From Blood-Sucking Jiggers to Jesus in Burundi!

I hope you’ve had a good summer. We’re back in Burundi now, and we didn’t give the kids the time to get despondent about returning to school – we left the UK at 345am yesterday, arrived at our home in Bujumbura at 9pm, and nearly overslept but made it to the school start at 730am today.

I wanted to give some quick feedback on my favorite activity of the year, our annual summer outreach for two weeks in August. In the end, we sent out 525 young people. A few were arrested for short periods because of the local authorities’ suspicions of what they were up to – the general situation in the country is fragile so a close eye is kept on all that is going on. Two teams were simply not allowed to operate at all.

The methodology combined serving in the community with gospel proclamation. In Mwaro province, they came across a destitute family whose leader was an infamous witchdoctor called Kaziri. They nursed the children and grandparents, bathing their wounds and pulling out jiggers. Kaziri was blown away by the love shown, and gave up his charms and various paraphernalia to be burnt. When neighbours heard of his conversion, they came to investigate and when they saw it was genuine, another seventeen decided to follow Jesus.

Beautiful.

Hopefully more wonderful stories will come through in due course from all those scattered groups. Over the two weeks, 4,019 people chose to become followers of Jesus, including three witchdoctors and five Muslims. May they all be built up to last.

I just read this quote from C.T.Studd: “Let us not glide through this world and then slip quietly into heaven, without having blown the trumpet loud and long for our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Let us see to it that the devil will hold a thanksgiving service in hell, when he gets the news of our departure from the field of battle.”

Over and out for now, go for it on your field of battle!

 

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7 comments

  • How wonderful that so many souls turned around their lives and decided to follow Jesus, Our soon and coming King. Praise God for your faithfulness and temerity, snatching souls from the precipice of eternal death and judgement. I am so thrilled! Ian and I were invited to Burundi to meet up with Bishop Hezroni again, but having read the advice from FCO a few weeks ago, plus one very painful arthritis knee that belongs to Ian, we decided not to progress with the invitation. We are living in France, but not for much longer and shall return to England having been away since 2006, Cyprus, then Normandie. Love and Blessings from The Grahams of Gavray.

  • We were praying for the teams, (and your family) so it is great to have news, thank you so much. May God bless your going out and coming in….
    PS We have all really enjoyed your sermons you put on the Internet. They inspired us (oldies!) to start a regular prayer group for our young people… We liked the “Prayer, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th: teaching…!

  • So encouraging!! Thank you! I’m praying!!j

    Mark Auffarth
    Greenville, SC

  • Massively inspiring – Thanks Simon

  • Welcome back home brother Simon and lovely family, yeah we are on our field of battle looking up to Jesus for his enabling grace, thank you for sharing
    Love from Apollinaire

  • It is nice,welcome God bless you!
    Inès

  • I am repeatedly lost for words and reduced to tears by the testimonies I hear from your site. May God keep you all safe and build His church, establishing the seeds sown by these faithful peolpe and may I also not just pass through this priveledged life without blowing the trumpet loud and seeking to serve those who God brings me close to. We are praying for you x

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