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The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that reconciled us all to God was available to the Nanton Kurugu community this Easter. We were blessed to have a team of 13 young missionaries from neighbouring communities join our full-time missionary, Emmanuel, for a successful Easter Gospel outreach to the glory of God.
Nanton Krugu Easter Mission TeamNanton Krugu is a dominantly Muslim community among the Dagomba people group. It is the same village where we built our first mission house, and where Emmanuel currently resides. Before beginning the outreach, we went to see the Deputy Chief and Elders of the community. To our amazement, the Deputy Chief confessed that the community had been hostile to the gospel in the past but he believed the right time hadn’t come then. He also said he had seen our perseverance in the community and was convinced this was the right time for them to embrace the gospel and investigate the claims of Christianity for themselves. Praise God for His faithfulness!
Thank you so much for your prayers, we saw the tangible power of the cross at work! Some people gave their lives to Christ as we went house to house sharing the gospel. Others came to the mission house secretly either to be prayed for or to know how they could make peace with God. At the end of the Easter weekend, we had 17 people surrender their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, including men (which is rare in the Islamic contexts we work in). We believe the number is even higher and some are keeping the decision secret because of family and community threats. We are praying for the day when God’s power will liberate the community and the people will be free to seek the truth and choose for themselves to follow Jesus without fear of the Islamic religious clerics.
The Konkomba mission field continues to be our busiest this year, not only for the outreaches and the home fellowships, but also for projects we are undertaking there to secure the future of the children and support the villages. The school building project in Deodigi has reached the roofing level and we are hoping to finish roofing one school block before the rains start in May. The eight classrooms in Deodigi will serve children from 5 villages who have no access to basic education, while a similar structure in Nakpanduli will serve 4 villages. Currently, 380 children are being taught by our missionaries and the number is expected to increase when the school buildings are completed and the Eternal Footprints Mission Schools formally open.
Another big challenge our brethren in the Konkomba land face is the lack of potable drinking water. Some of the people in the villages have never tasted such water. Others have a drinking source that is detrimental to their health. A typical example is Nakpanduli – their drinking water contains 2.5 mg/l of fluoride while the recommended WHO standard for potable water is 1.5 mg/l. The effect of the excess fluoride is evident in the brown-colored teeth of the villagers. Their children also have weak bones because of this. By the grace of God, we got funds to drill boreholes for four of the villages desperately in need of water. Two of the boreholes have been drilled, and the other two will be drilled by the end of this month. While we had water in one of the villages where we drilled, for Nakpanduli (the village that needs it the most), we were not able to get any water after drilling the well. We are trusting God to drill again this month when the rig goes into the villages once more.