Clean Water and Living Water – gifts that are changing Chaagbuni

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The village of Chaagbuni, Ash with Dokugiku, children who will benefit from clean water and the gospel in Chaagbuni, testing the new clean water, the Chaagbuni water project.

Dokugiku from Chaagbuni is a sub-chief in his village.  Years ago, he converted to Islam and brought Muslim teachers from Tamale to Chaagbuni to instruct the people and build a mosque.  His vision was that the whole village would become an observant Muslim community, but he was disappointed by the lack of care that Muslims from the city showed to Chaagbuni.

In 2011, Dokugiku took part in the water project celebration that we held in Komlanyili.  He was struck by the love that he saw in the lives of Christians, compared to the neglect they felt from outside Muslims.

However, he was also conflicted.  How could he credibly invite Christians to Chaagbuni after working so hard to establish Islam?

After talking with his chief, Dokugiku invited YLI-trained leaders to come and visit their village.  The leaders began to explain the gospel, teaching from the Bible, and soon there was a vigorous discussion throughout the village.

This year we completed the first phase of a water project in Chaagbuni.  At the dedication, a Muslim man asked publicly how they could allow their families to come and get water at “this Christian thing.”

Through a translator I explained to this man and the rest of the community that the clean water is a gift from God and that God loves all people: Christian, Muslim, and pagan alike.  Our desire is that all the people of Chaagbuni will benefit from the clean water and experience God’s love.

Through YLI trained leaders who have faithfully lived out the love of God, Dokugiku and others in Chaagbuni have received not just clean water, but salvation, and they are now on the journey of learning what it means to be disciples of Jesus.

YLI reaches Burkina Faso – Isaac disciples young village leaders

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YLI Coach Isaac Gyesaw has been with YLI since 2002. Ever since I met Isaac he has been discipling young people in Ghana’s more developed and Christianized city, Kumasi. Over the years he has met with numerous young leaders for discipleship and taught as many YLI conferences as anyone else in our ministry.  But the many small unreached ethnic groups in Ghana’s north have long been a burden on Isaac’s heart.

A man named Timothy from Paga, one of Ghana’s most northern towns, contacted Isaac earlier this year for help with five churches across the border in Burkina Faso that had collapsed after the evangelist who started the churches moved on.  Because of his YLI training, Isaac knew that the reason these small Christian communities were not surviving on their own, much less taking the gospel to other villages, was that discipleship never happened there.  No one had trained leaders in the communities.

The reasons were the familiar challenges that often prevent village leaders from being adequately trained: an uneducated, illiterate people with no resources and poor transportation.

Isaac began to travel the 14 hours to Paga to begin training Timothy and others who would then train and disciple others in these villages.

Unlike the typical paternalistic approach shown to village churches, Isaac has a vision that each of the five churches will have locally trained leaders who lead the churches into becoming beacons of Christ to the surrounding areas, rather than perpetual spiritual receivers dependent on outsiders.

In August, I traveled with Isaac and Timothy across the unmonitored border via dirt road to the village of Tangasogo, in Burkina Faso, to see for myself how discipleship is taking root in the area.  Although there is still much work to be done, young leaders from these Burkina villages have been identified and are being trained by Timothy and Isaac.

Please pray with us that these five churches will grow to maturity and become an active part of God’s work to spread his Kingdom to surrounding villages that desperately need to know the love of Christ.

YLI Trained Leaders – Elijah of Kintampo

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I met my friend Elijah in 2010 during YLI training in the town of Kintampo.  Over the following year I kept hearing reports from the coaches about this Elijah from Kintampo who was seeing amazing ministry as he lived out our teaching on love evangelism and deep discipleship.

Elijah is an auto mechanic and works alongside many Muslims who moved to Kintampo for economic reasons.  Elijah has had many of these Muslims and their families come to him secretly for prayer.

Elijah told me that some of the Muslims that have come to him secretly for prayer are now coming to know Jesus.  Elijah has started a church so new Muslim believers can worship in a safe place.

Elijah came to know Jesus for himself through an amazing set of circumstances.  As an older teen he had to move alone up to the northern city of Tamale to care for an uncle who had been falsely imprisoned.  His uncle instructed Elijah to appeal to their gods for his release by engaging in dark traditional sacrifices and idol worship.  During this time he fell into a deep depression and coped with heavy drinking.  Finally, he encountered some Catholics who welcomed him and introduced him to Jesus Christ.

After his uncle’s eventual release from prison, Elijah moved back to Kintampo and built his auto repair business.  Elijah also began to share the gospel with his family, and as a result, led his father to Christ.  Today, Elijah’s father hosts extended family gatherings for the purpose of introducing the rest of the family to Jesus.

