{"id":4927,"date":"2024-03-14T07:07:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-14T07:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/church-elder-murdered\/"},"modified":"2024-03-14T07:07:06","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T07:07:06","slug":"church-elder-murdered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/church-elder-murdered\/","title":{"rendered":"Church Elder Murdered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On June 12, 2023, Ibrahim Saidou was traveling to buy farm supplies when he decided to visit the church where he served as an elder. Ibrahim lived in an area of Burkina Faso where Islamic terrorist groups associated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) actively work to establish purely Muslim territory ruled by Islamic law. These groups regularly attack churches and Christian leaders. On his way to the church, Ibrahim was attacked and murdered by a group of Islamic militants. Fearing that they would also be killed, his wife, Esther, and her six children, ages 5 to 22, were forced to flee the area. Esther is struggling with questions about why her husband was killed and has asked for prayer to remain strong in the Lord.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/globalprayerguide\/burkina-faso\/\">Click here<\/a> to find out about Christian persecution in Burkina Faso and learn how to pray.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.icommittopray.com\/request\/2641\/esther-and-her-family\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Post a prayer for Esther and her family on iCommitToPray.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On June 12, 2023, Ibrahim Saidou was traveling to buy farm supplies when he decided to visit the church where he served as an elder. Ibrahim lived in an area of Burkina Faso where Islamic terrorist groups associated with the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS) actively work to establish purely Muslim territory ruled by Islamic law. These groups regularly attack churches and Christian leaders. On his way to the church, Ibrahim was attacked and murdered by a group of Islamic militants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-4927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-i-commit-to-pray","tag-burkina-faso","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Church Elder Murdered - Stories<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.persecution.com\/stories\/church-elder-murdered\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Church Elder Murdered - Stories\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On June 12, 2023, Ibrahim Saidou was traveling to buy farm supplies when he decided to visit the church where he served as an elder. 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