Yesterday, all our missionaries trooped
back to base for our annual in-house missions week. I remain most grateful that
every year, since we started this special missions week, we have 100%
attendance by these men. Some of them are able to come with their wives, but
others are not able to due to family demands—especially those with younger
children who are still in school.
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| Raphael Banda, one of our missionaries, presenting on ensuring biblical church membership |
The first event in the missions week is the
missionaries prayer retreat. This began last night. We are hidden away at a
lodge, reviewing the previous year and strategizing for the year ahead. Last
night, it was a time of fellowship as we shared testimonies from the previous
year and prayed for one another. This morning presentations have begun. This
will go on up to tomorrow evening.
On Thursday, our missions conference
begins. Ronald Kalifungwa, the pastor of Lusaka Baptist Church, will be our
main preacher. He will be handling the theme, “The Role of Ordinary Church
Members in the Work of Missions.” These meetings will go on up to Sunday
morning, ending with an ordination service. We will be sending out our latest
church-planting missionary (Kasango Kayombo), who is presently one of our
church deacons.
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| The missionaries having fellowship on the first evening of the prayer retreat |
Pray for us, as we go through this week.
The work of missions is so important that we would hate to see our members and
missionaries going through this week as “just one of those things”. This is where God’s heart is. He gave his Son
for the salvation of the world! We long to see our members going beyond
Africa’s major cities. We want to reach Africa’s rural areas, where cults and
ethnic religions are really flourishing. We want to get to the world’s citadels
of Islam and Hinduism. We want to be used of God to reach the Jews in the
Middle East and the atheistic communists in the Far East. These places
desperately need to hear the world’s best news. May God make us relevant to the
unfinished task!
