It was 1999. I was in Mali, West Africa, sitting in a small grass hut made of harvested millet stalks, squeezed in between an old Dogon pastor, a younger man who was my translator, and six Fulani nomadic shepherds. Suddenly I found myself witnessing a very lively and animated conversation. Everyone was talking at the same time! What was so exciting, I wondered, asking, “Please translate this for me!” But before I share this compelling God story, let me tell you how I got into the hut in the first place.
The Early Years
I grew up going to church and hearing about Jesus. But I found what was said about Him and how people lived were polar opposites. I knew by age seven how I lived in this life now was going to make a difference in the afterlife, so I began looking for the hope of a happy immortality in other philosophies, religions, and paths. However, God was protecting me from the wrong pathway. I would explore a course, read, go to meetings, and talk to others; it never rang true. So I would move onto another group, another philosophy of life, another path, until one day I had stepped over the line and got into a teaching so dark I knew I could not just move on to another idea. I had to do something with what I now knew.
This path was not going to let me go. So I told my friend, “I know I need to find God. That is my solution. I know He has the answers to life and knows what I am supposed to believe and how I am supposed to live, so from now on, I am looking for Him.” I had already tried “church” and did not think Jesus was the Way, but a work friend knew I was searching and told me the real truth about following Jesus. I was led in the “Sinner’s Prayer.” I did not know what I was saying, but I did pray earnestly. My friend did not follow up with me, but I believe God took me seriously and began leading me to truly know Him.
A new friend came into my life and invited me to an adult Bible study at Circle Drive Alliance Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Nine months later, in my kitchen, the Lord gave me a vision of a curtain being drawn open and behind it, on one side, were all of the philosophies I had ever heard; these were from Satan. He revealed this clearly to me, then on the other side was His Son Jesus, who truly loves me—“Choose today who you will follow.” That day Jesus chose me, and I chose Him! This was in April when I was twenty-seven years old, my “birth day.”
God put wonderful mentors in my life at the Alliance church who helped me to dive headlong into a radical way of living for Jesus alone. I got involved in Evangelism Explosion and then in being a youth group sponsor. I learned quickly what a missionary was and chose to avoid all of those kinds of meetings, just in case I would be “called.”
A year and a half after my new birth, I went to Capernwray Bible School in Australia and New Zealand for a year. I was not allowed to avoid missionary meetings there. After hearing a few missionaries tell of their adventures with God, I was hooked; excited, I told God, “You can call me now.” All year I waited. He didn’t call.
I went back to Saskatoon, earnestly praying He would choose me to be called. About six months later, a missionary spoke at our church. The Holy Spirit powerfully convicted me to go and proclaim Him where people had never heard before. I ran to the altar with tears of joy to accept the call. This same powerful conviction happened numerous times over the next year. I waited and watched for the Lord’s leading in how the call would be worked out.
A few years later, I interned for a year at Circle Drive Alliance in youth ministry with Garth Froese. During the year, the vice president for missions, Arnold Cook, came and spoke. Pastor Garth encouraged me to talk to him, but I didn’t meet The Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) requirements to be an international worker. At thirty-three, I was already too old for their criteria, and I had not even finished high school. How could I go to Bible school? And even if I did, then I would really be too old to be sent. I went and talked to Dr. Cook anyways. His parting words were, “No, you don’t meet our requirements, but we make exceptions for exceptional people, so be exceptional.” I left, thinking the door was slammed shut.
I applied and was accepted to go to Canadian Bible College (CBC) in Regina as a mature student without a high school diploma. God led me to leave Saskatoon and move to Grande Prairie, Alberta, for work. I immediately got involved in the Grande Prairie Alliance Church. The job had not worked out, so the door to Bible school was closed to me due to a lack of funds. Then miraculously, the church hired me as the Christian education director. I had experience with adult and high school Bible studies, but not so much with children. This was so challenging! However, God gave me some great ideas and people to help implement them. It was an exciting adventure with the Lord!
