Hello everyone! Check out our video about Senegal... it is a nice summary of everything we did there. 2 months in 6 minutes! Glory to God for all of the things He has done.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
Week 7 & 8
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| Luke and Papi in the village! |
Throughout the summer we got to see the
supernatural work of God raising the spiritually dead in Christ! We saw what we
believe to be 5 genuine salvations. We saw
three of these men come to
faith in Christ the last two weeks we were there! Glory to God! The first of
these three was a man from Ivory Coast named O. But this story does not start
with O, it starts with a man named M that the team
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| View from tallest building in SCIII |
from our church that came in
April made contact with. The April team shared the Gospel and a lot of truth
with M and they wanted us to follow up with him when we got to Senegal. We had
met with M a couple of times, and he was very interested in the truths of
Scripture and who Jesus really was. We gave him a Bible and some other Gospel
material to help him research. Well apparently he wasn’t just researching by
himself but he was sharing with his friends! One day we got a call from O and
he said, “I’ve never met you, but I want to meet so you can tell me about
Jesus.” What?!? Only God can do these great things! We shared this with some of
you as a prayer request so that we could pray together that God would provide a
way to meet up with him. The day after we asked for prayer O called us again
and we met up that evening in a park. We spent a couple hours working through the
Gospel with him, sharing with him the truth of God’s Word about who Jesus is
and what He came to do. That night he confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and
Savior! We were so humbled to see how God works together His plan with His
methods.
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| Waiting for the game |
This was all done by the hand of the Lord. O came looking for us! We
had nothing to do with this! God just chose us as vessels to carry His message.
We hooked O up with a Bible and we got him connected with some believers and
missionaries over in Senegal. Pray for his spiritual growth, that he will be
discipled, and that God will use him in ways that we could never imagine.
The Thursday before our team arrived we had our 7th
Bible study at our friend’s house. That night a new guy (M) came, that is
friends with S (the new believer from our first week here), and is from Guinea
Conakry. It is a miracle in itself that M even came to Bible study. We went to
go pick up S, and M saw us and decided he wanted to go along. That night, O
(our translator/partner in ministry) taught a lesson on the faith of Abraham
and on his sacrifice on the mountain. M was very interested and it seemed that
he was ready to believe that night. We
gave him a Bible and told him to seek God and ask Him to reveal His truth. That
Sunday a team of 5 people (Paula, Chris, Craig, Keirsten, and Bekah) from our
church came to continue the work in Dakar. It was great to have them there. On
that
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| Favorite family |
Monday we met up with him, continued to share more of the Gospel, and he
ended up placing his faith in Jesus Christ that night! We took him back to meet
up with our group and he professed his new faith to our team. Praise the Lord!
This was an incredible way for us to start our last week in
Senegal, and for the team of 5 it was a great way to start their first week! It
was a blessing for us having the team there as they encouraged us, helped us
stay focused, motivated us, and they were used by God as instruments to
proclaim His Gospel to many more people than we could have in just one week.
During our last week there, our team of 7 people from CFBC and 3 translators
continued to evangelize and build relationships throughout SCIII, our adopted
neighborhood. We had many good
connections and had our last Bible study on Thursday evening. 2 nonbelievers came, and 1 was a Muslim man
that has a great story. We were prayer walking through the neighborhood, as we
usually do, looking for people to share the Gospel with. It was getting late so
we were headed back to our meeting spot to meet back up with the team. On the
way our translator saw one of his friends named S. We greeted him and got his
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| Squirly Boy (on the right) |
information, but that was all. Our translator told us that this man, S, had
been very interested in
the Gospel and had been spending a lot of time with him,
but when S’s parents found out they put pressure on him and he stopped being so
interested. We spent some time in prayer for S, and the next night the very
same thing happened! We invited him to our Bible study, which was the next
night, and he said that he would come. Usually they all say that they will
come, and they never do, but the night of the Bible study he called and asked
for us to meet him to show him where it was! We went and met up with him and
brought him to the Bible study. The Gospel was very clearly presented by T, one
of the believers, but when Bible study was finished and we asked S questions,
we could tell that he was holding on to his old beliefs. We spent a lot of time
sharing with him individually, and then two native believers took over and
discussed with him for a very long time. After this he was ready to
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| Alex and some new friends |
believe!
