To DR Congo Today

Greetings all, it is Thursday night and I have just finished teaching through 1 & 2 Timothy - 20 sessions in four days, a little bit of a marathon. The students had a good number of questions and seemed to be following the teaching well. There is so much very practical instruction in these two books about what we need to do and apply in church life and we talked much of the application of these principles in village church ministry.

We cross into the Congo tomorrow (early Saturday morning NZ time). The border crossing will be a little unknown for us as Congo can be a little difficult; however the graduates from Congo have been trying to prepare the way. The crossing is by long boat over the Luapula River which should be interesting and we will be taking Bibles as well. We expect to see around 8 graduates and we understand that there will be quite a crowd at the meetings, not just the church leaders. We will still focus on leadership training however, as this is the essential ingredient to the churches growth.

We value your prayers for this time and the effectiveness of the training. There will be five of us going over, Gwen, Katie, Donald, Levy Kasoma (Principal) and Francis Chola (teacher). Gwen & Katie will get to see some projects that Murray & Joy work with, so that will be interesting and fun.

We are thankful that our new passports have arrived in Mansa, and we will pick them up on our way through. We also will visit the Immigration office to have our visas transferred into the new passports. Please also pray that this will go smoothly. Thank you for all your prayers and emails - we really do appreciate your support.