Project Description:
The Maninka people represent 30% of the population of the Republic of Guinea, which is one of Africa’s least evangelized countries. The purpose of the project is to support the national church’s and the mission team’s efforts of planting churches, training of national leaders and developing of agricultural training programs among the unreached Maninka.
Tim Norton, missionary to Maninka
We hope to reach 5,000 Maninka people by June 2007. We are working to translate theological education materials into the local language.
Leaders receive training in appropriate evangelistic techniques using the chronological Bible storying method.Believers receive literacy training in the Maninka’s indigeneous script called “N’Ko”.
Believers receive training on effective agricultural techniques and training on developing revenue to support the Bible study groups and fellowships with guidance from the regional agricultural missionary. Leaders will have access to theological education materials in their own language to help them with equipping believers. $2,000.00 of this project will go towards translating and producing theological education materials. $4,180 will go towards renting and keeping a space for meetings, translation work, and housing guests. $1,000 will go towards agricultural training.
Foundation Description:
This project is intended to reach one of the largest people groups in West Africa, and one of the least reached.
· The Maninka are part of the 22.5 million Mande people cluster. Most Mande peoples, like the Maninka, are Muslim.
· Although the response has not been in the hundreds of thousands or even thousands for the moment, there is a tremendous opening for evangelism among the Maninka relative to other Muslim people groups.
· This project and work represents one of the few areas in the world where evangelistic work among Muslims is being done openly and not under the guise of some other endeavor (e.g. humanitarian aid).
Ablaze Touches:
Note the above goal of reaching 5,000 people by 2007. In point of fact I think this would go beyond “touches” as I understand that language since we’re talking about more than a “critical event” but actually 5,000 people entering into the kingdom of God. The potential for touches and critical events could possibly even go into the 10,000-20,000 range since there are approximately 300,000 people in the city of Siguiri and about twice that number in the prefecture.