On the Road to J-village

Day 3
I woke up this morning not know what to expect. Would anyone come to travel to J-village with us? While we were still savoring Sara's and Jessica' delicious breakfast, 5 men showed up ready for the journey. Jessica made us some ham samswiches, chips, cookies, salami...she did not want us to go hungry. Of course Charles, her "Shmoop", was going and she really wanted to take care of him!!

We took off on our 5 "African Kilometers" hike. It was flat terrain, the weather couldn't have been any better. 1 hour and 15 minutes later we walked up on J-village. They had no clue we were coming. The Internet, telephones or any other line of communication hasn't made it that far yet. Many of the believers were out in the fields working.

Prior to our arrival in J-village, there has only been two other times that Christ followers carried the message of Christ to this village. Nine months prior, a Nigerian missionary had showed the Jesus film and 15-20 villagers commit to following Christ. The second time was when a team from GPC went in September and the believers from K-village baptized the J-village believers.

In short, for nine months 15-20 new believers have expressed their earnest desire to follow Christ, but had virtually no one to come and share stories and walk with them in the way of Jesus. When I asked if they had been meeting to learn of Jesus, sing, pray, tell Bible stories, they replied, " We can't because we don't know what to do. " They had the desire to follow Jesus, they want to follow Jesus, but no one was showing them the path of Jesus. I was heart broken. How can these people go the way of Jesus? It's much a like a new baby. Without a model of learning to talk or walk, they never will. How can we expect these new believers to ever function as a church without someone to guide them? They don't have a Bible; they don't have a leader; they don't know how to pray or worship. They don't have a any songs to sing. They are baby believers living in the middle of the bush. How can we ever expect them to grow up and be mature followers of Christ? They don't have the knowledge to follow Jesus, or a model, how will they ever be like Jesus?

I had to ask myself: How can WE help these new believers to survive and not die in their faith out here. They will surely die, give up and stay in there animistic ways. The gospel story will die here and go no further. We gave a quick lesson on prayer, told them a Bible story, sang a few songs that we hoped would be a model for them to meet and worship together. I asked the men of K-village to come back each week and tell the people of J-village Bible stories. The Bible stories that we bring from America to share in K-village could be shared in J-village.

Just as we finished and were about to "ask for the road," all the negative feelings and remaining culture shock melted away. In the Bambara tradition of formal communication they started speaking to one another, one man telling another man, who would tell another man, who would tell another man, and so on - much like the "gossip" game we played as a child except instead of whispering, it was spoken out loud before the entire gathering. The message was meant for the believers of K-village and us, their American guests. The message was that they couldn't wait to tell the message of Jesus that they had learned. They, by themselves, were traveling to B-village every Friday and telling the chief their the story of Jesus. The chief in B-village was expressing his interest in following the road of Jesus.

The chief of B-village's name is Jofolo. I've never met him, but the new believers of J-village know him and want him to take the path of Jesus too. They simply couldn't keep the message of Jesus to themselves but had to make it known!!

Pray for the believers of J-village...they don't have a Bible and couldn't read it if they did. They don't have a leader, teacher or missionary. They don't have the experience of praying and worshiping God corporately, but they do have a faith that compels them to go outside of their own village to B-village in hopes that Jofolo and other villagers will join them on the path to following Jesus.

This was an amazing breakthrough. There was a definite spring in my step as we walked the 5 "African Kilometers" home.