Elijah has planted four churches using the teaching he received from YLI on intimacy with God, love evangelism and going deep in discipleship with a few.   He lives the gospel, ministering out of his own difficult testimony, so that others can know the hope they also have in Christ.

YLI Trained Leaders – Bossman and Samuel

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Almost a decade ago, Yeboah Bossman felt called by God to start a church in the midst of a community of northern immigrants who had moved south to his town of Sunyani to seek a better life.  The community, nicknamed “Angola,” was notorious for alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty and sexual promiscuity.

Bossman and his family moved into a single room of a small building that also housed a witch doctor in one adjacent room and squatters in another.  As he started his ministry, the persecution was intense, but eventually the witch doctor died, the building was razed, and he started building his church on the same site.

After going through YLI discipleship with our coach Naomi Awuni, Bossman began holding discipleship meetings that were open to everyone in the community.  A young man named Samuel attended regularly but usually showed up intoxicated or hung over..  Samuel always brought his drinking buddies with him.

Eventually, Samuel came to Christ and began to deal with his alcoholism.  When I met with Sam this year he had been sober for two years, but his young body is suffering the effects of alcohol and drug abuse.  We prayed with him for his physical healing and that God will give him strength to follow his desire to minister to others in his community.

Like Jesus, Yeboah Bossman and his family embraced abject poverty in order to reach a group of sinful, broken and hurting people.  And God is blessing them richly.  Though their living situation is startling, their joy is uncontainable.  They need your prayers!

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Abukari from Komlanyili – from defender to disciple

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I wasn’t introduced to Abukari the first time I visited Komlanyili, but I couldn’t help noticing him. His imposing presence stood between us and the children of the village. His protectiveness was understandable–as far as I know, we were the first non-Africans to visit their village.

Komlanyili’s chief had invited us to come after seeing the impact the gospel was making in the neighboring village of Kpenchila.  YLI coach Adam Brown spent four months explaining the gospel in Komlanyili, and God provided the funds through my church for a water project (Komlanyili had the most repulsive source of water I have seen to this day).  After the completion of the water project, the new Christians in Komlanyili began to meet for worship under the water project’s shed.

Abukari did not attend the church in those early days, but his wife was one of the first to become a Christian and was being trained as a leader of the church.

On my second trip to the village, I saw Abukari with the Christians, but not his wife. I was told that Abukari’s wife had suddenly gotten sick and died. Abukari stood there in the church, somehow less imposing in his suffering, with a new tenderness in his eyes. I learned that through the death of his wife, he had come to Christ.

By my third visit, Abukari had ascended into a natural leadership role. It was an amazing transformation to see this tall, stern defender of his village becoming a disciple of Jesus and a leader. Counter to tradition for men in his culture, he stooped to kneel and serve the children with us. The love of God was clearly at work in his life.

Today, my friend Abukari is being trained for leadership by Mumuny and Baku from Kpenchila.  He is still very young in the faith and has many needs, as do all of the people in Komlanyili.  Please pray for him and all of our leaders in northern Ghana who are taking the gospel to unreached people.

A YLI trained Timothy grows into a paul

For Isaac to travel from Kumasi to Navrongo, he must commit to a long journey by bus that takes as long as it takes me to travel to Ghana—except he doesn’t have the luxuries of air-conditioning, movies, or airline cuisine. Relatively speaking, it costs more for Isaac to travel to Navrongo than for me to travel to Ghana. He also has to leave his young family for two weeks, as I often do. He too must travel to a different culture with a different language.But Isaac takes 2 Timothy 2:2 seriously, and he has a burden to entrust the good news that he has learned from YLI to others who will be faithful to pass it on.

Over the last ten years, I have watched this young “Timothy” named Isaac Gyesaw gradually mature into a Paul-like figure. Today, Isaac invests himself in other young leaders, especially a young man in another corner of Ghana whose name actually is Timothy. Isaac is an example of how training and empowering a young businessman, who has a heart for God and love for lost people, can lead to spiritual multiplication and fruitful Kingdom growth.

Isaac works in the shipping business of Ghana’s cocoa industry, which he balances with rural evangelism and disciple-making in villages. This year, the cocoa harvest has been weaker, and Isaac has had less work. With his free time, he raised funds to journey to Navrongo in Ghana’s northern region to visit Timothy.

This spring, I placed a phone call to Isaac. He told me that he was not at his home in Kumasi, but 12 hours north in Navrongo, walking along a hot dirt road doing village ministry with Timothy. A few weeks later, on my second trip to Ghana this year, I visited Isaac. As we sat together and talked, Isaac told me amazing stories of how God used them in northern Ghana and across the border in the neighboring country of Burkina Faso.

