July/August 2008 Prayer Letter
Wow! What a way to return to the field after our furlough! In August, we had a week-long evangelistic campaign at our church in the village of Fumagira. Two Tanzanian pastors were invited to do the preaching for these meetings. Pastor Joas from Lamadi arrived on Sunday and preached both services to the members at Fumagira in order to encourage them to bring lost people to the meetings which would begin on Monday.
Pastor John from Bariari arrived on Monday to join Pastor Joas in preaching the meetings. Starting on Monday and lasting through Saturday, each afternoon the church members from Fumagira arrived at around 4:30 p.m. In order to attract lost people to the meetings, the church members started singing and giving testimonies over the temporary sound equipment that was set up outside of the church building. We did not use the inside of the church building for lack of sufficient space. The church building seats between 275-300, however, we were expecting larger crowds than this, so we set up benches just outside of the church building.
After singing and giving testimonies for about an hour, either John or Joas would preach a clear salvation message. Each afternoon there were between 300-600 people in attendance. God blessed in a tremendous way! We had a total of twenty-seven lost people who received Christ as their Savior. Among them was a witch-doctor and a Muslim. In our years of working in East Africa, we had never seen a witch-doctor come to Christ, neither had we ever seen a Muslim get saved. The Sunday following the evangelistic crusade, the church building was packed. Normally, the attendance for a Sunday morning service at Fumagira is around 200. However, this Sunday we had around 270 in attendance including the newly converted witch-doctor and Muslim. Pelegrino, our national assistant pastor at this church, said that both of these new believers had so many questions about the Bible and both had a great desire to follow Christ. Please pray for all of these new converts as we seek to follow-up on them.
Thank you for praying for our return to Tanzania. We arrived safely back in Mwanza on July 4th. All four of our flights went very well for which we were so grateful. It has been a joy to visit the churches that we are working with and to see our dear Tanzanian brothers and sisters in Christ once again. Two of our churches (at Igoma and Kisesa) are struggling a bit, but overall, we have been greatly encouraged by the progress made in the other churches, including our newest church plant in Igekemaja.
Thank you so much for the eternal investment that you are making in reaching Africans for Christ.