As the Olympics kick off and many of us spend hours watching athletes in action, I’m fairly confident that apparently insignificant Burundi is at least as exciting a place to be as London in the coming two weeks. Picture 615 young people gathering tomorrow, Saturday, praying together, and then being commissioned to go up into the bush in 35 different teams, where they will preach the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick, get their heads kicked in, and (if it’s anything like last year) in the process see about 30,000 people come to Christ in coherent one-on-one conversations. Our guys are amazing and would get the gold medal in evangelism if there was one! Witchdoctors will bow the knee, Muslims will respond to the power of Jesus’ name, marriages will be restored, and much more – and yes, we are committed to follow-up too.
So this is a plea to pray – daily if you can for the coming two weeks – for our guys to be bold, sensitive, healthy, safe, anointed, effective, united, holy, etc. Interestingly, the one year (of the last seven) that I didn’t seek massive prayer back-up for this outreach, we experienced much more persecution and logistical problems. So all the more PLEASE PRAY!
And here’s just one of the many stories from last year to give you a taste of what goes on:
I quote Onesphore: “In Nyrusange Commune, the officials refused that evangelists permission to visit people in their houses, allowing them only to work out of the local church. We are working to sort out that situation, but amazingly God is doing powerful things there. People come to that church where the evangelists are being hosted to hear the Good News and receive prayer. They are having a non-stop conference of preaching and praying for sick people (from morning to evening). This morning a man called Alexis came for help – his wife , Petronie, was mad and was going to the market with dirty clothes and sometimes naked. our guys prayed for Alexis for eternal life and asked him to bring his wife for prayer. He succeeded to bring her and we took time to pray for her . God did a miracle and Petronie was healed. All the neighbours came to see the miracle and many of them gave their lives to Christ. This is causing many other people to come and see the evangelists. We need to keep on praying for them so that God may grant them wisdom. Even if they have not started visiting people in their houses, God is working beyond our expectations.”