His parents texted him and said that they needed him, so we told him that he
didn’t need us to put his faith in Jesus Christ. We told him to ask God to
reveal truth to him, and that he could be saved by the blood of Jesus Christ
and putting his faith in Him alone. The next night he called to meet up with us
so we told him to meet at our meeting spot. When we got there he was already
confessing his new faith in Jesus Christ as Lord to some other members of our
team. Hallelujah! This man was Wolof, which is the unreached people group that
we had been targeting. All the other believers that we saw come to faith had
been from different countries and people groups. This man was the first from
Senegal and the first who was Wolof. These are the people that we have been
specifically praying for and reaching out to, but they are usually very
hardened to the Gospel. Praise be to the One who can break through the hardest
of hearts, and open the eyes of the blindest of souls!
Glory to God for all the fruit that was harvested in Dakar,
Senegal this summer! God did ALL of the work. We were just obedient to His call
to plant and water, but He is the one who did the growing. We saw this in
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| Paula... aka Mimoona Ndiaye |
every
one of the salvations that we got to witness this summer. GOD DID EVERYTHING!
He set up divine appointments, He gave us the words to speak, He opened up
their eyes to see, their ears to hear, and their hearts to understand. He
adopted them as His children when they were enemies of Him. These men had no
earthly reason to give their lives to Jesus Christ. They could lose everything! This is the case with many
believers of this country. We have seen it happen. God revealed to them that
Christ is supreme. That He is better
than anything on this earth, and that the sufferings of this present time are
not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to come! These men were
completely undeserving of God’s grace, but He is rich in it and He gave it to
them anyways. This is true of us as well. Only by God’s grace were we in
Senegal this summer, and only by His grace did we accomplish anything at all.
This was our hope. That God’s grace will accomplish its purposes. That God
changes lives. It was not up to us to convince anyone of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. If it was we would be utterly hopeless. We know that God can and will
save His people. We put our confidence in our sovereign God.
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| Africans! |
We learned so much this summer. To try and write all of it
down would take absolutely forever, and since this update is already too long,
we will try and make it short. We could write about how we both learned to live
with another leader (which was a lesson we had to learn early), or we could
write about the best way we found to evangelize a West African, we could write
about many things, but we want to give you something that we already knew but
we were living as if we had never heard of it. Complete dependence upon God. Now, of course if you had asked us
before we left, “do you have a complete dependence upon God?” Our answer would
have undoubtedly been yes. But we were pushed to a different level of
dependence these past two months. We were trying to win souls in a country that
is almost 100% lost, we were pushed to our physical, emotional, and spiritual
limits. If it had been up to us we would have utterly failed. But praise be to
God it was not up to us! It was up to HIM! We had to learn to give everything to Him, because He owns it
anyways. Why were we trying to hold on to it? I think this is why this was the
most fulfilling summer of our lives. Because every morning we had to wake up
and say, take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee! Take it God!
It’s Yours! Use it for Your
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Two African swimmers
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glory! This is not just a lesson to be applied on
the mission field in Africa, but a lesson that we want to bring back to our
lives in the States, and a lesson that we hope that you will take for your
life. We say that we trust God with our eternal future, but so often we have
the hardest time trusting Him with tomorrow. What would our lives look like if
we had a complete dependence upon God?
We could never thank you enough for praying for us so much
and being so supportive of us. Know that we are thankful. God has heard your
prayers and He has answered them. There are new believers in Senegal, there are
countless seeds that have been planted, and we know from experience that even a
seed can plant another seed that will produce fruit! Please do not stop praying
for the people of Senegal. Here are a few requests that you can lift up to the
throne of God with us:
· Growth and discipleship of new believers
·
A growing passion and zeal for the glory of
Jesus Christ in the native believers
·
Strength for the missionaries to continue the
task that God has given them
·
That God would reveal Himself to all the people
that we shared the Gospel with
·
For all of us to continue to completely depend
on God and His grace
In Christ,
Assan ak Abdou
(Luke and Alex)
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| Omar Ba and Friends |
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| Remember that one time when Luke stepped on one of these? |
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Lighthouse
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| We visited Goree Island |
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| This is where slaves would be pushed through to enter the ships |
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| Saddest door on the slave island |
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| Colonial Building |
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| Luke and his trusty steed |
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| Village |
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| Chris and Keirsten |
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Week 6
Sa fass menul dowal! (A Wolof proverb "You are late!)
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| Who is like our God! |
We are writing to give you an update on what has been going
on here in Senegal over this past week.
God has been at work and is teaching us many lessons through
everything. We just got back from the
village today, but we will write more about that towards the end.
