22 May 2015

Church planting in Burundi

Please keep a careful watch on the news from  Burundi.  Their elections are scheduled late in June. A recent government takeover was stopped, preventing what our missionary contact felt sure would be the beginning of another long, bloody war.  He tells us that he and his family  can hear gunshots at night, but they are  still able to move about town. He has two tiny little girls and his wife is expecting another baby in the same week as the elections.  I think that none of us would blame him if he got his family out of there, but he soldiers on-- doing the work he was called to do, and the Lord is blessing it. Read the words directly from him as he reports to us about the building of church building that we have funded there:
As far as the church plant on the property, that is having to be delayed a little bit, one factor is the political situation (in the current political climate it would be difficult to take large teams up from the city to help with the initial evangelism efforts etc...),  The other factor is that the nearby village church that will be helping with the plant is in the middle of its own construction (currently like 30 people sit outside every week cause their building is packed and can only hold about 120). So the local leadership here in the city decided that it would be best for us to help that church finish its expansion project before working on building the building at the new property. They already have a  new foundation and are hoping to start building the beginning of July.  It would not be good to very quickly build a good sized building for the new church plant on the new property when the mother church is still stuck trying to accommodate the people they have! 
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Things are always more complicated here in Africa than I would like :) But I guess it is not just Africa.