The group helped dig for three days.

Yesterday, we saw Modou walking by our house. We hadn’t seen him in a long time, so my husband Corey rushed across the street to greet him and ask how he and his family and others in his village were doing. Before they parted ways, Corey told Modou that he still prays for him every day.

Seeing him brought back a flood of memories and stirred up some strong emotions. In 2003 someone from Modou’s village heard about our SIM team and asked if we would come work in their village. In this rural area of Senegal the Lord has opened many Wolof villages to our team in this way.

Out of four and a half million Wolof people, less than 100 Christians are scattered around the country. Missionaries have initiated many aid and development projects to minister to the serious physical needs of the people, while at the same time sowing the seeds of God’s Word. Over the last 25 years the Lord has used their hard work and words of truth to open doors to the Gospel.

New to the Kaffrine team, our family had the opportunity to respond to the invitation of Modou’s 100% Muslim Wolof village, where the Good News had never before been preached. We visited them regularly, and eventually Corey invited everyone to come hear the chronological Bible stories in Wolof. (Because the wisdom of the people is handed down in oral stories, Bible “storying” has become popular. Storying makes use of 52 stories from the Bible to take listeners from Creation, through the Old Testament prophets, to the work of Jesus and his death and resurrection.) A good-sized group of adults came every week to listen to the story, and over time we grew to know each other well.

A simple turn of the wrist

We rejoiced when Modou confessed faith in Jesus and was eventually baptized. After a while, I started a storying group for the children and grandchildren of the adults in Corey’s group. Modou experienced increasing pressure from others in the village, even his own family, to turn his back on his new faith. No one else was willing to become a disciple of Jesus, although they continued to welcome us warmly and even come to the storying group.

As we spent more time with the villagers, we saw that one of their constant struggles was getting water. Their only water source was a 100-foot-deep well. Three women at a time pulled the rope up several times in order to fill one plastic tub. Then one woman would carry the tub of water on her head to her hut. Because each household’s daily need was a dozen tubs (for drinking, washing, and their animals), this laborious job took hours each day. The people told us of their great desire for a pump and storage tank. But, as we investigated prices, we discovered this was way beyond their reach.

	More than 30 people helped dig.

We talked with World Vision, and found that they were willing to pay for the pipes and materials needed to bring running water from a nearby village. All the villagers would need to do was dig the trench! But it was farming season, and the people were working long hours in their fields. They would need help to complete this giant task. Our SIM teammates sent out an appeal to Christians around Senegal, asking anyone who was willing to help dig to come. The response of the Christian community was beautiful: Senegalese believers from other towns and villages, Canadian and American missionaries, missionary kids from the school in the capital city; in all, more than 30 people came to help.

Working together with the villagers in the blazing hot sun, the group helped dig for three days. The Muslim prayer leader for the village, who had been very resistant to us at the beginning, gave a thank-you speech to the visiting group. He seemed to have had a genuine change of heart. After the piping was completed, it didn’t take long to set up the water faucet in the center of the village. That long-awaited day in 2007, when the water came rushing out with just a simple turn of the wrist, was a day of great joy!

Never give up

Meanwhile, the Gospel continued to be taught through the stories and teachings of the Bible. Other national Christians and SIM missionaries came to the village and shared their lives and their knowledge, both of the Scriptures and of community health and development.

Then Modou’s wife died, and since there were no Christians in the area for him to marry, he married a Muslim woman from Kaffrine with five children. Not long after, he succumbed to the temptation of the money he was managing for a village development project and found himself in jail. His brief marriage ended in divorce. But not before the five children of that wife had formed strong relationships with our teammates, who live near their home in Kaffrine.

Now Modou doesn’t allow his own children to attend our Christian children’s meetings and he is not walking with the Lord. But the teenage children of his second wife come regularly to our meetings, study the Bible, pray openly, and are talking about being baptized.

There are still no believers in Modou’s village. But the Good News was taught and demonstrated there by many Christians over more than five years. I don’t believe that our time in Modou’s village was wasted, or that his story is over. Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

I rejoice that teenagers from a broken home have discovered Christ. And every morning, when women from the village get water from the faucet, they can remember the Christians who helped bring that running water. They can also remember the message of God’s Word and the love they received. They may ponder the grace offered to a thief by the very people he stole from. Who knows how God will grow these seeds in years to come?

*Note: This article was originally published in Serving In Mission Together, issue 128.