My New Brother!

Wanted to share a little bit more with yall about my friend PaaPaa, who became a follower of Christ this week. This guy has brought so much joy into my heart, especially over the past few days, following his decision.

PaaPaa is a young teenage guy here in my village who started coming to my home to hear Bible stories about 6 months ago. I really enjoyed having him there. I could tell he was genuinely interested in the gospel. Unfortunately, PaaPaa started baking bread at night to sell to villagers and was unable to come by my home as regularly. So I asked him if it would be ok to come by his place instead. He said sure, and we started getting together to read Gods Word. It has been a really sweet time. It seemed as though PaaPaa really had a hunger to hear more.

Fast forward 6 months. It brings us to the Easter Conference. So as it started, I began praying that PaaPaa would come to know Christ if it was his time. Praise the Lord, God answered that prayer. On the third night of the conference, PaaPaa prayed to receive Christ. I saw him go forward, but was not sure why. Possibly to pray to receive Christ, but I thought, maybe it was for something else, maybe just wanting someone to pray for him. The conference was at a near by village so we had to walk down a long trail to get to our boat before leaving. We began to talk and he shared with me these words, “Me be teke Jezus”, which means: I took Jesus. He was telling me that he made the decision to follow Christ that night . I got really excited, gave him a dude hug (yea, there is such a thing) and told him that I could now call him my brother. PaaPaa made my night.

PaaPaa was at the conference every single night after that, all week long, and we had some good opportunities to talk more about his decision and what it means to be a believer in Christ. He really understood what he did!

I was even more excited to find out that he told his family, which I was wondering about. I ran into his dad and his dad told me that PaaPaa had told him about his decision. He didn’t seem thrilled, but he was not opposed to it either. Praise God for that! Many families in our village and along the river would be completely opposed to another family member coming to faith. I don’t think everyone who made decisions at the conference went home to share the news. Its sad, but it is a reality here. We hope that others would have the courage to share their decision as well.

The conference ended Friday and I was interested to see if PaaPaa would go to church with us on Sunday, and sure enough, he was right there ready to go. As we walked to the boat, tons of people were sort of giving him a hard time, asking him if he was going to church. PaaPaa responded with this: “Joe e taki tuu”, which means: You speak the truth, or you speak correctly. Basically, he was sayin, “Yep. Got it. Im goin to church.” I told him I was proud of him and his boldness. I told him not to be shy of his new relationship with the Lord. So we headed to church and when it was done, he asked if we were going back next week. I told him, most definitely and Id love for him to come.

And if that wasn’t enough, to top it all off, he went around with us today, as we began the follow up from the conference. We have the names of 175 people from 15 different villages who made some type of decision at the conference. Some decided to come forward to be prayed for and others came forward to pray to receive Christ. So our task now is to go and sit down with all those people that we can and look deeper into why they went forward for.

PaaPaa saw us with the list and told me to tell him when we wanted to start going around to talk with the villagers. He came with us!!! This new baby believer was already going out and wanting to start doing the Lords work. I was so pumped. As we finished today, his dad asked him what he was doing with us. And PaaPaa answered him honestly and told him that we were going to talk to people and pray with them. His dad answered by asking him if we went to pray for his mom. How cool. We did actually go and talk to her and got to pray for her and her health. Im hoping that others in his family would come to know Jesus as their Savior! God is so good.

Please continue to pray for me and PaaPaa’s relationship, but more importantly, for PaaPaas relationship with the Lord. Im so excited that I have a new brother and even more excited to see how God has been working on his heart.