We want to thank Light Bearers Ministry for helping us to set up our newly translated Bible study lessons in the Lingala language. We have also submitted a proposal to the Union to start a colporteur ministry. We believe the printed page will do a mighty work here in DRC.
Daily Archive for December 31st, 2008
Although we are still living in rented houses in the city of Kisangani, we can’t wait to move OUT to the country! Kisangani has nearly one million inhabitants and is the gateway to the Congo River Basin. From here, we plan to launch the gospel to the fourteen million unreached people in the jungle. We have just finalized the purchase of 125 acres of land that is seven miles north or Kisangani. We wish we could move much farther out, but it is simply too dangerous. We will locate our new campus and evangelism training school on this land and will soon add another 125 acres to it. Nathan Rittenour is currently organizing a brick making team on our property and mapping out the location of roads and buildings for the new campus.
We are excited and grateful that Maranatha Volunteers International, together with the One-day church project has agreed to send us the steel frames and roof sheets for 22 buildings for our campus. Although we do not have the resources to finish all these buildings, we will complete what we can and finish the others as the Lord opens the way. This will give our project a big boost! We also have a container of building equipment and materials coming.
We plan to host our next lay training session in June 2008, so we need to ship our materials and start building! We also need experienced builders to help erect our new campus. How about you? Please let us know by email if you are interested in coming to help.
Recently Carl Rittenour came to help us produce Sharing the Light in the Heart of Darkness a new 12 minute DVD that shows the challenges facing the Lord’s work in DRC. If you would like a free copy to show at your local church or just at home, please send us your address using the email form right here on the website. You will find it under the “Contact tab” and we will mail it to you. A shortened version of the DVD was presented at the Generation of Youth for Christ (GYC) Conference. Thank you Carl!
Unfortunately, for the Congolese, losing your children to disease is commonplace. Our housekeeper Jani is a typical example. She lost 2 of her 8 children in childbirth, 3 more to malaria, and finally her husband died of malaria also. Our watchman Malaise came last week to get an advance on his pay to treat his 8 month old daughter, who had a high fever. We gladly advanced him the equivalent of a third of his month’s salary. The next day, he returned and said the doctors had treated her with worm medicine and she was doing fine. By the time he reached home though, she was already dead––no doubt from malaria. We wept with him at the loss of his precious daughter presumably from a misdiagnosis and lack of proper treatment.
Tuberculosis and sleeping sickness are common here. No one boils their water in the jungle, and almost everyone has dysentery. Aids is on the increase with almost no education available. It is estimated that 45,000 are dying every month from disease. Won’t you consider helping us start a medical canoe ministry along the Congo River that can save lives and bring hope into the hearts of the people? Each death is one more person who will not hear the gospel on this earth.
In late November our seventeen church planters gathered for a special training session in which the topics of self support, more effective evangelism, natural remedies, etc were presented. This was a great help and encouragement to them and at the close we gave them clothing, Bibles, seeds, mosquito nets, and other tools to help them in their work. The people of the DRC, through no fault of their own, have descended to such depths of degradation and ignorance, that it is only with the utmost effort and God’s abundant grace that they can be raised up to a higher standard of faith and living. Please pray for our church planters that through the mighty agency of the Holy Spirit, they can lift people out of “the pit” and deliver them from their degrading heathen customs.
When the Konga family arrived for the training session with their one year old twin girls Zipora and Marta, they were deathly ill with malaria. We treated them with the medicine we use for malaria but to no avail. In the hospital Marta was treated twice with a quinine drip and by God’s grace the second treatment finally knocked the malaria out of her system. PTL.
