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BURK
IN A FASO The Burks work for God among the Dagara of Burkina Faso, West Africa & are supported by the |Homewood Church of Christ| in Birmingham, Alabama. |
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The Nakar Ladies Club
Maybe I am an ageist and a male chauvinist, but I do not typically think of words like tough and gritty, when I think of older women. However, one of our young churches is opening up my world. When you meet one of the older women from Nakar, you might look at them and, at first, see their wrinkly, skinny limbs and think that they are old and weak, but you would be wrong. From feeding a large extended family to gathering water from, often, miles away, to gathering huge bundles of firewood, to planting and harvesting in the fields, Dagara women have about the toughest lifestyle of any human on God's earth. As scrawny as these women look, they have not slowed down one bit. Once you shake hands with Nifaawa or Daapoh, you would know that this is true. The skin on the palm of their hands is tougher than the dried out cracked skin on the bottom of my feet. Nevertheless, the toughest thing about these women is the stand that they are making for Jesus in a culture that at best is just lazy about religion and at worst can include elements of a secretive satanic cult. When I took "Leadership Training," under Dr. Matthews at ACU, through no fault of his, I had a particular picture in my mind of what it would be like to work with church leaders. I would come to a village where three to five of the men in the church would sit around and share together the questions and struggles they had in trying to lead a church. I never knew I would have a church to work with so different from what I had imagined. I have made several mistakes along the way. I particularly should not have emphasized getting new converts to start preaching our evangelistic series right away as I did. I think this scared off most of the men, except for four. Two of them, Dabuol and Koombaterazieay, are elderly blind men. The third is the young preacher of the Nakar church, Yawmbacherey. Another is a man about my age, Viel. Trying to be sensitive God's direction and not have missionary appointed leaders, I asked Yawmbacherey early on why he was doing all the teaching and why no one else would do it. He pointed to several of the older women at the meeting and said that they decided that somebody needed to do it and they picked him. As Yawmbacherey has matured he has not only helped more in guiding the church in making decisions, but also recognized that he should not be the sole leader of the church (if for no other reason than he just has too much other work to do). So recently, when I announced the beginning of a new training series, I said that I want everyone to come who is serious about being a better Christian, because I did not want to put the pressure on teaching again. The result has been very exciting. Yawmbacherey cannot come to the meetings at the time that I scheduled, because he is taking a literacy course, and I think this is the best thing for the Nakar church. At the first meeting last week, there were Dabuol, Yawmbacherey, and twenty women. We are trying to use these meetings as a springboard for new evangelism. That is, we are having the meeting with the church and then going together to a preaching point not far from the church. Therefore, about ten of the women at the meeting and I took the truck the half mile to Nakar-Bagawn. They were singing Dagara Christian songs at the top of their lungs all along the way. In trying to come up with a description for you as to what this sounds like, the best thing I could come up with would be to say that it sounds a little like a mix of Tina Turner and Willie Nelson. We had a great time, and we pray that we created some interest in Nakar-Bagawn. This week, Dabuol and Koombaterazieay were back and Viel as well, but there were twelve new women now! It took me almost an hour to see if everyone from last week was there and had done their homework (there were six absent from the first week) and to get to know all the names of the new ones. We taught the first lesson in the series over again since there were so many new faces. Toward the end, a woman came and wanted to add her name to the role for the class. I had never seen her before, so I asked her if she had been baptized, if she was a Christian. "Who is Jesus?" I asked her. She replied, "Uuh . . . God?" "God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit? What do you know about Jesus? Who is he?" "Uuh . . . God?" Therefore, I gave her a little brief gospel explanation. Her eyes got a little wet and she said that she would believe in Jesus and give her whole life to him and she wanted to be baptized. I asked those present at the meeting who would take her and baptize her. Viel said that it would be good for her to come on Sunday and they would baptize her then. Praise God for how He is glorifying Himself in the little village of Nakar. May the Lord bless you and keep you all, Aaron, Andrea,
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