Alan & Pauline Ashmore - Abergwynfi, South Wales
With UFM Worldwide, Swindon, Wiltshire
Simon Ashmore - Highwoth, Wiltshire, England
With WEC Mission, Bulstrode, Gerards Cross, Bucks (June 2008- Jan 2012)
Update 5th April 2012
Simon was a student at Vavoua Mission School, Ivory Coast from 1998 - 2002 and from Oct 2002 - 2003 at Bourafaye International School, Senegal.
He returned to the school in Senegal after geaduating from Canterbury Christchurch University, to teach at the school and to be a a dorm helper. In the last few months before returning to the UK Simon helped construct a school and a pastor's house in a village in Senegal.
Simon is now living in Highworth and working in Swindon. He worships at St. Michaels.
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Alan & Pauline Ashmore - We first came to St Michael's Church, Highworth, in the early 1980's and in 1998 we were able to follow God's calling to overseas missionary work with the support of the church and a number of other churches and individuals.
St Michael's is our "home church" and also our "sending church" and in 2008 some friends formed a work team and came out from St Michael's, along with the head of a local school, to construct and install sports equipment for a junior school and to repaint a very large classroom.
From 1998 - 2002 we worked alongside the Ivorian church in Ivory Coast and following disruption in the country we moved to its neighbour Burkina Faso, spending in total another 3 amazing years there. We recently had the opportunity to go out for a 3 month working visit which we describe here. It was a very special time for us to go back to a country of amazing people.
Burkina Faso, West Africa - April to June 2010
(the really hot season!!!)
We arrived on a hot evening in April, and were touched to be welcomed at the airport by so many of our students from the Bible Institute, and our missionary friends.
Film Projection and Outreach
SIM mission in Ouagadougou had kindly put into store our film equipment as well as keeping our truck up and running. This meant that we were able to immediately slip back into ministry, which was good as we had a request to do a projection at one of the churches the first Friday evening we were there. After a little servicing of the equipment we had a good attendance that evening and the church followed up on this later in our stay with two consecutive nights of projections.
All of our programmed projections took place as planned, except one, which had to be postponed till the following evening because of an electric storm which was brewing up all around us. As our screen is attached to a large metallic frame in a large open space with hundreds of people around it, did not seem good. So we returned the following night and had an amazing evening. All our projections were well received and many people accepted the Lord over the 3-month period.
Niendouga Bible Institute
Within a couple of weeks of arriving we were heading off east to a town close to the Niger border. The Director, Pastor Albert and his teaching staff had asked us to return to teach a course on Evangelism to the 143 students. There had been a new intake since we ran the course two years previous but a number of the existing students were in their final year. So we adapted the course to give these students extra material on topics such as radio evangelism, then we motivated the students to head up the week-end outreach to a local village immediately following the course.
One member of staff and two final year students shared the translating of our French into Gourmanche, the local language to that region. They did a great job, and even translated the dialogues of the sketches that we had given the students as exercises to reinforce the topic subject area being taught. As before it was an amazing time and the Lord really blessed it both during the course and the amazing work the students did in the outreach at the end of the course.
ESL – Teaching English as a second language
We were involved in teaching at two ESL courses. One was a two-hour weekly class, the other was a one week intensive daytime course. We had over one hundred students for the evening course and around fifty students for the intensive course. With six different levels, this worked out well.
Mahadaga Handicap Centre
We visited the village of Mahadaga, a centre for handicapped children and adults. Francoise Pédeau, a SIM missionary, has run the centre for many years. It started with her wish to help one orphan and now has grown to incorporate a full size school with classes for mixed abilities and classes specifically for blind children, deaf children and workshops for physically disabled adults. There is also a medical centre, which has to meet the needs of 65,000 people of the surrounding villages in the area. We cannot begin to explain our emotions as we saw young children being fitted with calipers (made on site), some having physiotherapy and some walking for the first time. To see the blind children learning and reading Brail, and to see the deaf being educated using only sign language, was humbling and touching.
We were pleased to be able to project the film "Jesus, for Children" (the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of children). We projected this outside the school in the early evening. Some of the children sang, prompted by their teachers. We also led some singing and shared with the children about Jesus, until it became dark enough to project the film. Later we heard that a number of adults who had gathered at the back, had also been impacted with gospel.