Light of Togo

Last week was certainly one to remember.  I believe it (the pastors’ conference) was a great help to the Togolese pastors as they were able to see every one of their “sister churches” in Togo, get to know the other pastors, and recieve biblical teaching on topics relevant to them.  I personally had a good time getting to know several pastors who I had never met before.  I would like to ask you to pray for them if you could.  Many, if not all of them are struggling to make ends meet, dealing with serious health problems, and trying to lead churches full of people in the same situation as they are.

I had the opportunity to speak two times during the conference.  I basically did a verse by verse study of Jean 15:1-17, dealing with the topic of abiding in Christ.  The main idea was that without a deep, trusting, abiding relationship in Christ, their ministries will only bear the fruit of their own efforts and not that of the Spirit.  The other sessions given by the other missionaries were incredibly helpful as well, and I was really challenged and encouraged by them.

Without going into too much detail about all the rest of what we did during the week, I’ll just say that we drove a total of 24 hours, many of which were spent on roads so bumby that they made my truck beg me for mercy.  In fact, it’s making a few new little noises that I’ve never heard before!  During the last two days, we were in the Dapaong area visiting some remote village churches.  It had rained really hard just a couple days earlier.

Other than my vehicle we had Jim’s, which doesn’t have 4×4.  Just in case you don’t know, remote village roads, hard rains, and no 4×4 aren’t a good combination!  Because his vehicle is larger, he also had the majority of the people (9) in it which just added to the problem.  Needless to say, he got stuck in the mud 4 times!  A couple times were pretty bad and we had to tow it out using my vehicle while everyone pushed on his.  Overall, it was a great experience.  Really!  There’s something exciting about being stuck in the mud out in a remote African village with no cell phone service.  It makes me want to buy a helicopter actually.

So, now that the conference is over and several other time-consuming things are wrapping up,  I expect to have quite a bit more “free” time.  Free time is a very relative term, isn’t it?  What I mean is that I’ll have more time to catch up on all the other stuff that’s been put aside while I was too busy.  So as always, I’ll do my best to keep you updated with anything else that’s going on.  Thanks so much for praying for the conference, and don’t forget to pray for the pastors.

Before the films, we let the kids play with a big ball, which was a completely new experience for them. Joshua even jumped in there with them and had a blast running around with all the kids, stirring up the biggest dust cloud I’ve ever seen!

It was interesting to see how at the beginning of the films there were only a handful of church members there watching, but by the end there were probably around 150 people, many of whom were standing outside watching through the windows.

Afterwards, Pastor Sopa gave, in the local Moba language, a clear explanation of how to know Jesus personally. Sopa, by the way, is the pastor of six churches right now, and as you can imagine needs help very badly. He started out by walking to each church, then he upgraded to a bicycle, and now he has a motorcycle that Randy Alderman bought for him. He preaches at two churches each Sunday and rotates between them. Please pray for him, and for God to call other Togolese men to go help in this needy area.