PRAYER LETTER NO.39.

www.greatlakesoutreach.org

Dear Tigers, 29th September

These are potentially incredible times for Burundi! The new President is very clear in all his dealings that he is a follower of Jesus. I heard through a friend of his wife that he gets up at 4am to pray and read the Bible before starting on his day. He has set aside three hours every Monday morning to meet with church leaders for advice and prayer. So for all those years during the war that people were prophesying we would get a Christian president, I struggled to believe it, and yet here he is – O me of little faith! It is far better at this stage than any scenario we could have dreamed up. Praise the Lord! There are still horrific problems, of course, so this is no time for complacency. Please keep praying for the President (Peter Nkurunziza), that he would stay humble, uncorrupted, and alive.



I have been back a week by myself, having left Lizzie in England until the birth of little Bilbo Gilbo in December. They both seem in great shape, growing more pronounced by the day. This separation is not ideal, and of course I miss them. But being on my own has been very different from what I expected.



I hesitate to share the following, at the risk of sounding super-spiritual. But I haven’t experienced such intimacy with God since I first came out here seven years ago. Back then I was twenty five, had left everything and arrived in this crazy country having been robbed of most of my money. Miscommunication and confusion meant my role was unclear. I knew virtually nobody, was relatively clueless, and yet it was an incredible time of dependence on the Lord, who answered my urgent prayers with extraordinary interventions. I remember being so full of the joy of the Holy Spirit that people would laugh at me because I was overflowing with Him. I would go into my room and feel totally overcome. I would sing for joy and feel like I was going to explode. You see, I was being forced to depend on Him. I was desperate, weak, and vulnerable. In my helplessness, I trusted Him to prove His faithfulness. In my weakness, I knew he would show His strength. I had taken some big risks, and He indeed proved faithful all the way. This was the adventure of living I knew I was created for. It was an amazing season in my life. I have often harkened back to those precious times…



However, as with all pilgrimages, there are mountain top experiences followed by valleys, and lush pastures followed by arid deserts. The last seven years have been undeniably fruitful and exciting. But preaching a hundred times a year has sometimes left me stale and sapped of spiritual vigour.



Now this week I have had a new visitation. It has been an amazing time. I only write a little about it, because maybe there is something we can learn from each other’s journeys.



As I said goodbye to Lizzie and her parents at the airport, my dearest Mum was being cut open to have her gall bladder and a cancerous growth in her colon removed. It was a bad time to leave. I had loads of excess luggage, and could have been fined a few hundred pounds, but we prayed and the lady at the counter let me off the hook. I had a long conversation with a lovely Hindu on the plane, who said that he preferred Christianity to Hinduism! I shared the gospel with him, and he said he wanted forgiveness of sins and assurance of heaven through Jesus – but was not quite ready. I gave him my details and hopefully will hear from him. Arriving in Burundi, we got the massive cardboard box with twenty wedding dresses (to start up an income-generating rental service to raise money for our evangelistic work) through customs without being stopped. They could have stung us for a whole load more money. Thank you Lord. Then I was dropped off on my own at our house. From my diary the next day:



“I’ve got the good old runs straightaway - readjusting to the different foods, I guess! I went round to visit all the neighbours, and it was nice to see them again. I am reading this book on Praying Hyde*, and it is so challenging. As I tried to emulate him by letting rip in prayer for ages on my bed in the dark, it suddenly struck me that these two months will probably be my quietest for the next several decades! So instead of bemoaning my loneliness, this could be the most fabulous time of nurturing intimacy with the Lord by spending as much time with Him as possible. Let’s be positive! I am rubbish in general with my own company, but loved the chance tonight to pray so undisturbed - not something I really did much over the last few months of hecticness in England. So Lord, I give you this time, I surrender my life afresh, have your way, do whatever you want with me. What a great privilege it is to be a child of the King!”



Since then I have been up praying at 6am each morning, and then have been free most evenings from 7pm onwards to spend hours praying, belting out songs of praise and adoration with the guitar, seeking His face, and interceding for the lost. It has blown me away. From my diary yesterday morning:



“Fasting day. I feel caught up in an extraordinary state at the moment, somewhat a mountain top experience. It surely has to do with the fact that I am spending so much time in the Lord’s presence – what a numbskull I am and how slow to learn the fact that intimacy, which we all crave, can only be attained and sustained through disciplined commitment and time given to Him. We want effortless intimacy, but it just doesn’t happen that way.



So I was up at the crack of dawn, and jumped out of bed with a ‘Good morning, Jesus!’ I am still full of gratitude that Mum’s cancer op has been declared a success. I prayed passionately, sang, read the Bible and then started preparing a sermon to preach at Sunday’s International Fellowship. I wanted to make notes on the computer, but it seemed like it had fused with the latest power cut. The power wouldn’t go on, although everything else electrical was working. I prayed over the computer, and went off to start searching the Scriptures for the right message. I came back to find it working! And then the sermon just flowed as never before. The Lord was being so clear, the ideas and structure flowed so easily. Truly preparation of the messenger is as important as the preparation of the message.



God knows how long this season of extraordinary intimacy will last, but in any case I want to maximize it. Keep the discipline, Simon, and guard the time spent in His presence. Don’t let business crowd Him out. It is so obvious, and we all know prayer is of paramount importance, but Satan will do anything to distract us from what renders him powerless. I remember someone once asking me: ‘How much do you want of God?’ Because ‘nobody has less of God than they want.’ Keep me hungry and thirsty for more of you, dear Lord!”



I’ll stop there. May it be an encouragement for us all to put first things first - with prayer underpinning everything - which for some of us may mean re-prioritising aspects of our lives.



There’s plenty to pray about - here’s to Quality Time with the King!



Simon Guillebaud



PS Let me mention Elihud, a dear friend out here who is shaking the kingdom of darkness. We spent this afternoon together. He is a key national evangelist who has impacted thousands of lives. He was working at the United Nations and earning $500/month (a good wage in Burundi), but knew that was not the call of God on his life, so quit his job to live by faith. He told me of how he’d just been upcountry and his team went from house to house, and people brought out their idols to burn them and receive Christ instead; and a man heard him on his radio program say that God can heal any disease. This man had spent $21,000 on medical fees abroad, and so contacted Elihud as a last resort. He received Christ in desperation, was prayed for, and is now totally healed! Elihud and his wife Jeanine are only eating at night time as they cannot afford any more, preferring first and foremost to feed their baby daughters Grace and Divine. I can only hope that I would be willing to go through what they have gone through for my faith if put in their position, and so I long to honour such committed servants of God – anyone out there want to help?



* BIG RECOMMENDATION – Get hold of Praying Hyde – Apostle of Prayer, ed. by E.G.Carré