“Light does not shine only in one direction.” Pastor Conrad Vine, AFM’s president, said this in October 2011 at the AFM African retreat. What great relief and encouragement this simple yet powerful and inspired statement brought to me.

Since our launch in November 2006 as AFM missionaries to the Dendi people of Benin, Elmire and I have done our best to keep to the “temporal restriction” of our evangelism commission, just like in Matthew 10:5-6 where our Lord instructed His disciples to focus their ministry: “Don’t go among the Gentiles, and don’t enter into any city of the Samaritans. Rather, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Though many of our early interests, such as a man from the south named Richard, were non-Dendi people with Christian and animist backgrounds, for four years we kept a laser focus on reaching out to the Dendi. Though we decided to broaden our efforts last year, we remained cautious about engaging prematurely with non-Dendi people. Yet, interested people continued to approach us, and we didn’t know exactly what to do about it. While our primary goal is to reach the Dendi, we didn’t want to turn away earnest non-Dendi seekers. We knew the time would come when it would be appropriate to broaden our focus, but we did not know when. When could we allow ourselves to minister to other people groups and not feel like we were short-changing the Dendi?

For me, hearing Pastor Vine’s statement that “light does not shine only in one direction” was crucial. This confirmed what Pastor Marc Coleman, our field director, had told us earlier. Yes, our first call is to the Dendi Muslim people of Benin, but like Jesus on His way to answer Jairus’ call to heal his daughter, when He healed the woman with the issue of blood, there are other sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father who need to hear the good news we have for them on our way to reaching the Dendi people. May God’s will be done.

Two days after we returned from camp meeting, Richard’s first child, Aaron, was born. We dedicated him in January 2012, the first child to be dedicated in the Dendi Project. And along with Richard, his wife Elois and his son Aaron, we have seven other non-Dendi families worshiping with us.

Thank you for your prayers and support.

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