I had such a good time; I changed how I interpreted my call and now looked to raising up others to go instead of going myself. A year later, Ron Brown came as our missions speaker. At lunch, he asked me, “So what is God’s plan for missions in your life?” He got the extended version. As we stood to leave, the Holy Spirit spoke clearly, “I am sending you now!” I asked the Lord to give me one other confirmation to ensure I heard correctly. The following week He sent one of our Sunday school teachers, Barry, to the church to tell me God had spoken and I should obey.
I knew I needed not only four years of Bible school but at least one year of seminary to meet the C&MA requirements. I applied at the seminary, and they accepted me as a mature student. Arnold Cook wanted me to do a three-year Master of Divinity, so at thirty-five years of age with no high school diploma, I arrived at Canadian Theological Seminary (CTS) in Regina to begin a Master’s Program. To say the coursework was challenging would be an understatement. The Holy Spirit guided me in every assignment and paper I had to write, and, in the end, I graduated in the top half of my class! This was not done in my own strength, something I could always sense.
Burkina Faso, West Africa
In my final year at CTS, I was assigned to go to Burkina Faso, West Africa, and left for Quebec to complete one year of French language study in January 1995. I arrived in Burkina in January 1996. The mission was not ready to give me a people group or a language to learn yet, so I was assigned to teach three classes at the Burkina Faso Alliance Bible School in Bobo Dioulasso—in French!
One year of study did not leave me with this level of language competence, but with help from many others, we got the course together and began. Thankfully, my first-year students also had twenty hours of French classes weekly, so their level of French was not very high either. Really, we were at the same level. It was challenging, and the Lord helped me teach in a foreign language each day.
Additionally, I was not yet assigned to a people group or to learn a local language. I was concerned about my age—already early forties—and learning was not getting easier with age. I knew I needed to remain patient, seeking the Lord for daily contentment. My desire was to get into ministry again. Three years of theological studies, one year of the French language, and now waiting again for my “assignment” in Burkina.
In these challenging days of waiting, I was so thankful for dusty bookshelves. They were dusty because we were living on the edge of the desert. Missionaries do not throw things out. You never know when you will need something, and most items we had back in these days were sent over on a container because they were not locally available. While waiting in Burkina, I read every missionary biography I could get my hands on. It inspired me to know God does not waste any of our days. He will use them in His time, so patience was formed in me, and these biographies helped me see the larger picture.
Mali, Africa
During my second year in Burkina, it was decided by the mission leadership I would join the Fulani team in Mali. So, in May 1997, the big truck was loaded. My German shepherd and Ron Brown (who was now our Canadian regional developer living in Ivory Coast) got into my miniature Suzuki Samari. We made the over 700-kilometre drive to a town called Severe, located on the edge of the desert north of the capital Bamako. It was over fifty degrees in the shade!
Finally, I was officially assigned to a people group and a language! Then I realized, WOW! This language is tough. But I loved the nomadic people I had been assigned to. I really loved going into the Savanna Desert to speak with the shepherds and sleep in their nomadic camps, learning their customs and language. It was like living in a National Geographic article. During language learning, I was not allowed to be officially assigned to a ministry. These years were a time of discovery and learning. In the process of learning, I visited the office of the Lutheran Mission in my town of Severe to get some language study books and hopefully some tips.
One day I met John McKinney, a former C&MA missionary who was visiting from the United States. He had worked for over twenty-five years with the Dogon people, and in his last five years, worked with three Dogon pastors among the Fulani nomads. He told me there had been about eighty nomadic believers when he moved back to the USA ten years earlier for a home assignment. Unfortunately, he had not been able to return to Africa. The Lutheran missionary in the office had participated in many of their yearly conferences, but her mission was working in an entirely different part of the country, so she had no new information on them. John told me how to connect with Pastor Sangou, and I immediately decided to go to his village. This was exciting news! There were only a handful of known believers from all the mission work amongst the nomads, but there had been no missionaries assigned to this vast area for almost ten years.
I got to the pastor’s village the following week. Through the translator, he said he would like to go visit the place where the believers had travelled. Would I want to go with him to look for them? YES!
