Eric Barry, Team Expansion’s VP of Outreach, recently contributed to a disciple-making training in a sensitive country in Africa. He introduced a few of the participants who were determined to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples. Names have been changed.
Commitment from Tragedy
Issouf, a pastor, was in our 2015 training, but didn’t do much with the training. Then a year later, he survived a terrorist attack that left 29 dead. He said he was one of two people that survived. He and a friend hid all night while the terrorists went through a restaurant and a nearby hotel killing people. He found a small niche where he was partially concealed.
He said he reflected a lot as he waited through the night and thought he might die. He realized his wife and children were NOT prepared to carry on spiritually without him. He immediately started a 3/3rds discipleship group with his family and he came back to take our training again.
An attack made Issouf realize the importance of discipleship.
Joy and Perseverance
One of our trainees was always filled with joy and smiling. But when you hear her story, it’s even more remarkable. Flora was the second wife of a Muslim man. And she had a recurring nightmare. Small black demons came out of the ground and sought to pull her down into a pit of fire. She went to the Imam and asked for help. He didn’t know what to do. The dreams kept repeating.
Finally, someone told her to ask the Christians. She had a sister who had converted and so she traveled to her village and asked her for help. Her sister prayed for her and told her about Jesus. She returned to her village. But from that day, the dreams stopped. Impressed by this, she decided she would follow Jesus.
Despite all that had happened, Flora had the joy of Christ.
The village realized this. They came to the husband and said, “You can’t be a Muslim married to a Christian. This must stop.”
The man took her six children and gave them to his first wife, who already had 4 kids, and threw her out of his home and ran her out of the village. She went to another sister for help. She wouldn’t help. She went to her brother. Again, no help. Finally, a Christian Pastor and his wife helped her.
With tears in her eyes she said that her marriage had never been broken and she hopes to regain her family and her children. Her husband has left the country and left his first wife and 10 children behind.
Flora said she’s hoping and praying to share the Gospel with her family and her village with the tools she’s learned and see her home restored.
Orphans and Widows
Issa and his wife live in and operate a “big house” where they are currently hosting 27 orphans – but don’t call it an orphanage. They’re just part of his family. His oldest son Luc and his 8 children live there. A pastor’s widow who’s been blind for 20 years lives there. A total 48 different people live there. The orphans don’t know they’re orphans. They think they’re part of the family. The whole community meets every morning and every evening for prayer and worship – it’s amazing!
They’ve had as many as 60 at a time along with their 9 children. Over the years, they’ve become pastors and leaders throughout the country.
The kids don’t know they’re orphans, they’re just part of the family.
We shared with them about how another team with an orphanage has used the training to teach the orphans they care for to make disciples, and the impact it’s had. So Luc attended and from day 1 became a great booster. He’s incredibly well respected and on numerous occasions, he’d get up and address the group and explain why what we were teaching was so important.
These folks don’t have much. And it’d be easy to think that we could help by giving them money – that would be a mistake. For decades, in the midst of their poverty, they’ve been impacting the world. They don’t want our money, and they don’t want western culture. They want Christ! It was such an honor to train people, who were not wealthy, but were incredibly rich toward God!
To read more about disciple making movements, check out our Real Life DMM series.
