Meet our Missionaries: Steve and Debbi Clouser
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
Steve and Debbie Clouser:
Our Missionsaries to Burkina Faso, Africa
Interview by Anson Reppermund
Q. Give some general background for those that arent familiar with you and your work i.e. where you’re from, your family, where you live there (and/or here)
A. We are Steve and Debbi Clouser, long-time members of DAC (since 1981!) and we live and minister in the sub-Saharan country of Burkina Faso. Steve is originally from York, PA and Debbi grew up in Burkina. We did our home service at DAC from 1981-83 (Steve was assistant pastor) and Daniel was born during that time. We have two other children. Sarah was born in Africa during our first term of service, and Elizabeth in Pittsburgh during our first home assignment
Q. What is your current “Mission/goal” and how is it going?
A. Burkina is a very exciting place to be right now. There is freedom of religion and people are VERY open to the Gospel. You can use almost any method to win people to Christ and it will probably win someone here. We are doing bush (primitive, rural) evangelism and teaching while living in the capital city and also planting a church here. It’s difficult because it requires trips into the bush, but we are seeing God at work in both places!
We were asked to work with a core group of 5 families to plant a church in the upper class neighborhood of Ouaga 2000. (Ouagadogu, the large, capital city) Our strategy is to use a Family Life Center to attract neighborhood youth and professionals through English classes, youth activities, and other social events. The youth, in particular, are extremely open and love to come to the Center for any kind of activity. Sunday, Feb. 1st, we held our first church service at the Center and we are now officially a church!
Q. Historically, what has happened in the country? Are you and Christianity accepted?
A. Islam has been steadily on the increase over the past few decades as Animism gradually declines. Christianity is growing quickly as well, however, and Christian schools in this country are so popular for their high quality that Muslims stand in line to get their children enrolled in them. The evangelical denominations here are working together at the present time to start an association of Christian schools as a strategy to stem the tide of Islam and win the souls of children for Christ when they are most impressionable. The track record of a couple of other African countries shows that, in another generation, this strategy will very likely succeed in halting Islam in its tracks.
People here are very acceptant of us, even though they aren’t all acceptant of our faith. When we lived in the Islamic village of Safané for 7 years we had a wonderful relationship with our Muslim neighbors and we are friends with them to this day.
Q. Can you cite for us a “feel-good” story?
A. There are lots of “feel good” stories from Burkina, as you know! I’ll just pick one-
Just a decade ago the Nounouma people group were unreached with the gospel. There were a couple of converts, but no Nounouma village had a church group. In the early 90’s Steve and a team of Dafing pastors went into a large town that was half Dafing and half Nounouma to preach the Gospel (their strategy being to launch an outreach from that town into the unreached Nounouma area). They stopped in the village chief’s courtyard when they arrived in the town to ask his permission to evangelize. The chief’s son said to them, “Now I know what my dream meant! I saw our courtyard full of Christians and thought that was a prediction that my mother-in-law (who came from a Christian family) was going to die. Today when I saw your white truck with “Protestant Mission” written on it parked in front of our courtyard, I knew what the dream meant. It predicted the coming of Christianity to our village.” Permission was granted and the men stayed in the home of a woman who was out of town so they would have a place to sleep during the 2 weeks of their evangelistic campaign. During the campaign the village was opened to the Gospel and Nounouma people began to come to Christ. In the years that followed, miracles of healing and deliverance from demons were common occurrences as Nounouma villages began to receive the Good News. Today there are 5 Nounouma villages with churches in them! There is one Nounouma pastor and the other 4 are pastored by Dafing and Bwa pastors. The Nounouma have a very strong fetish that everyone fears and many are amazed to see that some have abandoned animism and turned to the Jesus Road. All the glory goes to God!
An interesting side note to this story is that the woman whose home Steve and the pastors were staying in during the evangelism campaign turned out to be a sorceress. She came home from her trip and said that she could no longer call the spirits in that house because there was too much light in it! The light of the Gospel has penetrated the Nounouma people who for so long dwelt in darkness. What a joy to have a part in God’s plan.
Q. What does your typical day involve?
A. No two days are alike here, which makes life very interesting. Believe it or not, some of our time is spent doing mundane things like financial reports and e-mail. One consistent part of our days, though, is spending time with people. There are many visitors to our home and many days we are able to spend time talking, praying, and counseling with people. We also make visits to peoples’ homes ourselves. We spend time preparing for and teaching lessons, as well as preaching sermons. We do a good bit of traveling into the bush for conferences, teaching, and evangelism campaigns. Debbi is away from home several weeks per year on her educational consulting trips.
Let us know if you want any more info! Hope this is what you’re looking for.
Steve and Debbi
Thanks so much, Steve and Debbi!
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