EXPLORE
LESSON LEARNED
BURKINA FASO: LESSON LEARNED IN PEILA
“GOD WHERE ARE YOU?”
Joel and Heidi Hayslip are missionary leaders to Africa having served many years as National Directors in Burkina Faso. In 2004, they launched evangelistic Kids Clubs to reach the next generation of Burkinabe and the Give a Kid a Christmas project using small gifts to bless the children and share the gospel in schools and villages across the nation.
After the first five years of investing in both Give a Kid a Christmas and Kids Club, they realized that over 20,000 children had received gifts and heard the gospel and they had trained close to 100 volunteers serving in three different regions of the country on how to do Kids Clubs. They are amazing evangelistic tools that enable the gospel to get into even the most difficult of places. They have been able to tangibly see the lives of children being transformed by the love of Jesus and then their whole families being affected as a result.
Today, they have trained and empowered hundreds of workers to use these same tools to continue spreading the gospel throughout Burkina Faso. Below Joel shares one lessoned learned along the way.
"We had 2,000 shoe boxes that we were gonna take to this large village of Piela. And literally every single child in this village was going to be receiving one of our gifts. We had a large team at this point. We had a lot of drama and skits that we were gonna do. And so we had a three car convoy going up to Piela. Long story short, by the time we got there, there was only one car still working. And that car didn't have brakes. Joseph was driving the 'old blue' as we call it, and when he had to stop, he would just have to go around in circles until the car would slow down enough to where it would stop. But we got there, we were still encouraged. Hey, we're gonna make this happen!
We would go from school to school handing out the gifts and at this point we wouldn't share about Jesus at the schools. We would just do what we call Do-Do and Tu-Tu, which is this really fun skit with these big masks where we share about basic hygiene and encourage the kids to kind of take care of their bodies, brush their teeth, watch out for mosquitoes, that kind of thing and have a lot of fun with the kids and then we would invite them to a big outreach in the evening.
After going to three or four schools, it was time for the big evening outreach and so we set up all of our equipment and the kids started to pour in. We had five, six hundred kids, and then we had seven, eight hundred kids, and we were just playing with them, having fun, doing games and little silly skits and some music and singing. That kind of thing. Just to draw the people in.
We would go from school to school handing out the gifts and at this point we wouldn't share about Jesus at the schools. We would just do what we call Do-Do and Tu-Tu, which is this really fun skit with these big masks where we share about basic hygiene and encourage the kids to kind of take care of their bodies, brush their teeth, watch out for mosquitoes, that kind of thing and have a lot of fun with the kids and then we would invite them to a big outreach in the evening.
After going to three or four schools, it was time for the big evening outreach and so we set up all of our equipment and the kids started to pour in. We had five, six hundred kids, and then we had seven, eight hundred kids, and we were just playing with them, having fun, doing games and little silly skits and some music and singing. That kind of thing. Just to draw the people in.
Then all of a sudden, it was time to share the most important message of all. The message of the gospel! And so we did the introduction, just preparing them, and then we started the music for our big drama presentation. And the very minute that the narration was supposed to start, and the drama was supposed to begin, the speakers went out. The power to the speakers just went completely out. The lights were still on. The crowd was still there. We were ready to go, but we had no speakers.
Everybody started to look at me. Joel, what are we gonna do? Joel, what are we gonna do? I went and looked at all of our attachments. Is it this cord? Is it that cord? We changed the cords out and put it in our back-up speakers, put in a backup generator. Maybe it was this, maybe it was that. We tried everything we could, and nothing worked. We were dead in the water. We had a thousand people waiting to hear the gospel. They all wanted to know why we came to Piela. Why did we get this gift? But we had no way of telling them.
As the team was just kind of looking at me, expecting me as the leader to come up with a solution, I just shrunk back so discouraged. I looked out there and I thought, you know, we're here, the gifts are here. We're ready. The people are here to hear but God, where are you? I began to look back over the course of the year, the preparations to getting to that point. And I began to realize this wasn't spirit-led. This was us developing a strategy, putting decisions together, finding the next best step to get to where we are. God hadn't led us there. It wasn't a spirit-led moment. It was a strategy-led moment and I realized that God wasn't being glorified. At least it felt that way.
We had to resort to Joseph speaking at the top of his voice and the rest of the team spread out throughout the huge crowd, repeating what he said in our loudest voices to attempt for everyone to hear the message. It worked out but there was no power behind it and I just realized in that moment that after all these years of doing so many outreaches, I'd let it become mechanical. Doing the same thing over and over again. I knew what I was doing and I could make the right decisions. We had stopped really seeking God for these decisions and God used that moment to really draw me back into remembering to seek His presence, to really desire for His presence to be tangible in these moments. That it's not just about the message but it's about the person and these children need to encounter God. Not just hear the message. Not just get a gift, but really experience the presence of God."
We had to resort to Joseph speaking at the top of his voice and the rest of the team spread out throughout the huge crowd, repeating what he said in our loudest voices to attempt for everyone to hear the message. It worked out but there was no power behind it and I just realized in that moment that after all these years of doing so many outreaches, I'd let it become mechanical. Doing the same thing over and over again. I knew what I was doing and I could make the right decisions. We had stopped really seeking God for these decisions and God used that moment to really draw me back into remembering to seek His presence, to really desire for His presence to be tangible in these moments. That it's not just about the message but it's about the person and these children need to encounter God. Not just hear the message. Not just get a gift, but really experience the presence of God."
PROVERBS 3:6-7
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and depart from evil.
