No Burial Plot For Me
By Kimberly Rae Thigpen
Isaiah Frimpong Bernasko’s Testimony
I grew up in an idolatrous village in Ghana. People used to tell me that my parents got me from a god, since they sought its assistance for me to be able to stay in this world. Other babies born to my parents had died.
In my village my name is Asaseasah, which means, no burial plot for me.
The political instability in Ghana with its attending economic crisis pushed many Ghanaians to migrate to other West African countries like the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. My wife, Mansah, and I traveled to the Ivory Coast. My chief aim was to work here to get some money to return to Ghana to pursue my education in Law.
I did not have peace. I wasn’t a Christian then. I was a mocker and blasphemer. Since I thought that I was a child of a god, I began to visit some shrines of some gods for help, but in vain. I could feel that death was closer to me. I became despaired and began to ask the question: if those gods cannot save me from death or danger, who can? The gods of my parents failed me entirely.
By God’s grace during this time of trouble, I came across two cassettes through a friend who came to borrow some money from me. One of the cassettes had worldly songs of the Ashanti’s philosophy of life (my tribe in Ghana), while the other cassette was Christian. The songs of the Ashanti encouraged me to take some alcoholic drinks in order to forget my plight. However, anytime I played the Christian cassette, I felt urged by something else to read a Bible to find out if the messages were true. I borrowed a Bible. The more I read, the more I felt something was urging me to fast and pray.
As soon as I started praying and fasting, I began to have some wild but meaningful dreams. I was frightened by them, so I went to a certain man in our area whom I often found reading a Bible to explain to him what I was going through. The gentleman was surprised; he couldn’t understand why a person who was not a Christian could have such dreams. He told me, “I would advise you to leave the Ivory Coast immediately for Ghana, and when you reach your homeland, see to it that you see a pastor first because what you’re experiencing is like how God used to call some men in the Bible.” I became highly disturbed. I was about twenty-three years old.
While I prepared to leave for Ghana that same week, I was struck with a terrible disease. I became demented. Friends chained me and sent me to a “Pray for Me” center. I stayed in chains tethered to some walls or poles for over eight months there. The “lords” prayed for my healing but in vain, until one night in their absence, the Lord God Almighty miraculously healed me!
After the healing, Mansah and I couldn’t return to our rented house for we had lost it, and moreover our landlord had put his hands on our belongings. We had nowhere to go and had lost everything in life. We didn’t have money to return to our home country. We stayed with the lords of the “Pray for Me” center to serve them for our survival and for training to become like one of them. A year later they ordained me. Upon my ordination I was sent into the interior region to start a ministry for them.
It was there I met two Christian young men who saw I was lost and still going astray. They advised me to go see the pastor of their church, an American missionary who had arrived in the Ivory Coast in 1983. When the missionary interviewed me, he found out that I was lost in my sins. He gave me some of the Bible lessons of Source of Light Ministries. By studying these lessons, Mansah and I found out that we were lost and we needed Christ to save us from our sins. We repented of our sins, confessed them and received Christ as Savior. We kept on studying the SLM Bible lessons which gave us a solid theological foundation. Henceforth, the scales fell from my eyes, thus I put an end to the “Pray for Me” work. I began to preach the true gospel.
In 1985, by God’s grace I entered the Baptist Bible Institute of Abidjan. In 1989, I was ordained a Baptist preacher by the church which the Lord had used me to plant when I was a student in the Bible institute. There were no churches in the Ivory Coast to support me. I had to do part-time jobs to support the family, the ministry, and myself. My wife had to sell some little articles in the streets. Sometimes too we would start a restaurant in the slums. When the American missionary found out that we were trying to be faithful and loyal to both the Lord and him, he entered into partnership with me. The Lord was blessing our work.
In 1993, unexpectedly, the American man left Africa. My wife and I had to work hard by undertaking microfinance projects to earn our living and have something to support the ministry. The ministry could have been expanded extraordinarily but we lacked adequate support. This has been a big challenge. We have lost the “memory” of our home country because the Lord has retained us in the Ivory Coast. We have never been able to go home or on leave since the 1980’s because we are always ministering.
However, I praise the Lord for His faithfulness and provision, for since the day I was carried in chains to enter that “Pray for Me” group, we are always in the Lord’s hands. He never forsakes us. By God’s grace I have been involved in the planting of about ten churches across the Ivory Coast. I win many souls and make disciples out of them. By God’s grace we have started an orphanage. I am always in the chains as God’s bondslave for the ministry’s sake. Please pray for us for the challenges are many. We have turned sixty this year. I do not have a bike, or a motor-bike, or a car. We are praying to start some important micro-finance projects to be left as legacy to the ministry and the generations to come. Could you please pray for us?
I got saved by reading Source of Light Bible lessons in 1984, and wonderfully, in the year 2011 the Lord chose me to be the director of the Discipleship Training Branch of Source of Light Ministries in the Ivory Coast. With SLM, the Lord still is using me to start churches with the young men and people who are being trained in the Ivory Coast. With some of the disciples who have traveled abroad, new doors are being opened to me in the Ivory Coast and in some sister west African countries (Guinea, Ghana, Mali). Please keep on praying for us because, God willing, we are still on the track running the race.
