Dear pastor:
We greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, hoping this letter finds you well and enjoying the many blessings he bestows upon you daily.
The past few weeks have brought much joy and victory as we continue serving the Lord at Central Africa Baptist College “training the next generation of servant leaders in Africa for great commission living”.
About 4 weeks ago I began teaching my yearly hermeneutics class at the college. This year’s class is the biggest class I have taught at the college; I have 28 students currently in the class. It is very exciting to participate in the training of those men and women that will soon take the Gospel to different parts of the continent. By God’s grace we have students in the class from South Sudan, Congo and Kenya, though the majority are from Zambia. We feel so privileged to have been sent by the Lord to serve at CABC and participate in the spread of the gospel in Africa through the teaching of his Word.
I am also teaching the letters to the Corinthians, which has been a real blessing to my life as I spend time in the Word in preparation for my lectures. This class is taken by those who are in their last semester at CABC, so they are the most theologically mature students. This has challenged me to be more intentional in my exegesis of the letters to be able to present a more complete content to my students.
Furthermore, the college recently had the privilege of receiving a group of men led by Pastor Mark Dever of Capitol Hills Baptist. He taught a one day seminar for us on the topic of congregationalism. We opened the invitation to many leaders and pastors in the country and we had around 270 people in attendance.
So we praise God for the impact CABC is having in Zambia.
As many of you know, a couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of traveling to Mozambique to train a group of leaders in some remote areas of the northern part of the country. CABC has a program of theological studies by extension which means that we go to different locations of Zambia and the continent of Africa to train pastors and leaders for a few days at a time. Ministering in Mozambique has been one of the most challenging things I have done in Africa, especially considering the spiritual oppression in that part of the continent.
For one week I taught a class on how to study the Bible, but at the same time I had to teach them many basic things of the Christian Faith that most of us take for granted. It is very common in a religious culture such as this to aspire to the office of pastor only to enjoy the benefits that it brings (respect, admiration, money, etc.). Because of that, several of the leaders present in the class were not even believers. There were also several polygamist pastors that have never learned anything different. However, the most difficult situation was that, because of traditions and extreme lack of Bible knowledge, some of them did not understand that the Bible and witchcraft do not go together. Nonetheless, I had the opportunity to share the Gospel with some of them and to confront all of them with Biblical teaching. Also, as we went through the biblical qualifications for pastors, I confronted some of them with the fact that they need to quit the ministry until such a time when they are biblically qualified. Therefore, we ask you to pray that the lessons they received will have a lasting impact in their lives.
Finally, I was also able to preach the Gospel in some churches in other villages nearby. Some of the headmen or chiefs from different villages came to hear the preaching and encouraged many of the villagers to attend. I was actually the first missionary to ever visit those parts of Africa.
We thank all of you who have been praying for our ministry at Kitwe church. As many of you know, we recently joined this young church where the Lord providentially brought us to serve. We have been helping disciple young believers, share the Gospel with the many regular unbelieving attendees, as well as hosting a weekly Bible study at home. Kitwe church is a multiethnic church; we have people from about 15 different nations that attend the church. All this presents a lot of challenges, but it is also a great opportunity to share the Gospel with people from so many nations.
We currently meet at a temporary location but we will soon move to our permanent location within the city; the move will be on the 4th of November. We are planning a big event to invite hundreds of people to this celebration, so we ask you to pray for this big day.
We also want to thank all of you who were praying for me during the time I battled with malaria, thankfully I am feeling better now. I did, however, experienced God’s grace in a very unique way. I had to preach last Sunday, the day when my malaria was worst. I got up early, prayed for a while and asked the Lord to give me strength as I really wanted to preach. Thankfully, right before the service my fever stopped and I felt much better, so I did preach, but as soon as the service was over, the fever came back and got even worse, but I was able to preach. I was, however, so overwhelmed to see what the Lord did in my body, spirit, and through the preaching of the Word. We praise God for his amazing grace!
Paola and Asher are doing very well. Paola will be traveling for a women’s conference in Indianapolis for a few days next week where she will also meet several women from our sending church in Mexico. Please pray for her as she travels.
Finally, please pray for Pastor Noah and the church in Mindolo. Though the church continues to grow in the knowledge of Christ, the spiritual battle has been fierce as they have struggled with some issues in the church. Please intercede for Pastor Noah so that he will handle everything with wisdom and love.
Prayer Requests
- For the ministry at Central Africa Baptist College
- For our ministry at Kitwe church
- For the Church in Mindolo, that the Lord would keep the believers faithful to him
- For Paola as she travels out of the country for a few days