Kurt Simms, Master Electrician, Crosby, Texas
September 2012
Dori is 3.5 hours northeast of the capital of Ouagadougou
Kurt’s Report
“I would like to summarize the 2 weeks of ministry that we had in Burkina Faso. We arrived in Ouagadougou late in the evening on Sunday, September 16. We were greeted by American missionary Steve Parker and our host Gaston Gnoumou. Getting past immigration was a breeze for Gaston at one time was a member of the president’s cabinet. He has diplomat status. While in Ouagadougou we were housed in a Assembly of God complex in a small guest house. We had all of our meals there and had a cook.
For the next few days we met with pastors, leaders, and with officials in Ouagadougou, and then we left for Dori, approximately 150 miles away. We were housed in the private home of a church member who was out of town while we were in Dori. We were there for 5 days. While in Dori we met with the Mayor in his office, and also with the Governor and his staff. The Governor is a Christian and he spoke with us and thanked us for our service to Dori and God’s Kingdom. We were asked to pray for Dori, the Governor, and his staff and this was all televised by a local Christian TV station “Impact TV”.
We kicked off the Elijah Challenge Training the following morning at a Baptist Church. This training consisted of pastors of different denominations and was sponsored by the Federation of Evangelical Churches and Missions. By lunch time, we had a demonstration of healing. Knees were healed, a man who had pain all over his body was healed, and another man had pain in his head and he felt something leave his head.
We resumed after lunch and were greeted by believers singing and dancing and praising the Lord in an African tribal style. We continued with the teaching until the late afternoon. We had more demonstrations of healing. There was a woman who had traveled from many miles away and heard about our training. She had become deaf in both ears. We ministered to her and her hearing was restored. Lung conditions were healed, stomach pains healed, backs healed, eyesight was restored.”
Evangelistic healing service in the evening
“We had planned on teaching an evening session but we were surprised to find out that I would be preaching at an evangelistic service that evening. There were a total of three evening open-air evangelistic healing services. Approximately 3,500 people attended on those three nights. The pastors and disciples who were trained applied what they learned from the Elijah Challenge training by going door to door covering the town of Dori which they had divided into six sections. They healed the sick, cast out the demons and preached the Kingdom of God effectively.
At the evening services many Muslims attended since it was a special time where many Muslims traveled to Dori. Each evening I would preach a different message revealing their sins before God, followed by telling the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and confirming through miraculous healings that there was only one way to God through his son Jesus Christ. Each evening we would call the sick to come forward and to line up one on one with the disciples. The disciples healed the sick and cast out demons while we commanded from the podium.”
As in the time of the Lord Jesus
“There was such a multitude of people in need of healing that they were rushing the pulpit. As they reached out to touch me they were healed. There were literally hundreds and hundreds healed, some of them traveling over 375 miles to come to the evangelistic healing service expecting to be healed. It had been advertised locally, but word had traveled. There were approx 300 people that were born again over our time in Dori. There was such a multitude of people healed and set free from demons that we could not keep track of it all. There were too many to list in this report.”
Return to the capital Ouagadougou
After the time in Dori, we returned to Ouagadougou and taught the Elijah Challenge for two morning sessions and one evening at the Assembly of God central church. During the week there were several speakers for it was an evangelism conference. During the training we had at the end of each session demonstrations of healing and deliverance.
Many different types of healings took place but the miracles were more difficult to perform. The mountains were harder to move for this was a church setting not an evangelistic setting. In the end disciples were equipped and were successful in healing the sick and casting out demons. But there was a huge contrast between the church setting and the evangelistic setting in Dori.
We give all praise to The Lord Jesus Christ for the work we were able to do in equipping the saints and planting the seed of the gospel! I would like to end this with a very profound statement by Steve Parker:
“You can count the seeds in an apple but you can’t count the amount of apples the seeds produce.”
The Governor’s wife healed
Kurt and Mary were introduced to government officials, including the Governor whose wife was infirm. As they ministered to her, the Lord healed her miraculously. And they experienced so much more.
Introducing Gaston, Kurt’s host in Burkina Faso
Name: GNOUMOU Kani Gaston Age: born by 1949 (exact date not known)
A deacon in the Central Church, Assemblies of God, OUAGADOUGOU
Director General of Ecole Supérieure des Travaux publics de Ouagadougou (training engineers in construction, a company owned by a group of 20 christians from different denominations)
Vice President of AMCF (Association of military Christian Fellowships), in charge of the Francophone nations in Africa from 1997 to October 23TH, 2012.
A retired colonel (engineer corps) from Burkina Faso Armed Forces
A Former minister of Public Works, transports and Urbanism in the Government of the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).
MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY AND VISION
I was born and educated according to our traditional animist beliefs. I turned to be a roman catholic and was baptized in 1965. There I walked as a formal Christian from untill February 1989 when my wife and I together accepted Jesus as our Savior and personal Lord. It was in a supernatural way, as nobody invited us to church or brought us the Gospel in any way. I was in a Hotel in Houston (USA) and Eléonore in Ouagadougou when one night we took the most important decision in our lives. We were followed by our three children, our servant and the watcher, later by more than twenty people among my relatives and some other people on my wife’s side. I was baptized in the Holy Spirit on my bed at home one Saturday morning in May 1989; Two days after my conversion I become a member of the Scripture Union fellowship; a week later I was a member of the Gideon’s. Three weeks later I joined the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, and for practical reasons left the former two ministries to stay with the FGBMFI. A year after I was national chairman, remaining at the post for more than fifteen years when I decided to hand.
As a matter of fact I was appointed a deacon in our church in 1992, AMCF francophone vice- President in 1997, and national President for the Haggai Institute alumni’s fellowship in Burkina. I use to witness many conversions and miracles in my house, in office and in my activities. I also have had a rich experience of collaboration with other churches and denominations around the world, meeting some of the most anointed ministers in the world. I became more and more sensitive to the fundamental concept of the body of Christ and at the same time very much conscious and anxious as well about how much rapidly the Lord has adopted me and promoted me in His church. I was also very much aware of the fact that such blessings implicate relevant contribution to the Lord’s Kingdom on my side.
In 2000 I decided to look back to the times the American missionaries arrived in our country (1st January 1921), then a far away French colony in West Africa, and try to study how they were able to spread the Gospel so fast, despite numerous difficulties on culture, language, politics. The final aim was to see how this could help our days’ church. I met some surviving witnesses of the period. Rapidly I knew I had to consider not only the number of converts and churches but the impact on the global evolution of our country. In 2003 I wrote l’Annuaire des Eglises et Missions évangéliques, in 2008 le Répertoire évangélique and in 2010 Cinquante ans de Développement au Nom du Christ. They are kinds of diaries trying to identify any local church, any hospital, school or project owned by an evangelical church in Burkina Faso. Most of the work was done by myself on my own expense. The inadequacy of means resulted into some evident insufficiencies. I tried to catch interest from Christians and church institutions but their commitment was short of my expectation. Nevertheless these booklets has remained precious sources of information on the body of Christ in Burkina Faso.
But in my heard things were getting clearer; what is needed at the end is a true spiritual map of the country to help evangelize effectively, bringing the Gospel where it has not reached. Combined with the fundamental idea of the body of Christ the idea of the map goes with the concept of national evangelization, that means bringing different churches and ministries in a country to work together with the vision of reaching any ethnic group, any village with the Gospel. I create the Christian Resource Center for Africa (CRC) in May 2011.
I feel it is time for me to resign any other activity and commit myself fully with the ministry of the spiritual map and national evangelization, as the Lord provides along with resource, and intensification of the vision. From April 20th-30 th, to start we held an evangelization campaign in Banwa, an administrative zone about 300 km far from Ouagadougou. The result was 3601 individuals who heard the Gospel and 498 gave their lives to Jesus.
The involvement of The Elijah Challenge
From September 19TH-23rd, with the help of evangelist Kurt SIMMS, a co-worker of the Elijah Challenge ministry in Texas, USA, we had another campaign in Dori, the most Islamized zone in the north of Burkina Faso. The Gospel could be announced to 3696 individuals and 236 persons gave their lives to Jesus. There was also a training session on divine healing and many healings such as deaf speaking or blind seeing. After the campaign in Dori we had a Missionary Convention in Ouagadougou and another seminar on divine healing by Kurt.
2012 is considered a test as our plan of the National Evangelization and spiritual Map will run from 2013 to 2018. To close the year 2012, our project is to be able to organize a door to door evangelization in Koudougou, where Burkina Faso Government will celebrate national Independence Day on December 11 th.
The biggest challenges we face are:
1. Bringing the churches to work together;
2. To be able to keep the new converts and help small cells to grow in order to become self-sufficient churches:
3. The resources necessary for the work.
CONCLUSION
We praise the Lord for the vision He gave us and the very encouraging results in 2012. To go on with the work we permanently need God’s wisdom, guidance, protection and provision. We also need faithful men and women to obey His voice and support us in prayer, with equipment and finance.
As the eyes of slaves look to the hands of their master, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he shows us his mercy. ( ps. 123.2, NIV).
Ouagadougou, October 28th, 2012
Gaston K. GNOUMOU