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LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 27

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

OFFICER, BOARD, AND COMMISSION REPORTS
3.

Over the last two years, we have been sponsoring
an Alliance Missionary from Romania, who by the
Holy Spirit has started a congregation in Bucharest
and is also working to do the same in Padua, Italy.
From this faithful servant, our interest in Mediterranean missions is growing. We have the potential for
another indigenous pastor to start work in Rome and
to help out in Padua.

For all of this we give thanks to our gracious and merciful
Lord for expanding His kingdom to many unlikely places on
the globe. There is still much room to expand our efforts in the
Eurasia region. To be a witness of the Lord opening doors to
us is truly a labor of love. We thank you for your guidance and
support and pray the Lord of the harvest that He will continue
to bless us with faithful servants in the mission of God in our
world.

Africa Region, West and Central Area—Rev.
Gary Schulte, Area Director
I’ve been saying for as long as I can remember that the
planting of the church in West and Central Africa is generational in nature, not something that can be adequately accomplished or fairly evaluated over a five- or even twenty-year outreach plan. Now I truly think the Lord of the Harvest has given
my wife and me a unique perspective to evaluate the truth of
that contention as, last year, Stephanie and I celebrated the 30th
anniversary of our arrival in West Africa as young missionaries.
In addition, we were blessed to visit 11 of the 13 countries in
which the LCMS is currently involved with mission and partner
churches. That has added quite a bit of latitude to the already
longitudinal nature of these observations.
The OIM has been the consistent player in this blessed history of church planting and mercy work. So now I’m going to
share with you just a few of the stories we were telling everyone on our recent home service to show you just how blessed
our involvement has been here from generation to generation.
Stephanie and I bear eyewitness testimony to each of these
blessed accounts.
Rev. James Marrah in Guinea—James grew up in a Karankan village in Sierra Leone. The Karankan people are almost 100
percent hardcore Muslims. As the civil war began to force tens
of thousands out of their ancestral homes, James found himself
in a refugee camp in neighboring Guinea. God would have it
that James would wind up there with a corps of Leonian and Liberian Lutheran evangelists, who were not hanging their heads
from being displaced from their homes and being dumped in
this hellhole. They simply pulled up their sleeves and got to work
spreading the Good News of Jesus. This hardcore Muslim was
baptized, confirmed, and eventually ordained as a pastor! Such
was the length of their stay in the camp! When the long and
brutal war finally came to an end, James returned to his village
in Sierra Leone with his wife and two teenage daughters. The
elders of the village kicked James out, took his wife and daughters from him, and did an unspeakable thing to the two teens.
Like the Lutheran missionaries in the camp, James did not hang
his head, even though his heart was crushed in three different
ways. He returned to Guinea, where he had learned there was a
population of about 150,000 Karankans during his days in the
camp. He turned the other cheek to his oppressors and started
sharing the Good News of Jesus. God has used this man and his

testimony to reach other hardcore Muslims with unprecedented
success! Where Muslim work is usually very slow, requiring generations, James is raising up a new generation of the children of
God village by village.
Rev. Kombandjar Souk in Togo—Togo was the first
French-speaking country the LCMS had ever entered to do mission outreach. By the grace of God, Souk was one of the early
converts. He and another new evangelist named Saka were sent
to neighboring villages to do evangelism. As God would have
it, just as they were starting their work, a historic outbreak of
cholera swept across the area; killing thousands of kids under
the age of 5, including of two of Souk’s own. A huge aspect of
traditional African religious belief is that they fear change because they don’t want to upset the ancestors and perhaps incur
their wrath. It’s not difficult then to deduce why these two young
men bringing in this message of salvation were quickly blamed
for causing the outbreak. In their villages, five miles apart as the
crow flies, they both were physically dragged to the tree to do
sacrifices to appease the angry ancestors. Saka, being a young
and inexperienced Christian, capitulated in his weakness and
did the sacrifice. He became possessed of the devil, and it required about six weeks of 24-hour visitation and prayer on the
part of missionaries and local evangelists before he was finally
delivered. Souk, by the grace of God, was able to be strong. Not
only did Souk eventually bring those village elders to Christ but
he also now serves as the Director of the CLET, a multinational
seminary in northern Togo training a new generation of pastors and church planters from eight different French-speaking
nations!
Rev. James Yasseh in Sierra Leone—In her mercy medical
work, Steph, who is the Mercy Medical Coordinator for the region, was blessed to oversee four Mercy Medical Teams (MMTs)
in a two-year period as well as half a dozen CHE (Community
Health Evangelism) events. Of the four MMTs, the one in Sierra
Leone is the one that has moved our hearts the most so far.
Held in the former missionary home of Rev. Ricky and Kim Jacob, God began the redemption of this area through this work
of mercy from three different hellish scourges—the scourges
of warfare, pestilence, and persecution. The Jacob’s home became the headquarters of a northern rebel group during the war
years, where daily executions and other atrocities occurred on
a daily basis. Just as the nation was getting on its feet again after the long war ended, they became the epicenter of the Ebola
outbreak that not only killed thousands but also wiped out 90
percent of their medical doctors! The third scourge threatening
the existence of this baby church in the Kono region has been
the rapid spread of Islam. An area that was 20 percent Muslim
when Ricky arrived is now 80 percent Muslim! So this medical team manifested the healing mercy of Jesus in an environment where people have no idea what mercy is. Among the most
merciful was James Yasseh, who has been the principal teacher
of the church for more than a decade. He helped out in the
pharmacy, gently explaining to the patients, often mothers with
four or five kids in tow, how to take the medicines prescribed to
them. As the day progressed, the afternoon sun advanced on
our little makeshift pharmacy. We kept moving our distribution
table further back in the room to get it out of its merciless heat.
But Francis, the local pharmacist, had to sit in the front in the
full sunlight to distribute the meds to the people. At one point,
Steph, as she turned from the table where she was filling pre2019 Convention Workbook