Isaac spent his first few days in Navrongo teaching 16 young leaders, through a translator, YLI’s material on listening to God, love evangelism, and going deep in discipleship. Then he shared some biblical principles of cross-cultural discipleship that I taught him last year.

After the training time, he and the 16 leaders traveled village to village on motorcycle and by foot, practicing the things he had taught them. In a village called Nadere, two people accepted Christ. In the town of Po, an idol worshiper asked Isaac to pray with him to accept Christ. He then asked Isaac to burn his idols. Isaac, showing some cultural wisdom, delegated this leadership act to the local pastor who would be discipling the man. In Kaya, others gave their lives to Christ and ten more reaffirmed their faith in Christ. In a village across the border of the country Burkina Faso, a woman who is one of 14 wives of a man from the royal chief’s family came to Isaac for prayer and counseling. Isaac and his team also visited four additional communities to encourage disciples and give clothes and supplies to local churches.

As we sat together in Kumasi, Isaac spoke with excitement about the movement of the gospel taking hold in these villages, and of the leaders who are passionate but need much more training and assistance. This month he is traveling again to Navrongo, this time with three other YLI coaches to identify and train additional leaders.

It takes time, but through love, mentoring, and training, young Timothys like Isaac will grow to become Pauls in their world. Let’s celebrate together as we witness YLI’s vision bear fruit—as new movements of the gospel are carried through young leaders like Isaac into a world that desperately needs Jesus.

 

Empowering Leaders Through Basketball and Love

Because Vincent dedicated two years to training his coaches and lovingly pouring his life into them, the coaches are ready to replicate the basketball ministry in other areas of Kumasi.
Vincent surveys basketball drills

Vincent Asamoah, YLI’s national coordinator in Ghana, started a basketball outreach in Kumasi in 2009. For almost two years, there were no kids in the program. No explosive growth. No crowds gathering around a charismatic leader. This was on purpose. Vincent patiently
dedicated those two years to improving his basketball court and training a small group of young adults to be coaches and “love evangelists” to the children. He knew that this small group of coaches was going to spend hours upon hours with the children and needed to be trained not just in this fun new sport called basketball, but also for disciplemaking.

Last fall, Vincent finally held his first basketball camp for children. Eight months later in the spring, Barry Sutlive and I, along with two Atlanta-based Fellowship of Christian Athletes staff, got our first opportunity to see the basketball ministry in action. I couldn’t wait o see how Vincent’s deep investment in the coaches was paying off.

We spent about half of our day at the court, and throughout the morning
four of Vincent’s coaches ran the basketball camp. Vincent walked
around to greet and encourage the kids, and he led short Bible studies
during game breaks. He wasn’t directly involved in coaching the kids
in basketball. In fact, I didn’t see him even touch a basketball while
we were there. He has given away this “up front” role to the coaches.
Watching them was like seeing “little Vincents.” As they ran drills,
they encouraged and laughed with the kids and showed them kindness and
love. The kids were hearing about Jesus through Vincent’s Bible
studies and seeing Jesus lived out through the loving actions of the
coaches.

Over lunch, one of our American guests commented on how impressive
Vincent’s young adult coaches are and asked Vincent how he trained and
discipled them. Vincent mentioned just four things: “I invite them to
my house so we can eat together. Every month or so we hold an
all-night prayer meeting. Sometimes I take them down to the lake so we
can spend a day together. If they have a physical need I give what
little I have to help them.” This isn’t what we normally think of as
leadership development or discipleship methodology. Yet, does it not
sound like Jesus’ training of the twelve? Later that evening, the same
guest remarked that Vincent’s coaches would be the envy of any
international sports ministry and that the mark of YLI is clearly
visible on Vincent’s life and basketball ministry.

It isn’t important to Vincent that he be seen as the dynamic leader
around whom the ministry revolves. His heart is to elevate others and
to equip and empower younger leaders. Multiplication is a natural
byproduct of empowerment. Because Vincent dedicated two years to
training his coaches and lovingly pouring his life into them, each of
these coaches is ready to replicate the basketball ministry in other
areas of Kumasi.

Thanks for your support of YLI and our empowering of leaders like
Vincent so they can empower others. The Kingdom is growing in Ghana.

Coaching Conference: Empowering Young Leaders

Thanks for your patience. It’s been four days since I arrived in Ghana and this is my first update. Our Coaching Conference started as soon as I arrived at the Kumasi airport Friday night. Vincent, Naomi and Tettey were waiting for me at baggage claim.

