In March we were privileged to have Henry Stober from Adventist World here for 10 days of filming and picture-taking. His visit gave us a wonderful opportunity to look at Benin and our work from a new angle and to see how much the Lord has done here in the last few years. As we prepare to leave Benin for good, it is satisfying to look around and see so many evidences of the Lord’s blessing on our ministry here. Our efforts have been so feeble, but the results are mighty, so we know all the praise goes to our loving God!
For a long time we couldn’t see much happening with our work here since we were focusing on training the evangelists who work for us and on writing culturally-relevant Bible lessons for them to use. We wanted to have a complete set of Bible lessons ready before we began to use them, knowing that we would not be able to write new lessons fast enough as soon as the evangelists began teaching them in the villages. Writing 100 Bible lessons takes a lot of time!
In 2014 while we were on furlough, the editors of Adventist World interviewed me. At that point we had only a vague idea of using the concept of freedom from the Otammari tribal curse as an entering wedge, but the idea seemed to fascinate Bill Knott, and he wanted to do a story about it. They wisely decided to wait to do the story until we actually had visible results from the Bible lessons. The Ebola crisis in West Africa delayed our plans, but after we had been using the lessons in the villages for over a year, Henry Stober was able to come to film and photograph in preparation for the article and a video Adventist World wanted to put together. Truly, the Lord has been working mightily this year!
As a direct result of the evangelistic efforts of our three evangelists, Hyacinthe, Jean and Charles, five new groups are meeting several times each week for Bible study and prayer. These groups are all in villages that had no Adventist presence whatsoever just over a year ago! In fact, three of the groups are in villages known for their resistance to other religions. A large Catholic church and a mosque stand unused in two locations, and no other group has been able to start up religious meetings that have lasted for more than a month. Apparently the method our evangelists are using is meeting a felt need.
While Henry was interviewing Hyacinthe under a mango tree one afternoon, it became abundantly clear that the Lord has been working in awesome ways. Hyacinthe has been working as an evangelist for 15 years, but in the last year he has seen more success from his efforts than in the previous 14 years combined! He used to work very hard, going door to door to find people to study the Bible with. He would find interests and study with them once or twice using proof-text thematic Bible studies he had been taught to give. But after the first visit or two, the people were never home when he visited. They were avoiding him. He worked for years under very discouraging circumstances, feeling obliged to push on, but sure there must be a better way.
Now people come to him asking to study the Bible with him! He has far more requests than time. To help meet the flood of requests, he has begun to train five young men as evangelists. Whenever a new village asks him to come and study with them, he first invites somebody from the village to meetings he is already holding. In this way he begins to develop their spiritual maturity, so that when he will be able to work in those villages or send somebody else to work there, he will already have a core group of people to build upon. His weekly radio ministry has also become quite popular, and many people are urging him to do daily broadcasts. He hands out recordings of his talks, and people listen to them over and over.
It is sad for us to be leaving Benin as these ministry opportunities are opening up all around us. The young people in the church have begun to seek us out for advice and counseling. I have begun to train Sabbath School teachers in the class I have been teaching, and the young people seem to be rapidly growing in spiritual maturity. Seeing the growth in the churches and the village groups, we would like to stay and be a part of that for longer. However, we believe it is best for us to move on. We came to the Otammari Project in its phase-out stage. We have trained up leaders; we have given them tools to continue to work for their own tribe and for the other people groups around. We believe the Lord is opening up opportunities for the church here even as he opens doors for us elsewhere. We’re not sure what the Lord has in store for us, but we are encouraged to see the fruits He has brought forth in Benin!
Although our family will be leaving, the evangelists will continue to work for at least another year and a half together with Ulrike Baur-Kouato. We plan for Hyacinthe to continue his work until the end of 2020. If you would like to continue supporting AFM’s work in this area of Benin, please consider transferring your support to Uli and Toussaint.
Thank you for your support and prayers for us during our part of this relay race. Now the baton has been handed over to others who will keep running the race here. Please keep praying that the Holy Spirit will win the battle for Otammari souls, and prepare to meet many of them by the sea of glass in Heaven someday soon!
