God Abides with Former Teacher of the Koran
Kazim Safisa was once like the young Muslim men waiting for him in front of his village home in West Africa with knives, clubs and cudgels. Returning home from a long day working his farm in Ghana, the new Christian knew the cultural dynamics behind their Islamic zeal. Not long before, Safisa had been a zealous sheikh, going village to village teaching on the Koran. He knew why they felt “infidels” like him must die.
Gospel Workers Push through Hardship
A team of 26 native missionaries prayed that it would not rain during a recent outreach to a village in West Africa, because most of them would be sleeping in the open air. The village in central Togo had little space for visitors to spend the night. They managed to find a small shanty to rent for the women, and the others slept on the ground or on benches. No rain water fell, but later stones did rain down on some of them.
Islam in the Light of Christ Poses Danger
A native missionary in West Africa was showing a documentary about Islamic extremist atrocities to villagers at an earthen-walled, thatched-roof home when a neighbor showed up saying the police were on their way. The native missionary, Eric*, took his equipment and left, telling the others to disperse as quickly as possible. Muslim Akposso leaders had directed the police to arrest him.
The Gospel at God’s Speed
Coastal humidity mingling with desert heat blew in through the window of his family’s third-floor apartment as Mostafa listened to a former Muslim on his laptop screen talk about Christ. His parents and siblings were away, but the 19-year-old didn’t dare try to turn the laptop volume up when, outside, the noon call to prayer from a mosque loudspeaker drowned out the speaker on his screen.
How to Go Where No Missionary Has Gone
More than two centuries of foreign missionary efforts in Liberia did not reach tribes in the thick jungle of the interior, with its predators and disease, and it wasn’t easy for a native ministry either. But 27 native missionaries recently got into a large canoe at 10 p.m. to paddle for nearly three hours, arriving at a village where the gospel had never been proclaimed.
Traditional Ritual Stuns Village Patriarch
Adama had lived in his village in Burkina Faso his entire life – 90 years. Suddenly, he was banished. A 6-year-old girl had mysteriously died, and tribal leaders used a divination ritual to determine what had provoked local spirits to commit such an outrage. A shadow fell on Adama, and they accused him of employing witchcraft to bring a deadly disease on the girl.
Animists in Kenya Find Meaning in Christ
In the midst of a long drought, the birth of a girl in western Kenya had created quite a dispute in her family about what to name her. Due to malnutrition she had been born prematurely, which among the Bukusu tribe called for the name Nambuswa.
