 As you read these reports and the places where training will take place, keep in mind that getting the best fares often requires multiple flight connections and two or three days of travel. Sleeping may be in an airport chair or airplane economy seat. Please remember our team in prayer.
Lord, my strength and my fortress, my refuge in time of distress, to you the nations will come from the ends of the earth… Therefore, I will teach them—this time I will teach them my power and might. Then they will know that my name is the Lord. Jeremiah 16:19,21 October 1-3, Travel to Entebbe, Uganda. “Many flights! LaGuardia to Boston to Amsterdam to Kigale, Rwanda to Entebbe. Then 5-6 hours travel by road to Bweyale, just in time for our training event. In the Scripture above, I am glad the Lord is our strength!” (Randy) “So, they went out and proclaimed that people should repent” (Mark 6:12).
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 TANZANIA - Sept. 15-16
“Richard & Verena are heroes of our faith! After years of faithful ministry in the city of Dar Es Salaam, they obeyed the call of God to move to a village to reach Muslims. Please pray for them, and the 40 leaders who will gather for training in January 2024. God has also opened the door for training leaders in Dodoma. Please keep these bold leaders who are giving everything for the gospel to reach the unreached.” SOUTH AFRICA - Sept. 17-19 “How I thank God for the opportunity to meet Matt and Rachel in Johannesburg and then Doug and Ellen (pictured) in Cape Town. It was exciting to see how these are impacting others with the gospel and making disciples. We will see how God develops our ministry ties with them over the new year.” (Report from Randy) In the next few blogs, I will update you with key reports from our team as well as trips that are starting in two days. Your prayers for this ministry and these training events are vital to this work continuing. As you read each blog, please pause to pray for our team member and the pastors, leaders, and students who are involved.
PAKISTAN - Sept. 4-8 (Pictures withheld for security reasons) “Just a few days before our arrival in Islamabad, villages were attacked and Christians ran for their lives, leaving behind everything they owned. Because of this persecution, many who would join our training could not travel. We were reminded of the severe stress our brothers and sisters are under, and yet despite all of this, we had 13 brave ones join us, and these from 5 different denominations, like last time. V. & A. are incredible leaders who have laid everything down for Christ. Let us pray for these who face such opposition and for the gospel to multiply in these difficult days.” (Randy) “One question was asked by a young brother, related to the Antioch Church Model and evangelism, particularly how to get started. He said that his church prohibits any member to go out and share the gospel publicly. We encouraged the brother to take the opportunity to ask the question to the group and discuss this question from their cultural viewpoint. It was a wonderful discussion as they pointed out Paul in Athens (Acts 17) where he used a type of relational evangelism. This was a rich time watching them discuss and compare their church and ministry with the Early Church and Paul.” (Jonathan) (Report from Tom) This was my third trip since January 2022 and each trip gets better than the previous one. Relationships get deeper, and more opportunities open up. Plans are already being worked out for my possible return in January 2024. I was asked to present “God’s Plan for His Disciples” material in new locations during the next visit.
I returned to one of the places where “God’s Plan for His Disciples” was introduced in February 2023 and held a graduation for 87 who completed the course. It was a very special time of presentations, messages, testimonies, and singing and worshiping, and a meal. You would have thought these men and women were receiving a Ph.D. in physics from a major research university. Many who received a Certificate of Completion had never graduated from anything before. This was a significant event for them. It was a privilege to be there and present the certificates. This graduation was the highlight of the trip. Knowing that these men and women have been interacting with the Word of God for the last several months was a tremendous blessing. The focus of my message to them was that this should only be the beginning and not the end of their study of God’s word. I left several copies of “God’s Plan for His Church” for them to review and decide if they wanted me to introduce it when I return. This manual would be helpful for the leaders, so please pray that God would reveal the right decision to them. With gifts that were sent, I was also able to buy several hundred Bibles in Uganda for distribution. Eli will handle the distribution.”  I have written before about the amazing opportunity we have in India with the most persecuted believers in Odisha. They speak the local language, Odia. Some years ago, I was there with Randy and trained 110 pastors, but we did not have our resources in this language, so we used the Hindi books. There was no follow-up or success from this event.