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One thing I love about our people is the complete lack of stuffiness that can, at times (lets admit it), be found in gatherings of senior level leaders. YLI coaches are known for their fun which helps people relax and experience God’s love. A frequent inside joke among the coaches is how during our trainings, ministry people are sometimes offended with our laughing, games and relaxed atmosphere, but then usually loosen up and join the fun.

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Naomi, Isaac, Solomon, and Jonah

After coffee outside early the next morning we did some digging in the scriptures; examining together Paul's spiritual-father relationship with Timothy. Our conversation lasted around three hours and gradually focused in on the observation that Paul didn't just train Timothy, but empowered him. Through the relationship Timothy developed confidence, a sense of authority, responsibility for his own spiritual journey, and he internalized Paul's mission to spread the gospel as his own mission.

Knowing that Timothy was not just trained with the right skills and information, but empowered; Paul was at peace even though his life was like a carton of juice that was almost completely poured out.

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What can we all learn about empowering others from Paul?
1. Carefully select the right people for leadership positions (Acts 16:1-3)
2. Invite them on a journey and model what it means to work toward the goal/mission (Acts 16:1-3, 2 Tim 3:10-11)
3. Teach them to become spiritual self feeders (1Tim 4:6, 2 Tim 3:15-17)
4. Equip them culturally for the task (Acts 16:1-3)
5. Assign to them difficult tasks that will build confidence and reliance on God (1Tim 1:3-7)
6. Publicly affirm their gifts, abilities and value (Phi 2:22, 1 Corinth 4:17)
7. Let them know you expect they will be successful (1 Tim 4:6,15)
8. Remind them of their gifts, calling, and the reward. (1Tim 1:18, 4:10, 4:14, 6:20, 2 Tim 4:8)
9. Help them internalize the goal; make the mission their own. (1 Tim 6:11,2 Tim 2:1-3)
10. Communicate your love for them and how important the relationship is to you. They are not just employees or servants with a job to do, but people who are valued by God (2 Tim 1:2-4)

Sunset after the coaching conference taken from the porch we were meeting on

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Today’s trip to Ghana and Coaching Conference News

I’m flying to Ghana today for my 20th visit since 2006.  This first of five 2012 trips was happily delayed by the healthy birth of Timothy Zook on January 8th.  Carrie, Katie and John Mark are doing well which allows my heart to be at rest for the next twelve days.  They are so thankful for your prayer support while I’m gone!   Details of my trip are below.  Please use them as prayer points as you remember the YLI coaches, and me, during our time together.

With gratitude,

Ash

Info about the March trip and Coaching Conference

Coaching Conference
God has brought several new young Ghanaian leaders into our orbit, and our number of coaches is likely to soon increase by 50%-100%.  Growing even a small organization requires careful planning and a lot of prayer. We will be praying and doing some needed organizational planning together during the first few days of my trip (Mar 2-4).

Paul and Timothy Relationships
Discipleship can occur in peer friendships and through relationships with caring, older spiritual brothers or sisters.  But there is something especially powerful in a discipling friendship with a spiritual father or mother:  a “Paul”. This week I will be teaching on the Apostle Paul’s investment into Timothy’s life as a spiritual father, as he:
1. Selected Timothy for a task
2. Equipped him for effectiveness
3. Empowered him through challenging situations
4. Deployed him in ministry
5. Communicated to him the depth of their friendship.   

Chaagbuni

This is the chief of the village of Chaagbuni.  As a result of the relationship-building YLI Coach Adam Brown has done in the village, a Muslim group now gathers once a week to listen to Adam teach from the Bible over radio airwaves.  This is an incredible risk for them and speaks to the power of building loving friendships with people who are lost and hurting.  We plan on supporting this work with Adam by partnering to provide a clean water source for Chaagbuni later this spring.

10th Anniversary of YLI
It’s hard to believe that my first trip to Ghana was 10 years ago, but photos don’t lie!  This week Fran also told me how hard it is for her to believe that 10 years have gone by since she and Jim packed up three small boys and travelled to Ghana to begin YLI.  Four of the original coaches Jim recruited are still with us, and I know Jim would be proud of how they have grown as leaders who are reaching their world.  In losing it’s founder after just two years, YLI endured a hardship that would have been the end of many ministries.  But because of the power of spiritual multiplication, our vision for developing young leaders continues to grow and deepen.

Loss of James’ wife
James Tetteh is a leader we met in 2007 and had the pleasure of training over the three following years.  He’s a gentle, wise and loving leader who is impacting many young lives in his role as an educator.  In 2009, his wife suffered a stroke and gradually her health dimished until her passing this month.  We love James and have mourned with him through this difficult time.  Vincent and I will be visiting him in his home next week.  Your prayers will be a great encouragement to him.