September 2005

Chiwempala Church Maturing 

The church seems to be doing better than ever.  The African leaders are maturing and doing well in the work.  The weekly attendance is getting close to averaging 200 people.  And the offerings are better than ever and actually paying all the bills.
 
Due to the fact this church is maturing more and more, and I am needed less and less, my schedule has changed a lot.  Most of the teaching of Bible school and discipleship is being done by Zambians.  Therefore, my schedule is more open to do a lot more soul winning than I could do in the past years. 

These days the Lord has blessed me in soul winning to be working two village areas, Ipafu and Kalilo, about three days a week.  This month the Lord gave me eleven souls in personal evangelism.  This type of schedule is what we have been striving to reach for years.  The Africans have reached the place of being able to teach their own people the Bible, so we can concentrate more on outreach these days.  It is a blessing to reach this phase in the work. 

Children's' ministry

For a long time, we have overlooked reporting to you about the children's ministry in this church.  Of course, my wife has organized and nurtured 100% of this ministry.  And I forget to tell you how much she does.  We were blessed several years ago to get the large Beka Books flash cards for teaching Sunday school.  Lattisha implemented a system we got from David Cagle at our home church to teach through the Bible in three years.  She has used that system with the flash cards to teach the children all the way through the Bible.  We have between 40 and 70 kids on a given Sunday.

In the past five years, she has trained four other Sunday school teachers who are extremely faithful.  And Lattisha teaches the fifth week of the rotation.  Obviously, all the children are taught in one group at the same time.  It might not seem to be the best way to do it, but you would be amazed how effective it is.  And of course, the children are usually completely left out of other churches.  So these kids are just happy that anyone has anything at all for them.  And they are getting great teaching.  Our teachers are excellent.  Lattisha has been there with them for so long now that they can do it all on their own (teaching, song leading, memory verses, invitations, etc.).  And before much longer we will turn it all over to them and they can carry on, Lord willing.  Praise the Lord for a wife like that.  That does not include what she has done to teach the Ladies' meeting each Tuesday, plus home school, plus cooking, cleaning, etc.  Praise the Lord, what a wife (Proverbs 18:22)!

Starting The next church

Two years ago we applied with the Chingola Civic Center for another church plot.  Recently, this plot was allocated to us for a fee of about $8.  Can you beat that price?  Praise the LORD!  The plot is in a good area where we had hoped to start the next work, so it looks like the Lord is in this thing.  We are in the praying and discussing phase of getting a temporary meeting place and starting this new church.  We have a big day (Friend Day) planned at the Chiwempala church for October 23rd (Independence weekend).  After that, we hope to start working in earnest to get the next work going.  Please pray for this in earnest.  And thank you for your commitment to our family and the ministry here.  You are a blessing.  Amen.