Short Report on My Mission Trip

I returned home from West Africa almost a week ago at 1:30 am on Sunday April 13, 2008. I arrived with a cold, by Sunday afternoon the cold had become bronchitis, so I was down for the first half of the week. This is why I am so late in getting a message to everyone about my return and how the trip went. I am feeling much better now.

The mission trip to West Africa was excellent! God poured out his Spirit in every way. It would take too long to list all that we saw God do during our week there, so I will give only a few highlights.

We were in the country of Niger working with IMB missionaries Brad & Sally Womble. For the safety of the believers where we worked I will not use the actual village name or any individual’s name.

First, as Amy emailed many of you during the middle of my trip, God blessed us with seeing fruit from our labors right away. We spent the whole week in the village of Dayton. God just did a special work there in pulling back the darkness that has hung over that village and allowing his light to shine in for one full week. On the very first day, in the first hour, at the first presentation of the gospel we made in Dayton a man named Alfred came up and said, “I want to become a follower of Jesus. Can you show me how?” In this region the culture is Muslim with a strong adherence to the spirit worship of the past. Being a Christian is a difficult life choice and inevitably leads to societal and economic persecution. In this village before we arrived there were only 4 believers, 3 of which were baptized, so adding even one believer was a huge event. Alfred began attending the discipleship class that day and never missed a session.

Each day two teams of 4 went out and did evangelism in the village, while two others stayed at the home of Brazilian missionaries living in the village holding a discipleship class for the believers of the village. At the beginning of the first day 5 people were at the discipleship class, by the end of the first day there were 8. On the second day the 8 returned and by the end of the second day there were 13. Those numbers may not sound significant, but the missionaries were not sure if anyone would come any of the 5 days we held the class before we started. Because of working in the field and other needs the numbers dropped off toward the end of the week, but we still maintained a solid core of 8-10.

Dayton was a place of deep dark evil just a year ago. It took 6 years to get permission from the Chief to come into the village and teach about Jesus. Even then opposition and resistance were strong. We were told more than once that you could “feel the evil around you when walked the streets of Dayton.” When we walked the streets every hundred yards or so we would see dead chickens with their heads cut-off, but still having all their parts and feathers attached. This is an impoverished area with a high degree of malnutrition and starvation. We were constantly being asked for food. The people of Dayton are far too hungry to kill chickens and just throw them in the streets. These chickens had been animal sacrifices in spirit worship. Despite their hunger individuals would not touch them for fear of reprisals by the evil spirits they sacrificed to. This is to give you a picture of the spiritual state of Dayton.

Understanding the Spiritual nature of Dayton is important to understand my next statement. Each of our teams the whole time were in Dayton never faced any opposition or resistance in our presenting the story of the Bible and Jesus. In fact the residents were very attentive and listened eagerly. We were told that normally as you began to tell the biblical story the crowd would diminish and loose interest. In our case, the crowds listened attentively and always got bigger! Most of the time we would find a small group of 5-8 people and begin to tell them the story of the Bible, by the time we finished the group would be 25-30. On the last day I was doing Bible storying our last group swelled to around 50 people. It was like this the whole week. Our translators, who are very experienced in this kind of work and in this village, were amazed as well as the missionaries.

The highest highlight of our trip was holding a baptism at the end of the week. On our last day in Dayton Alfred and a woman who had come to faith a few weeks earlier named Susan, decided to be baptized. So in the yard of the Brazilians a pit was dug, then black plastic was laid in it to hold the water. The night before the Brazilians and some others spent two hours hauling water from the village well to have enough to baptize Alfred and Sally. We saw Alfred come to faith on our first day in the village and baptized on our last day there.
It is important to understand that baptism in that culture is a huge line in the sand. Alfred and Susan were already receiving persecution before by simply becoming Christians. However, when you are baptized the gloves come-off and the persecution becomes even more intense. So Susan and Alfred’s act was far more significant than most of us can comprehend here in America.

There is so much more I could share. Each day had an amazing occurrence of its own. Notice also that I have not mentioned anything about my own personal experiences and how I was affected nor any of our team. I suppose it would take a small book to recount all that happened in Niger.