Off we went into the desert in my little Samari. A few days later, I was sitting in a grass lean-to with six Fulani shepherds, the pastor, and a young interpreter. The interpreter said, “All these men are followers of Jesus, and they are listing the others who they know still follow.” Twenty-six men were named. We organized a time to meet at a watering place for the cows. We met, and it was miraculous to see that they still named Jesus as Lord after all these years.
The mission thought a single woman could not work in the desert without a partner, and they did not have anyone available to work with me and the nomads, so it was decided I would go to Guinea and work there with the Fulani team. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I did. I did not want to leave these lost and now found believers without someone to help them grow in Christ. I knew the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) Mission in Mali worked among the nomads in the Delta region, so I invited them on a survey trip to the “Plains” and introduced them to the group of believers. They assigned two families to the work.
I went on home assignment and then to Guinea, not knowing what had happened to them. These were the days before email, the internet, and cell phones. Over twenty years later, I was on home assignment speaking in Beaverlodge, Alberta. After the service, a couple I sort of recognized approached me. It was Pat and Deb de Reutter, who had been assigned to the Fulani on the Plains! Now retired, they were living just thirty minutes north in Hythe. They briefly shared with me how the body of believers grew in the area. The Lord had given me a very, very special gift. He let me know the rest of the story, showing my years there had born fruit for the Kingdom.
Guinea, Africa
I arrived in Guinea in 2001. I would again be working with the Fulani, but there was a very different dialect to learn along with a very different culture. The Fulani in Guinea were not nomads. There I was at forty-five years of age in language study again, up-country in Labe. It was a challenge being patient for my assignment.
Ten years after being appointed, going to Bible school, learning two new languages, and moving to three countries, I still did not know what God’s assignment was for me. As I neared the end of my two-year language study in Labe, I still did not have a specific word from the Lord for an assignment.
Radio Ministry
Another Mission had a recording studio which intrigued me as a possible ministry. Gospel recordings are very effective amongst illiterate people. I received permission to visit Mali, Burkina, and Niger for a vision trip. God often speaks to me when I am in motion. My roommate Cheryl and I drove 6,500 kilometres, visiting many recording studios and radio stations. After six weeks, I returned with no word from the Lord.
Now I had finished language study and, in ten days, was scheduled to go on home assignment. In desperate prayer, I said, “Lord, I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of everyone at home saying I don’t know what You want me to do here. I’ll do anything You want—just ask.” The Word came as clear as a bell, “You do not have because you do not ask and when you do ask, you ask with wrong motives.” Well, what were the wrong motives? You see, I had so often come before the Lord with my list of conditions to His assignment; I wanted to live here, work like this, do this, not do that, etc. I repented and again said, “Lord, I will do whatever you ask.” He replied, “Ask me for a radio station, and I’ll give it to you.”
This was a bit of a step up from a recording studio, and Guinea did not give licenses to private radio at the time. I asked. The Lord said, “You need to move to the capital city because that is where you need to ask for the license.” Oh, how I did not like that city. Big, dirty, and dangerous. But I did not hesitate to say yes, and the adventure with God began. I did not even own a radio and only found out later the day I had submitted to the Lord was the day the government announced they would grant private radio licenses.
I left for home assignment, and every day God gave me another sign the radio station was His assignment, and He would provide. The Lord had already prepared supporters. At Sherwood Park Alliance Church, God had a radio owner and promoter, Roger and Marj Charest, praying for me for the past three years. It turned out he could donate all of the equipment for the station and raise up people to come and build it! God had prepared people in every church who also believed in this assignment; I arrived back in Conakry after six months, ready to proceed with applying for the Guinean non-profit to be licensed and obtain the community station license. God was so obviously making the way and opening the doors. The following year, in fall 2006, the container and twenty-six people arrived over the course of two months to build the Familia FM community radio station. We were on the air!
The government did not allow us to be a “Christian” station, but we were a community station that could put on Christian content. We resolved to be a station giving the people what they wanted to hear, news, interesting programs, and music, so they could listen to what they needed to hear, the Good News of the Kingdom. First, we had the Proverbs of Solomon each day. Then we added a gospel message from a pastor and other biblical programs a few at a time. We changed our name to Renaissance Fm in 2011.
