Bishop,

I am currently the pastor of the Church in Ouagadougou, which is the capital of Burkina Faso, in Africa. The Church was inaugurated on July 24, 2011. A week later, the mayor personally came to the Church to tell me that the Muslim merchants were complaining about the church speakers being too loud and how it bothered them. So, I took down some speakers.

A month later, the Muslims came back threatening to burn the Church and kidnap my son. We informed the authorities about the threats and the Muslims said it was because our services coincided with theirs. So, I changed our schedule around.

On December 31, 2011, we made t-shirts with the words "Stop suffering" and "EURD" (Eglise Universelle du Royaume de Dieu, which is UCKG in French) written on them, which we were going to use to evangelize. On January 6, 2012, the police commander called me to the station and said that the Muslims were planning an attack on the Church because of the t-shirts.

While I was at the police station, my phone rang and I was informed that the Muslims had invaded the Church and beat up some church members and my wife, who was counseling a youth when this happened. She was severely beaten and had to be taken to the hospital by the firefighters because she lost consciousness.

They set fire to the chairs and the Church flag. Once again, we informed the authorities about the incident, which they considered an act of cruelty. Meanwhile, the Muslims urged the authorities to close all of the Churches in the country. However, they didn’t accept their "request" and warned them that next time this happened they would close their churches and stores instead.

Unsatisfied and angry with this decision, they left the police station determined to burn down the Universal Church. So, they went directly to our temple and stood in front of the Church.

I think that after last year’s rebellion, the government is afraid of the people. They asked us to return to the Church, but without any police protection. We currently have 400 members and to keep them out of danger, we were forced to rent a conference room in a hotel.

I spoke to Bishop Ferraz, who is responsible for the evangelistic work of the UCKG in the Ivory Coast, and he suggested that we move the Church somewhere else, but I asked to remain there because everything would certainly calm down. However, after seeing the current situation, I agreed to move to another location.

I wasn’t able to inform you about this situation before because of my wife’s health, since I had to take her to the hospital on a daily basis.

Issia Karaboué, who is a pastor in the Ivory Coast, was born into a Muslim family, but converted to Christianity in Brazil.