Now that we have God’s Plan for His Disciples in Odia, Tim and Terry are going again at the request of a dear brother who has tremendous influences as a spiritual father to so many in this area of India. Pray for this special event, October 8th to the 11th that God will pour out His favor and the power of the Holy Spirit, not just on the presentation of God’s Word, but on those who hear. We want the authority of Scripture and the Spirit to grip their minds and hearts so there is transformation. PLEASE be in prayer. We have been able to print 10,000 copies of GPHD, but their goal is to train 40,000 believers. This is too big for us, but a small thing for our Lord and Master.  In one country in S. E. Asia where pastors, leaders, and followers of Jesus are being trained with God’s Plan for His Disciples (GPHD) and God’s Plan for His Church (GPHC), there are real dangers. Yet, danger and risk cannot stop God’s work.
One of these dangers is someone reporting their activity to the police and the possibility of being arrested. Other dangers are the mountainous roads that are only passable by motorcycle. Often rain adds to these risky conditions. They know that God’s protection is very real. Just in recent months, 143 church leaders have finished GPHD in two different languages. These trainings are done during the day and our team travels at night to avoid being detected by the authorities. Wherever they go, they are met with hungry souls that want the truth of Scripture taught them so they can pass it on to others. Will you join us in prayer for both the trainers who risk their lives and for the students who want the Spirit to give them understanding?  We have often brought you news about the Quechua churches in Ecuador wanting to go through the training with God’s Plan for His Disciples (GPHD in Spanish). A Quechua church in Quito is starting this study and we are excited to see them take the initiative.
Pray with us that this new group will become an inspiration for many other Quechua churches across Ecuador. What is so exciting about this people group is their eagerness to learn from the Scriptures. They are true Bereans! (See Acts 17:11).  India is a unique place. Having been to many places in this large country, I write this blog with a personal knowledge of its culture that is unlike any other. The spiritual needs are as big as the population. Consider these statistics:
From these figures, our mission task seems impossible. We must never plan our work merely on numbers or be discouraged when numbers make the task look impossible. God is working. We are about to print 10,000 God’s Plan for His Disciples in the Odia language spoken mostly in the Odisha State. The goal of local leaders is to train 40,000 believers who will spread the gospel and equip others to be strong in their faith and disciple others. Will you pray with us that this small beginning will turn into a movement of God? As our team opened the prayer time last evening, Randy referred to Psalm 67 as it contains one of the sweetest expressions of universal worship of any Scriptures. “Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!” (67:3). This verse is repeated in verse 5 and the whole Psalm expresses a longing that God’s “ways may be known on earth….and saving power among all nations” so that “all the ends of the earth fear Him” (2, 7).
Though we are not certain of the human author, it is certain that the divine author, the Holy Spirit, reveals over and over that God is going to receive praise from all nations. This is one of the central themes of Scripture that drives NFI. Two prophets make this truth clear in other statements. “The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14). This could happen without activity on our part, making God’s choice of us, the Church, so very important that we cooperate with Him in getting His message to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Will we take up such a glorious privilege and carry the message to the unreached?  As we work with many different languages, people groups, and cultures, we encounter just as many ways our partners are getting training materials (books), banners, and themselves to places where the training needs to take place.
Think for a moment of the Apostle Paul. He traveled on three missionary journeys about 8,000 miles or over 12,000 kilometers. Do you know of anyone today that is making that kind of progress and impact? Paul had no motorbikes, cars, planes, or electronic equipment. Therefore, it would be difficult to find any better model than the Early Church and the Apostle Paul in the work of establishing growing and expanding churches. Yet, there is a growing number of those who are sacrificing everything necessary to bring the gospel and God’s Word to people who have never heard and to believers and churches that need strengthening and encouragement so they can stand strong in the Gospel of Pure Grace. You and I may not be able to physically join them, but we can pray for a movement of God through their sacrificial work. |
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