Our two teenage sons were with us on our recent e3 partners trip to Burundi. They are both such great assets to our team. On this trip Dan and our oldest son, Mike, were on the same team. They encountered a couple of unique obstacles with their church site. The first obstacle was - The Location of their new church. You can see from this photo that they had quite a hike from the bottom of the canyon (where the arrow disappears into the trees) to the place where the church is. This canyon had only a Catholic church on one side of the canyon and a Jehovah Witness church on the other side. Now there is an evangelical Christian church (New Life Church) right in the middle! New Life Church has their main campus in Bujumbura. There are several families, including the new pastor, who live in this canyon. They hike / walk over 2 hours every Sunday to get to church. Sometimes they hitchhike or catch a bus for part of the way. They are overjoyed to have a church planted right in the middle of the canyon!!
The church had a blue tarp roof on Monday, but that was blown off by the wind by Tuesday.
Some new church members gathered at new church building...
The second obstacle was - The River. They had to cross a fast-moving river at the bottom of the canyon in order to evangelize the other side of the canyon. Mike was terrified to cross. He had to be carried across the river by a Burundi national. Poor little guy, look at the size of his legs compared to Michael's legs. I don't know how he made it across!
On the way back, they found a narrower part of the river to cross. Here's the progression of Mike's second river crossing.
Some of the guys laid big, flat stones down across the shallowest part of the river for Michael to step on.
Mike stepped out in faith...
Mike might be changing his mind about crossing... His piggyback ride is now his helper...do you blame him?
Sort of reached a plateau...
His team member is cheering him on...
Gathering a little more courage...
A couple more giant steps...
He did it! I'm not sure if he kissed the dry land - I'm afraid to ask him.
I'm proud of him for not giving up and pushing on, keeping his eyes on the prize (the shore) and trusting God (and his team mates) to help him across!