In 2012 we began a call-in prayer program with a team of local believers. It is to this day our most popular program. We started with one day a week and shortly afterwards added another day. On average, we receive eighty-five calls a week, or 4,500 calls a year. People call non-stop. Each caller is followed up on, and literally, thousands have found Jesus through the prayer and healing programs.
It is easy to know how many people call, but not how many hear the calls broadcast. As our team went to people’s homes for face-to-face prayer, many people told us, “You are my church. I listen every week!” I love the Bible stories and the testimonies of people who have received from the Lord. Sometimes we find people in a church who say they gave their lives to Christ through our program, and God led them to the church. WOW, eh! Only in Heaven will we know the whole story of how many were impacted by this program and our praying team. But we know God is using this to bring all the language groups in Guinea into His Kingdom.
For two years, we rented a house and had a sign on the road leading people to the “Spiritual Clinic,” where callers to the program could come for face-to-face prayer. In these two years, we received more than 4,000 people at the clinic. Probably ninety-five percent were not followers of Jesus when they came, but many left as new creatures in Christ. We saw many healings and deliverances, with many people born into the Kingdom of God. After the clinic closed, we began accepting people into the radio station, which is now our “birthing room.” Home cells are formed, believers are baptized, believers are integrated into local churches, and the Kingdom of God is established in their lives.
Baby Rescue Centre
After we had been broadcasting for eighteen months, a young woman with a two-week-old baby came to the station and said, “If someone does not take this baby from me right now, I am going to throw it away.” One of my female employees took the child and adopted it. This was so shocking to me, and I began to be very interested in this huge problem. I am not very “motherly” and know nothing about babies, except they are adorable when they are not crying. However, I felt God asking me to help them, so only a few months later, we opened a centre for abandoned babies in the same building as the radio.
Over the next eight years, thirty-six families adopted babies from our centre. God used us to help with the process of creating new laws for child protection. Because of the exposure on the radio and through public events, we began to see other rescue centres and orphanages opened, to the point where we were not receiving any more infants. This work bore much fruit for the Kingdom, but God closed the door and the centre.
Prison Ministry
In 2013, I awoke to the Scripture talking about when we visit someone in prison, it is like we are visiting Jesus there. In response, I took my assistant with me, and we found the local jail. Having never been inside a prison before, I had no idea what was going to confront us. I was certainly not prepared for a third-world jail!
Despite the circumstances, I felt so at peace being there; I know this was a God assignment. We began visiting the women every week. Then I brought another lady, and soon we had a vibrant team sharing Jesus with the women. We taught literacy for a time. We would always sing, pray, and testify to what Jesus had done in our lives.
One day someone showed me a chapel built inside the walls, and we could use it for a church service, so I recruited a men’s team and began weekly church services. The women and the men were not allowed to mix.
I knew our once-a-week visits for the women were not enough. Our team wanted a tangible way to show Christ’s love to the ladies. I built a metal container just outside the women’s cell to house a four-day-a-week hairdressing school. After four years, it became a sewing school.
Our men’s team had the blessing of hosting the very first baptisms in prison. Twenty-nine men were baptized. Working in prison is so challenging but also so rewarding and profitable for the Kingdom. It is hard to see the suffering and injustices, but there is no other church I would rather be in when we worship on Tuesday. They sing and pray with all their hearts.
Conclusion
I can honestly say every project God has asked me to begin has been in an area I had no experience in beforehand, no real training for, and nothing I could ever do singlehanded. I always need others to make this work! He has raised up gifted, trained, and experienced people, and we work alongside each other. When God asks me to do something new, even though I may not have the experience, training, etc., I know I can do it because He asked me to do it. He would not ask me to do something if He thought I would never get His job done. He has asked me to do challenging things. Some things took years to bear any fruit. God has never expected me to be perfect at anything either. He usually only gives me the light of a flashlight, not a spotlight; just walk in the light you have, and the light will keep you on the path.
For every project God has asked me to steward, He has provided others with a like vision to support and be involved. This is the family at work, and it is a wonderful family we belong to. It’s really all about Jesus and giving Him all the glory!
This is an excerpt from the book, On Mission Volume 2. Download your free copy today.