D.R. Congo - Ministry Weekend

Us crossing the Luapula
Bibles to Graduates
What a wonderful weekend with our brothers and sisters in Christ in Kasenga, DR Congo. We met in Nsansamina church where four graduates minister - Saidi & Claudine (2006),and Talaka & Carol (2009). There were also present three other graduates, Mainsa (2001), Kafusha (1999), Mumba (2004). The reports from the elders of the work these people are doing was very encouraging. They all seem to be working hard in church life. Talaka and Carol even help support 12 orphans in their community through the gardening skills taught at Samfya!

Over this year, two graduates have been involved in Evangelism Training as far away as Lumbumbashi. Locally one graduate has been active in establishing and equipping Sunday Schools and teachers for various local churches, as well as the ongoing teaching programme that they are all involved with in the churches. As a team they have been training 21 people through June/July in Bible interpretation, Theology (the Doctrine of Salvation)...

The challenges they face are primarily support issues. They still need to work on farming as the churches do not give financial support. Bicycles are also needed for their ministry visits (they had some in 2006 , however these are now worn out!!). We are working on this one through the ministry fund.

The training that we worked on through the weekend was primarily aimed at leadership, using the booklet on Elders (by John MacArthur, now translated into Bemba - having this resource is a huge blessing to these village church leaders). This enabled us to cover the NT teaching on elders, the role of elders, their qualification, the team nature of the work, and the need to support those who lead well and are given to the task of teaching and preaching (1 Timothy 5:17f). The Impact of the teaching was significant. The leaders (around 90-100 men & women) were hungry for the Word and wanted to be applying the things they were learning. It is very important that follow up training occurs, and we know that even more people from many other churches will attend.

We were also blessed to have Murray & Joy Stevenson with us for Friday night, Saturday & Sunday morning. Gwen & Katie got to travel with them on Saturday to many projects that they work with (see Gwen’s blog for all the details!!) including doing an evening projection of the Jesus film. It was nice to have some family time in the depths of Africa!

One of the graduates children was in the local hospital with severe dysentery. We were able to leave a small gift for medications - life is truly on a knife edge here! Three boxes of Bibles were left for sale to the local village Christians. As always the distribution of these causes some jealousies among people who don’t have much, but please pray that they will be used to see men & women growing in Christ. I only wish you could have seen the joy in people’s faces and hear the songs of thanks and praise that were sung for the whole weekend and its impact on them all.

These graduates are strategizing to try and establish a Bible Centre for distributing Christian material, and would also like to begin a mini Bible School at the end of 2012 when people they have training will return (they are training at a theological school that Roger Wharrie and I visited in 2008 - it does a three year French programme). What an encouraging time to spend with these saints - with huge challenges they are committed to Gospel truth and impacting their communities.