First Fruits of the Harvest

Recently we spent a weekend visiting Ife (ee-fay) villages and churches that Jeff and Pastor Venance started 11 years ago. Our purpose was to encourage the work and our evangelist from Benin who is working among the Ife, and to link up with our brothers in the country of Togo who have already expanded their work among the Ife into Benin.

Rainy season had arrived in earnest. Jeff and I raced through the rain, squishy mud, and narrow spaces between the huts, until we came to one in which 15 people were already crammed. There the details were finalized for a working relationship between the evangelists from Benin and Togo, and a partnership of evangelism and church planting to win the Ife for Christ was formed.

Protocol demanded that we not leave the area without visiting the village elders who are Muslim men. Our evangelists from Benin and Togo sat together facing the two elders who warmly greeted us. Then the eldest reprimanded the Togolese pastor responsible for the work in the village, "When some of our Muslim men came and tore down the church you'd started here in the village center, you never came and spoke to us about it. You just took your work several miles away and started again. But we, the elders, were angry with these men for their act. We are a large village. We have other churches here and we want you here, too. What those men did to your church was wrong. You should have talked with us instead of turning away. We would have made things right. Come back, now, and plant your church among us." And with that reprimand, apology, and order, in an act of good faith, he gave $4 to the pastor. Commanded by a Muslim elder to start a church in his village - that is God at work!

The next day we made another long trek by car through what resembled a jungle in a remote part of northern Benin, and finally arrived at the village of Moretan in Togo. We made contact with the pastor of the Baptist church in Moretan who is heading the evangelistic thrust and church planting work from Togo into the Ife region of Benin. It was rewarding to see that this work, started several years ago, has solidified and expanded.

Praise God for calling out Christians from Benin and Togo to minister among the Ife people. Ask God to give these workers perseverance, strength, wisdom, and passion to continue the work.

Barbara and Jeff Singerman, Convention Team