.  Ashley, a 16-year-old eleventh-grade student, came to Christ 3 years ago at the Church I pastor in Calgary.  Abdul, a 23-year-old Muslim convert, came to Christ four years ago during the last CPE trip to Burkina Faso.  We also had an additional member of our evangelism team named Lampo, who spoke some English and interpreted the Gospel into French. Abdul spoke Mori, the local dialect, so he translated from French to Mori. I was very moved one day as I took a picture of 5 individuals sitting on a simple wooden bench placed in the mud hut, which served as a wing of the church we planted on our 1999 visit to BF.  On one end of the bench sat Ashley and Lampo sharing the Gospel in French with a 19-year-old lad who eventually gave his heart to Christ.  On the other end was Abdul guiding a 16-year-old Mori girl through the third follow-up lesson.