Hama lives in Koy Guruuji, a small village in the north of Burkina Faso. He is known there as Hama Moodibo, on account of being educated as a Muslim religious teacher. However, the people in his community no longer invite him to preside at their weddings or naming ceremonies, or even to write their curses. For some time now, Hama has been following laawol Iisaa, the Way of Jesus. He lives a quiet life on top of a sand dune with his two wives and four children and twenty-three goats. He works hard in his millet fields and spends his free time listening to the radio and mending punctures on his bicycle.

At 3.30 the French stops and a different voice begins to speak. This is what Hama has been waiting for so avidly. He puts down his tube of puncture glue and fiddles with the radio aerial. His eldest son, Amadou, stops shelling peanuts and edges closer to us. At 3.30 every afternoon on a particular Ouagadougou MW station there is thirty minutes of Fulfulde programming, mainly local and national news. It is an event which makes Fulani all over the north of the country put down their peanuts and listen.

Hama is the only Christian in Koy Guruuji. Occasionally he cycles to Gorom-Gorom where there are other believers, but most days he has to cope with a fairly solitary Christian existence. He owns three or four cassettes of teaching in Fulfulde, which he plays regularly to remind himself of the truths of the gospel. It would be great if he and others like him were able to receive regular, fresh teaching on their radios, and listen to bible-readings and worship music in their own language.

Amadou is not yet following Christ, although over the past months we have seen him become less ashamed of his father and more receptive to the gospel. It would be great if he and the many thousands of others like him could listen regularly to preaching and testimonies in Fulfulde. If this were available, Amadou would listen, I know he would.

As a strategy for reaching the Fulani in the north of Burkina Faso, I dare to believe that radio will play an important part. Whenever Keith and I travel in this region, we pass by many Fulani settlements just by the road and innumerably more out of sight. We simply can not visit all these people. But radio can.

This year the missionaries here in Djibo started thinking and praying seriously about the possibility of setting up a radio station in the town, with the goal of reaching the surrounding villages more effectively with the good news about Jesus. We could also arrange to relay news and broadcast programmes on health, child-care and agriculture. We talked to SIM leaders down in the capital Ouagadougou and they were sympathetic.

In July CMA approached SIM, saying (to our amazement) that they want to put a radio station in Djibo. More precisely, they want SIM to put a radio station in Djibo, and are willing to provide the equipment! Even though they have no one working in the north here, CMA recognise that Djibo is one of the only provincial capitals in Burkina Faso without an FM station, and that it is the centre of a large, un-reached Fulani population. This coinciding of vision is remarkable, as is the timing of it. The CMA and SIM leaders met on a Thursday to discuss the project. The day after that was the annual deadline for applications for FM frequencies. We squeezed through the application on time and now have a three month wait to know if we have been granted a frequency.

Please pray with us about this project. It is something which God has entrusted us with, and we want to follow his leading. We look to him to provide financially, and to give us two or three godly Fulani men or women to be trained in radio work.

Long ago God told Isaiah that, like rain on the earth, his Word does not return to him empty - “It will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11). We long to see God’s Word go out into thousands of homes like Hama’s. It will bring Fulani face to face with their loving Father. It will change self-destructive ways of thinking and acting. It will give people a really good reason to put aside their peanuts and listen.