Yasmine was outside her home chatting with a friend when they heard gunfire down the street. “I saw them coming, shooting,” Yasmine recalled. “I went to the house to tell my husband about that.”

Islamic extremists have ravaged large areas of Burkina Faso since 2016. Two notable militant groups in the region are the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam, which translates as “The Group Supporting Islam and Muslims.” Using the vast deserts of neighboring Mali and Niger as their base, the groups attack without warning, taking advantage of Burkina Faso’s limited military capability. “The terrorists are better armed than the army,” a local pastor said.

 

Islamist groups have taken control of roughly 40% of Burkina Faso, killed more than 10,000 people and forced about 1.7 million, including many Muslims, to flee their homes and take refuge in camps for internally displaced people. The militants have specifically targeted Christians in the country since 2019, often focusing their attacks on pastors and Christian leaders as they seek to create an Islamic caliphate. One denomination reported that 500 pastors have been forced to flee in the past few years because of Islamist activity.

 

On May 15, 2023, gunmen attacked Yasmine’s town, located in northern Burkina Faso near the border with Mali. Her husband, Pastor Laurent Siadau, urged her to leave with him on their small motorcycle. But Yasmine didn’t want to leave her friend, so she fled with her on foot while Laurent sped away on the motorcycle.

 

***

 

Hearing more gunshots behind them, the women ran into the forest and eventually found shelter in another town. Back in Yasmine’s town, government forces had arrived to confront the terrorists. Fighting between the Islamists and the military prevented Yasmine from returning home for more than 24 hours, and she was unable to reach her husband on his cellphone.

 

When she was finally able to return home, Yasmine was shocked to see Laurent’s motorcycle lying outside their house. Two of her adult sons told her that for unknown reasons he had run to the church next door, and was shot in the head by Islamists inside the church.

 

***

 

Laurent had not been in full-time ministry for very long. For most of his life he had worked as a cook in the country’s capital, Ouagadougou. But in 2018, he began attending Bible school. And two years later, he sensed God calling him to minister in northern Burkina Faso, where Islamic extremists were especially active and where many people were either Muslims or animists.

 

Yasmine said reaching people in that region was similar to working on a farm. “In the village, [the Gospel] is like seed,” she said. She and Laurent planted the seeds and worked hard to cultivate them. And Yasmine said that a fruit of Laurent’s prayer ministry was seeing their neighbors freed from spiritual oppression.

One of the couple’s five children, son Marcel, recalled that not everyone in the family was in favor of their move to the dangerous region of northern Burkina Faso. Aunts, uncles and other relatives warned him, “Don’t let your father go to that village; they don’t want him there.” But Marcel said, “He always told them that God called him to this village and he must go”.

 

Despite the brutality and injustice of Laurent’s murder, Yasmine said she does not feel anger toward his killers. “My heart’s desire is for God to make his Spirit meet these people,” she said, “and change their hearts.”

 

Marcel, too, prays that those who killed his father will repent and come to know the Lord “so one day they can also go to heaven.” Currently studying at a Bible training school, he is determined to follow in his father’s footsteps and enter the ministry.

 

“Pray for me to get involved in the ministry when I am finished,” Marcel asked. “And [pray] for my uncles and other relatives who don’t know Jesus to meet Him and know what faith my father died for. He died for the Gospel!”

 

Yasmine also requested prayer for perseverance in the faith. “Pray for me,” she said, “so God can comfort me and I will stay right in my faith until the end.”

 

Yasmine Siadau shared her story 16 days after her husband’s murder. While still in the early stages of grief, Yasmine said she warmly recalls the work that she and Laurent did together, sowing Gospel seeds in northern Burkina Faso. “I am really happy for what we have done there,” she said, “because many people have given their lives to Jesus Christ.”