Daniel Dao sat in front of his mud-brick home in a dusty village in West Africa and talked to Alliance videographer Josh Whiteman about his spiritual journey. “Before he died my father told me, ‘Our fetishes are no longer powerful,’” Daniel recalled. “‘You need to find the true God.’”
Two Alliance international workers in Burkina Faso regularly make the long trek to Kenedougou, a region filled with unreached people groups. Christian farmers who had moved to the area had little access to Bible classes or discipleship opportunities, so they asked the Alliance workers to come and teach them.
“God has seeded a couple of believers or maybe a family in these villages,” one of the workers says. “These are people of peace . . . so we just started working with them.”
The two Alliance workers, along with Burkinabè believers, do evangelism in the villages, praying that a harvest will result from the preaching of the Word and from the relationships that are forged with each trip into the region. “God has been faithful to do that,” they say.
“By the power of prayer we have started to see openness,” reports Pastor Sambé François, a Burkinabè church planter. When he asked the chief for land on which to build a church, he was given property that was considered cursed. The villagers wanted to see if the Christians would die, but God was gloried as He protected His followers.
In recent years, people have left the region’s majority religion to follow Jesus, and others have ceased worshiping idols and fetishes. “We have seen God speak to people through dreams,” Pastor Sambé says. “We’ve seen Him healing the sick.”
“When we went in there as a mission, we wanted to plant churches,” one of the Alliance workers says. “But as the Holy Spirit spoke to members of the new congregation, they became determined to spread the gospel among their own people.
“When we began . . . there were just a couple of groups of believers,” he adds. “Today, we have nearly 40 groups of believers worshiping the Lord every week.”
One of those believers is Daniel. “I found the true God—His name is Jesus,” he proclaims. “His name is the name that I call. I trust in the Lord and He gives me peace. There is no other name as powerful as ‘Jesus.’ My salvation is in Him.”
by Melinda Smith Lane, managing editor of Alliance Life magazine, from interviews by Josh Whiteman and Jordan Christopher