This morning David Essuman left us after a week’s  visit to begin his return to Swedru Agona, Ghana, West Africa.   Today he drives to East Texas and then on to Gainesville, Texas. From there he will go to Dallas to fly home. David is director of Swedru International Bible Institute, a preacher/leadership training center that uses Sunset International Bible Institute materials. The school itself and its staff are sponsored by the Westgate Church of Christ in Dothan, Alabama.

David was born in a small town in Ghana where he was introduced to Jesus and his church. Later, after attending school he found employment in South Africa teaching math. It was there that a missionary encouraged him to attend what was then Sunset School of Preaching. After graduating from Sunset David was asked to go to the Congo where there was no known church. He went to Harding University to learn French and then began work as a missionary in the Congo. Unfortunately civil war broke out and he had to flee for his life. He left everything behind. After things cooled down he returned to teach Jesus in that strife torn country. Again civil war broke out and David escaped with the French Ambassador. All he carried out was a  silver spoon.

Next he worked in Durban, S.A. with an Indian group that met there. He was then asked by his sponsoring church to go to Mauritius off the coast  of East Africa to try and resurrect a church that had been planted there years before.  He was there for about six months when his sponsoring church sent him word that they were building a new building and would no longer be helping him.  It was then that he returned to Ghana and began to fulfill his dream of a preaching school for the Christians in Ghana.

David exhibits the qualities that I believe are involved in faith. He went to a dangerous place not once but twice. That is trust in God. He moved to an island without knowing what he would find. That took faith. He did not give up even when he was left there without funds. He went to his home to teach his own people without that help.

David not only trusted God, which is what faith is but he understood that God expected him to do something. David is not only a believer he is a doer. David’s faith moved him to the Congo, Durban, Mauritius and Swedru. In every place, he was about God’s work, dependent on God to provide. That is faith. And by going and doing his faith grew stronger and stronger.

 Will we forever hear the words, “O ye of little faith,”? We will until our faith moves us to go and do. Trusting God means going where he sends and doing what he asks and until we do that our faith will never grow.