BURK IN A FASO

Our First Conversions

Do you ever feel like God is just giving you a ride and you either have to relax and enjoy it or fight it. I'm not talking about some smug, holier-than-thou version of, "Look at how much I'm giving my life over to God." I'm talking about a "How do you get off this train?" kind of experience. My life feels like that lately. Of course, the things that are happening are all so obviously answers to prayers that all I can do is sit back, relax, and thank God.

If you don't have time to read the whole story, let me just give you the good news. After being in Burkina Faso for almost two years we have had practically nothing to show for it, except hiring a few locals to work at our house and learning an obscure language, but, now, over fifty people have been baptized in the village of Nakar, and our first leaders meeting has taken place - and this in just the last two weeks.

I will start with something that was almost a major tragedy. Anyone who has ever had a three-year-old knows that kids can do some, frankly, stupid things. One day, two weeks ago, Daniel, though he is normally a genius, did one of these things. He had a long piece of plastic with which he had been pretending was a sword. He put it in his mouth and either fell on it or jabbed himself on purpose. He poked a hole in the roof of his mouth that looked about a ½ inch wide and about as deep. We decided to drive to the capital city, about three hours away, to take care of it. He went to see an oral surgeon. The doctor told us we were lucky that the object had not pierced any further. Otherwise, the little guy would have had to have stitches. Instead we just got a prescription for Advil, a bottle of antibiotic syrup, and another antibiotic that we were to apply with q-tips. Although trying to apply that third medicine three times a day was about as dramatic as a televised wrestling match is, he is now doing just fine.

That day was a hard day for us, but an exciting day for God's kingdom, because on that same day several of my friends among the Dagara made the decision to follow Christ and were baptized. I had been disappointed that morning, not only with fact that my son had hurt himself, but also that I was not going to get to preach our first lesson in which we call on people to make such a decision. On our way out of town, I stopped by my teammate Andy's house, gave him a copy of the lesson and asked him if he would go and fill in for me. When I talked to him on the phone and found out that there had been so many baptisms out at Nakar that he lost count (somewhere between 25 and 30), I became ecstatic. Andy had baptized the first, whose name is Yirwe (pronounced "year way"), and Yirwe baptized all the others. Luckily, Andy had asked him to make some sort of record of the baptisms.

Six days later, I went out there for the next lesson, excited to see my new brothers and sisters in Christ. I asked Yirwe to get the list Andy had asked him to make. He came back with the list. It had 33 names on it. Of those 33, at least 24 of them were at this meeting. I was disappointed to find out they had not met on Sunday yet, but I encouraged them to do so. Then I taught them the lesson telling four stories about baptisms from the book of Acts. When this lesson was over, I asked them if any who had not been baptized last week wanted to be baptized. About five or six people raised their hands. I was really feeling elated as we walked together to the muddy creek where they were going to baptize them. I just sat back and watched as another new Christian named Yownbacere (pronounced like "y-ow [as in ouch] -n-ba-cheh-day) baptized the five that had volunteered at the meeting place plus another fifteen or so people. The creek was really muddy and shallow. It only went up to Yownbacere's knees. Their method of baptism was a bit curious. The person being baptized stood in the knee-deep muddy water while the baptizer plunged their head, face first, into the water with one hand and splashed water up on their back with the other. All the way back to the village they clapped and sang the three songs they knew over and over again. When I left, they were still singing.

Yesterday, we had our first leaders meeting, and it was so exciting, I'll have to save it for our next newsletter. I just wanted to let you all know that God hears your prayers. When Paul Dyer, our liaison with our supporting church (the Homewood Church of Christ) was here in March, he took some video of me teaching a lesson out at Nakar. We sent that video over the internet to our supporting church. I put it on this newsletter so that you can download it. On the bottom of the video we had put the words scrolling, "PLEASE PRAY THAT THESE SEEKERS IN NAKAR WILL BECOME CHRISTIANS." What has happened in the last few weeks is a witness to the fact that prayer works. So please continue to pray for this fledgling church, especially as this Sunday might be their first Sunday to meet as a church.

Pray as well for our other three preaching points Boncholi (the same one that I spelled 'Bonchuol' in the previous issue), Dano-Pari, and Mebar. Without question, the most important social event for a Dagara is a funeral. This has caused some challenges at these preaching points in the last several weeks. It seems that each of these preaching points has had at least one week where there was little to no turn-out for a lesson, because of a funeral going on in town. Please, pray that God will work it out so that the people can hear the message God has for them.

Most of all, though, thank God for Jesus the author and perfecter of the faith of the Christians in Nakar.

May the Lord bless you and keep you all,

Aaron, Andrea, and Daniel Burk
B.P. 15 Dano
Burkina Faso
011 226 90 80 44
aburk@dagara.org

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