Perhaps the name Disampoli rings a bell for a few of you. In the February issue of AF, I wrote about scouting this village for future work. This is not a Ditammari village, but it is home to several brothers and sisters in Christ who recently moved back there after becoming Adventists in Ivory Coast. Gospel Outreach evangelists from Boukoumbe visit there only occasionally since it’s about a 24-mile trip and none of them own vehicles.

Disampoli is a small village of about 28 homes. It is quite isolated but not entirely backward—three of the villagers can read a little. The drivable road ends there, and a bike path continues on to the Togo border about two and a half miles west. There is not much out there, but they do have a school and a water pump. The location is quite pretty, up on a high plateau in the Atacora mountains. A few trees dot the landscape—mostly karite, the source of shea butter often found in hand cream, and nere, which has long seed pods lined with sweet yellow fluff, kind of like cotton candy. People save the seeds, cook them, ferment them, and produce stinky black stuff they call mustard. There are also a few baobab trees. By the end of the rainy season, there is basically nothing green left to use in sauce for eating with cereal except the new leaves of the Baobab tree, which are full of iron and other vitamins and minerals.

On Sunday morning, the first of June, I left our house for Boukoumbe, an hour away, to pick up Jules, a Gospel Outreach evangelist, on the way to Disampoli, another hour away. When I arrived, some of the brothers were waiting for us with another evangelist, Isaac, who had presented the first part of an evangelistic program in Disampoli the week before. Jules would continue the program in the village for the next two weeks. I was also going to stay in the village for a week and do a health program while Jules did evangelism.

The rains had started a bit so everyone was in the fields. The best time to have a program is about noon when it usually gets too hot to continue working in the fields, and people are ready to take a rest until three or four in the afternoon. About noon, people began to come in from their fields and make their way along the various trails leading to the “church,” a thatched roof with no walls. There are four benches and one long very crooked log to sit on.

Lazare came in from the east. He is a 35-year-old man who lost his eyesight to disease. Lazare grew up in this village so he knows his way around by memory. Where he doesn’t know, someone will lead him. He even works his own fields. He was very faithful and came every day.

Two brothers, Adam and Esau, came from the northwest with their families. These are the men who invited us to come and present the programs.

The first day, I presented the part of the program that usually gets people to warm up and ask questions. I had made month-by-month life-size cutouts of a fetus. I walked around showing the life-sized cutouts and explained what happens each month of development. I also had two real photos of babies in the womb at 6 and 10 weeks. The general belief here is that a baby is just blood until about the fourth or fifth month or when the mother starts to feel it move. Because of that belief and the general lack of respect for life, abortions are very common, usually induced by different teas and chemicals.

People here don’t want “big” babies so we don’t talk about prenatal nutrition in terms of helping the baby grow. We talk about what the mother needs to eat so she and the baby have enough strength for the birth. At the end, I helped Lazare feel the size and shape of the cutouts. He was very pleased.

The next couple of days, we covered oral rehydration solution for treating diarrhea, uses of water in treatment of many illnesses, both internal and external, and information about when they need to go to the hospital. We talked about uses for charcoal and how to make it.
For one of our prayer requests the second day, Noe asked for prayer for his hurting kidneys. I did a quick presentation on drinking enough water and then prayed that God would heal Noe. The next morning, he said his back didn’t hurt anymore and he had “watered the field” four times that morning. What a great witness to the power of God and the benefits of drinking enough water! Noe was a believer, and so was everyone else.

My time in Disampoli went by quickly, but we did have time to read and watch birds. At night in Disampoli, the stars are awesome. We even saw the Southern Cross. God richly blessed our evangelistic series. Please keep all these brothers and sisters in your prayers.

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