Sorian

Check back here often to read stories of the Sorian church and fellowship with them in the name of Christ.

This is one of the villages that Severin was instrumental in helping us plant. Our efforts began in Sorian in 2005. Sorian has been unique in that it seemed that it started gangbusters with around 30 people baptized and then seemed to peter off with fewer and fewer people coming to leaders meetings and sporadic at Sunday worship. However, the Spirit has wrought a revival in this village and they are currently growing both in numbers and in maturity and consistency.

23 March 2008
This morning I followed up my Saturday visit to Sorian with a Sunday visit to their worship service. It was a small service: 14 women, 8 men, and 10 children. There was some confusion about a larger gathering of churches meeting about 6 km away. After a short service several people headed on to the larger cluster worship.

Chad
Posted: 03/26/2008 9:30 am - GMT

22 March 2008
Today I biked out to Sorian considerable time with leaders in this village. The purpose of this extended visits is to encourage weak or struggling churches. We are trying to take the pulse of various churches and encourage them and teach where they are in need. This church has 68 members but 32 of these people have been inactive for the past month. They are struggling with people showing up only once every few weeks rather than being in the habit of gathering. This works out to average attendance of 35 with an average collection of 235 francs (57 cents). As we talked about problems facing the church they had no complaints about their Sunday worship services. The planning is set in place several days before worship every week. The struggle is getting folks together all at the same time in order to actual have the service they have planned! Some of the folks I visited with that you can pray for are listed here: Papu, Seraphine, Ni-faa- kpier, Rudolphe, Womo, Pauline, and Tie-taw. This church has started to appoint some provisional deacons. The next step is to actually get deacons functioning. They have some unique skills required... including a church-announcer. Maybe I should have visited with the church announcer about announcing service times....hmmm.

Chad
Posted: 03/26/2008 9:30 am - GMT

22 February 2008
Kyle and I journeyed out to Sorian to deliver a new attendance book for their church. They did not have any scheduled meeting and we were not sure who we would find. A lady recognized me and I greeted her. She invited us to sit down and I told her our reason for visiting. We eventually found the home of the lady responsible for attendance. She had just left town and so we left the book at her house, greeted several other folks, and then headed home to Dano. We will need to revisit and try to follow up more with reversions in this congregation.

Chad
Posted: 02/28/2008 8:20 pm - GMT

10 November 2007
As I left with Severen on my bike (he wasn\'t actually on my bike -- he had his own...), I noticed it was riding funny. We got maybe 10 minutes down the road, when I decided to check it out. I discovered that the brake was somehow crooked and had shredded part of the side wall of the rear tire. This meant I had to head for home, so I told Severen to greet the Sorian folks for me. When I arrived home, my wife (the bright one of the family) reminded me that we do actually own a truck that I could take to the village. I hopped in and actually wound up meeting Severen on the road. We road into town together, finding the Sorian market in full swing (the Dagara have a six day week, so this means their markets change weekly what day of our calendar they are on). It was so encouraging to me to see how excited so many of the Christians were to see me. An older lady (who, granted, does crazy stuff all the time) actually danced a little jig. Everyone was glad to see me but at least as equally disappointed that my wife and kids weren\'t with me. We headed to Ni-faa\'s house for church, and things got started quickly. The worship was very exciting to me, not b/c it was unusually lively or peppy (it wasn\'t necessarily -- this is a reserved church), but b/c they did everything on their own. They started on their own, prayed, sang songs, had a lesson (read by one of their own, not Severen), and were ready to wrap up without even allowing me to talk (I, of course, asked for a couple minutes to greet them...can\'t visit a village and not say anything!). At least from this one-time visit, this church seems to have done a lot of growing in my absence. Yet another confirmation that I\'m not all that needed! :)

