Dear praying friends,
Sorry that we have been silent as a church in sharing what the Lord has been doing among us for the last eight months. We failed to get our October 2017 prayer letter out due to other demands on our time. We were, however, determined that April was not going to pass without getting word out. We appreciate the time you spend reading through our letters and praying for us as a church. Here are some highlights from the last eight months and a few prayer items for the next four months. Kindly share this with your Christian friends for prayer support.
We ended the year on a very sad note as we got the news of the murder of one of our 2017 pastoral interns, Andrew Mulendema. Andrew had taken the last two weeks of his internship off so that he could attend to some family matters. He fell into the hands of bandits who shot him and his friend dead at point blank. A pregnant wife and three children survive him.
The Lord has been pleased to bring us another set of six pastoral interns for 2018. They are from Zambia, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Namibia. They are already proving to be a blessing to us as a church. Pray for us as we seek to invest into their lives so that when they get into pastoral ministry they may have the full benefit of a year spent with us understudying our two pastors and seeing how a biblically governed church runs.
On the good news front, the African Christian University welcomed its third batch of first years into its scholars’ programme. We expected a full class of fifty students but one sponsor withdrew their scholarships at the last minute, which meant that a number of potential students had to withdraw. We are still grateful for the enrolment and look forward to a year of great learning and transformation of life. Continue to pray for us that the Lord will enable us to find more conducive land and find the money to pay for it. We need to start building the physical infrastructure of the ACU. This is our most urgent need.
Our missionaries’ prayer retreat and missions conference came and went earlier this month. It was greatly encouraging to hear how the Lord was using our missionaries in their great work of planting Reformed Baptist churches. One or two situations were struggling but almost all the reports spoke of progress. We would urge you to pray for these men and their wives as they continue to labour in the gospel.
One major highlight from the just-ended missions conference was the setting apart of Peter Abutu Joshua as our missionary to Abuja, Nigeria. This was the culmination of his internship with us across 2017. We are conscious that we are sending him like a sheep among wolves and would ask that you uphold him and his family in your prayers as he gets this work off the ground.
We also ask you to pray for our church expansion project. The Lord has been so good to us in adding to our numbers every year. The deacons as a result have embarked on a mammoth task of extending our church auditorium to cater for the increasing numbers. To God be the glory!