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| Making disciples, don't worry Luke is holding a bible |
We continue to share the good news in Sacre Couer III. We have been meeting up with some good
friends that we have made and we continue to meet new people. God has blessed us with some good
relationships that we can share His truth with. We are praying that God will do
what only He can do and grow these seeds that they will one day produce fruit.
Last Saturday Luke got a bunch of little pieces of a sea
urchin taken out of his foot that had been there since Alex’s birthday
(whoops), but everything is as good as new now. God is good! Sunday we got to go to the church of
one of the believers that translated for us last time we were here. It was
incredible. We were able to worship the One true God of this universe in spirit
and in truth with believers from all over Africa. We got to sing “How Great is
our God” and “You are Great.” To hear everyone in that room declare the
greatness of our God in their native tongue (while we were doing it in English)
reminded us how truly great our God is. He is great. He does miracles so great.
There is no one else like Him! After church we went to the zoo, and since it
was an African zoo they let us feed all the monkeys. It was a good day.
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| Yalla aji kawe ji |
One of the most exciting things has been making a disciple of
S, the new believer. We have been
spending a lot of time with him and have been sharing many things from
scripture. Every verse that he reads he
is able to explain and comprehend. It is
amazing to see his growth in such a short time!
We have worked with him on memorizing some key verses and he even shared
the Gospel with one of his older friends here in the neighborhood! He is still planning on returning to his
country, so pray that God would give us the time we need to encourage him and
that God would give him power to share his new faith without fear.
On Thursday, we had our 5th bible study. God has been faithful in guiding us and
giving us wisdom with it. We had the
Bible study in the lower part of the neighborhood at a local believer’s
house. Three Muslims came and Luke led
us in a study on the story of David and Jonathan’s son from 2 Samuel pointing
to the grace and mercy Jesus and the riches of eternal life that we do not
deserve. The King has offered to adopt us as sons! We had a long discussion afterward and closed
in prayer. Please pray for this Bible
study. We are trying to encourage the
few believers here to continue it as we leave.
We continue to invite people and a few Muslims come each week. Usually they do not return, so pray that God
would bring people who are truly interested.
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| Best cooks in town! |
One awesome story: on Thursday we called M, a Senegalese that
we shared with and who is researching scripture, and he did not answer. Then we got a call from one of his friends
who wanted to come to our Bible study. O
translated and told us that this friend said that he wanted to come and hear
more about who Jesus is. Isn’t that
awesome?! We had nothing to do with this!
Only God can do these things.
This friend did not end up coming, but we have his phone number so pray
that we can meet up with him sometime this week!
Wednesday morning we were able to go help at a Talibé Boy
center. These centers help the children
that beg on the streets. The children have
all been given up by their parents to an Islamic teaching system here. They
must beg every day and study at the feet of their Muslim teacher. These centers help provide care, love, and
food for them. We spent the morning
there talking with some of the boys, handing out food, and talking with a local
believer who has been called to children’s ministry here. It was a humbling and heartbreaking
experience.
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| 1, 2, 3... jump! |
We left for the village on Friday morning with O. We arrived in Gundiaye and met his
Grandfather and his grandfather’s children.
They have 6 kids who are all very young.
We ate and lived at their house over the weekend. Village life is much different than city life
and we both learned a lot from the experience.
We enjoyed the squatty potty! We
had the opportunity to share some of God’s Word with O’s family and some of his
surrounding neighbors. We stayed from
Friday to Monday and on Saturday we went to a very small village to visit and
share with O’s mother.
On Sunday we went to a very small church on the edge of the
town. That day we were 3 out of the 7
people that attended. The pastor said that
many people were farming and gone for the three months of vacation, but the
church seems to be struggling. The
people of the village do not seem to be interested in the Gospel at all. Pray that God will open doors for this
church, for O, and for other missionaries to continue the good work there.
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| Bathing during the rainy season |
The village was exhausting and trying, but we got to see
much of God’s glory in his creation: the
beautiful sunsets, climbing the huge baobab
trees, cool African rains, and the starry night sky. It was amazing to see God’s glory on display
in this land.
Pray that Jesus’s name would be glorified among these people
and that his truth would shine as light in the darkness. Again and again God reminds us that he DOES
NOT NEED US to complete his work here, but He is pleased to use us as his
servants. And how glad we are to be
here!
Specific prayer requests:
-Bible study- encouragement of believers to continue it when
we leave
-S- discipleship
-We have 2 weeks left, for guidance and wisdom
-That God would give us the DESIRE to share the good news
when our flesh is weak
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| Climbing the baobab trees |
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| Jamming with a Serer |
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| This little guy was thirsty |
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| Journey home |
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