Martine: “My heart started feeling untired”
Martine is from the village of Silgadji in northern Burkina Faso. On April 28, 2019 armed men stormed the church as the service was concluding. The congregation had just finished listening to an impassioned sermon by their pastor, Martine’s adoptive father, on loving each other.
She remembers it like it was yesterday.
“When we prayed and left the church, some minutes later, not more than ten minutes, we realized, that we were surrounded…”
Martine will never forget the terrifying sight of these attackers. They were not locals. “They had belts with bullets hanging over their bodies and when they walked, we could hear the noise (shank, shank, shank).”
Some people had already exited the church and were standing outside chatting to one another. The attackers gathered everyone into the building.
“They took the Bibles, the wooden pulpit and threw everything together and burned it all. And they made all those who were in the church walk out and stand near the big tree in front of the church…
“They told the men to follow them. And they took them behind the church. They made them to lie on the ground to shoot them.”
The rest of the congregation didn’t see it happen, but they heard the horrible noise of the gunshots. The pastor, and 5 church members*, including two of the pastor’s sons, were dead – Martine lost her father, husband, brother, and brother-in-law.
Incomprehensible
What is hard for Martine to understand is why these things were happening when they had such good relationships with their Muslim neighbours.
“There was good understanding between the Muslims and Christians in our village. There were no problems between us. Even when the things happened, the Muslims were not happy. Muslims and we loved each other. Muslims sometimes came to our pastor to talk about what is happening in the country. Some of them said that Christians and Muslims should flee. But my father said that if it is because of the name of Jesus that people want him to flee, he will never flee this village. Even it would mean death, he would die for the name of Jesus. He would not be afraid of what can only kill the body but not the soul.”
So, even though Martine is sad about the loss of her father, she knows if he had the choice to go through it again, he probably would. “He used to say while pointing his finger to the ground, ‘If I have to die for the name of Jesus Christ, you can bury me here. And nobody should cry for me then. Because it is for the name of Christ that I accepted death.’”
Trusting God
As Martine was forced to leave the area, she remembers thinking: “I want those who did this awful thing not to die without knowing Jesus Christ.”
She had no idea what the future held for her. And she had no words even to pray. “I wanted to open my mouth to speak to God, or to ask God why, why, why, …” but all that came out were groans.
Yet, she has decided to trust God’s purposes. “If a person knows Jesus Christ, knows Jesus Christ, you have to leave your problem in the hands of Jesus Christ. And follow Him. Then He will lead you. Otherwise.”
“So, (I said to God), now it is your time O God, that’s why You allowed them to die. I leave the problem in the hands of God.”
“I told the Lord: ‘From now on it is You who will take care of my life day and night. I have no one else to whom I can carry my problems to, except You. As You allowed this thing to happen. Lord, I am counting upon You. And it is You who will take care of me. I will not go neither to the right and nor to the left. When something is about to trouble me, or when a thought troubled me, I used to say, ‘Jesus, remember the prayer that I made to You. I will not deviate neither to the right, nor to the left. It is only to You that I lift my eyes. My hope is only on Your cross.”
Provision
Through the generosity of supporters around the world, Open Doors has been able to deliver much needed emergency relief to displaced Christians like Martine. At least 2,100 families benefitted from the emergency food relief (consisting of rice, maize, beans, cooking oil) to help them bear the burden for a few months at least, in several locations.
Martine and 87 other women widowed in similar ways have also benefited from trauma care. “The trauma care training has helped me. I have rediscovered joy through the teaching. I got peace of heart, through the teaching. The teaching that you gave me has renewed my life. And it has renewed my strength.
“I say, thank you for the fact that you thought about us. As widows and pitiful people. You also did not forget that our hearts have been hurt. You came to help us, so that we may have strength again. And our bodies may recover so that our lives may be better.
“Really, the teaching has given me strength. Since the first day when they started teaching about how a human being who has his heart hurt behaves, and how these wounds can be healed. And if a body is wounded, how it can also be healed. When the teacher started explaining these things, it was at that time that my heart started being untired. Getting healed, and joy started coming in.”
“I say thank you to all those who sat and decided to take care of those who got these kinds of problems. May God bless you and renew your strength. May the vision you had, and that God gave you to do, may God accompany you and give you strength to fulfil it. May you never regret the work you are doing. May God bless you. May God expand your work. In the name of Jesus.”
Martine and other widows work together to process their trauma.
Prayer
“Please keep on praying for us so that the teaching that we got may diminish our hearts’ burdens and heal our wounds. That it may strengthen us.
“And I also ask to pray for our faith to be strong. Because when your husband is not there, many things can happen. We want to remain in Christ. Deviate not to the right nor to the left. May they pray for us so that we may have victory in our faith fight.
“We also ask you to pray for our nation so that peace may be back in Burkina Faso.”