Andy
Posted: 11/13/2007 9:34 pm - GMT

2007 August 15
Today is apparently the catholic holiday of \"Assumption,\" and here among the Dagara, it means, I was told, that we can rest and do no work and then have a big meal together as a family. Because of that, we didn\'t exactly have a meeting in Kowpla, but we did have some good discussions about the future of the work out there. Nyuor and Serafin discussed with me a long time why it was so difficult for them to do any evangelism at this time of year. The rain comes almost every day and because of that so do the weeds. If they aren\'t in the fields every day, that means less food for the next year (seeing as they seem to inevitably run out - this is a major problem). If Sorian Christians do leave their fields and go to Kowpla one day, they are going to be frustrated because no one\'s going to come to the meeting, because THEY are in THEIR fields. Then when they return, perhaps some of their crop will be ruined, and this will be a further discouragement. After all this discussion, I accepted that they weren\'t just giving excuses (which does happen a lot also). I asked them what they thought of having their Sunday morning worship in Kowpla one Sunday and then asking the Kowpla folks to come worship with them later. They seemed to be excited about this idea and are going to gather the church up to go to Kowpla this Sunday. Pray that this will be an encouragement to both churches and that the Sorian church will truly take on the work of evangelism whenever the rains slow.

Aaron
Posted: 08/15/2007 4:28 pm - GMT

08 April 07
There were seven people baptized in Sorian on Easter Sunday. God is blessing this church with growth. Please pray that the leaders will step up to the tasks at hand and lead this church with Christ like hearts.

Archie
Posted: 04/13/2007 10:19 am - GMT

08 April 07
Seven folks from Sorian were baptized at the baptism in Kuuri this Sunday.

Aaron
Posted: 04/12/2007 8:59 am - GMT

04 April 2007
When I arrived in Sorian I was greeted once again with the feeling that no one expected me to be there. This is the fourth time I have gone out and no one was ready to start the evangalism in Kowpla (I know I had written it as kompla above, but I think that kowpla represents the actual Dagara name of the village better which apperently means white guinea fowl). Ni-faa was the first church member I found. He was asleep on the porch of his store so I woke him up. He can read Dagara and we hope to make an evangelist out of him, but he had not prepared to teach the lesson we were teaching in Kowpla so I told him I would teach this time, but he had to do the Noah lesson next week. Eventually Ni-faa, Florentine, Ingmin, and another older lady went to Kowpla. For the rest of that story check out the Kowpla blog.

Aaron
Posted: 04/05/2007 10:50 am - GMT

28 March 2007
I was pleased to meet with several folks out in Sorian today who were relatively excited about going to preach in Kompla. However, they still had not asked permission from the Chief of Kompla. So we discussed it and picked two guys (Ni-faa and Seraphin) to go as representatives to go ask the chief and delagate for permission. Afterwards we had quite a bit of discussion as to how this was all going to take place, but in the end it was decided that next week, the women were going to go a little early since they didn’t have bikes and I was going to show up in Sorian with my bike and go with the guys to Kompla. We also talked about the fact that they are going to be the ones who teach. Please pray that the Chief and delegate pose no obstacles and that Sorian Christians can really get excited about this opportunity.

Aaron
Posted: 03/28/2007 5:03 pm - GMT

25 March 2007 – Sunday Worship
We enjoyed Sunday worship with the folks here and many said they enjoyed the teaching Saturday, but the church is just not getting business done. There was no lord’s supper prepared and I got the slight feeling that they might not have met had we not come. They had also said that they were going to decide who was going to start the teachine this message to heart. As we where getting ready to leave, people had just piled in the truck to get rides into Dano for the market. I had to make some younger healthier folks get out to make room for an older lady and someone who was sick. Afterwards I wished I had taken this teaching moment to talk a little about Christian love.

Aaron
Posted: 03/28/2007 5:03 pm - GMT

Sorian planning to meet for church plant – 21 March, 2007
I went out to Sorian to meet with folks wanting to start a new church plant in the village of Kompla. Despite what they told Andy, there was no one expecting me and we just made plans to start again next Wednesday.

Aaron
Posted: 03/23/2007 11:03 am - GMT

17 March 2007
Today started off pretty lousy. As I pulled up, I saw in the distance all the young men of the church pedaling furiously away to their soccer game up the r