Our dear praying and supporting friends,

There has been a number of good developments in the last two months within our ministry here in Malawi. It is always with great joy on our part to testify and acknowledge God’s grace among us. Recently as I have been thinking of what God is doing here in Malawi, I have been encouraged with two texts of scripture. from the book of Isaiah

“…the zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this,”
Isaiah 9:7

“…for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”
Isaiah 11:9

These have been good reminders for me as I shepherd God’s flock, that the work belongs to the Lord and that He will zealously fulfill all His purposes.

By the Grace of God, My Girls Are Doing Very well

Thank your for all your prayers and support toward our family. Both Rachel and I are basking in the joy of being new parents. Little Amelie is doing well and she is a great joy to us. We always wake up to lots of smiles. She smiles a lot, I believe she got that from her mother. She has grown so much in the last 2 and a half months.

We are thankful for the Lord’s sustaining hand, He has given Rachel and baby Amelie good health. Your prayers are not in vain. Please keep us in your prayers as we seek to raise Amelie in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

Preaching/Teaching

I have spent the last 2 months preaching a series of messages titled

“The Christian’s Work-Ethic: Earning a Living As God Intended.”

This has helped our church to have a basic biblical understanding of work, finance, wealth, poverty, hospitality, giving, supporting missions, and how all must serve and point to one goal, namely: the work of redemption, the furthering of Christ’s gospel for the glory of His name!

Pray for me as I am prayerfully preparing to preach through Galatians beginning January 18th.

Baptisms

I shared in my last newsletter of our preparations for baptism. We just had the joy of seeing four men make a public declaration of their faith in Jesus through water baptism. Josey Kachiza, Joshua Alexander, Lenson Mwalwanda, and Webster Moyo. I was delighted to see these men take a firm step of obedience to their Master, the Lord Jesus Christ and become members of our church.

We can only say, glory to God for He has become our salvation. As you pray for us, remember these men in prayer.

Translation

I am delighted to share with you that our church has teamed up with Hope Baptist Church (NC, USA) Sovereign Redeemer Community Church, (NC, USA) and Chapel Library (FL, USA) to translate a booklet from English to Chichewa. The book was written by L.R Shelton Jr

“Biblical Repentance: The Need of This Hour”.

The Chichewa version will be printed by our friends at Chapel Library in Pensacola, Florida.

As I write, the project has already reached the half way stage. At the moment a brother in our church is doing the first proof reading. As soon as he is done, I will do a second proof reading before sending it to another Chichewa speaking Brother in the USA, for final proof reading. It will then be sent to Chapel Library for printing. Our target is to have the project ready before 20th January.

Our church has been involved in translation work for a number of years now. We have translated a lot of small books and tracts on the gospel and Christian living. We would love to continue doing this and even organize the projects properly so we can put more sound literature into the hands of Chichewa speaking people in Malawi, and some parts of Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. We were encouraged 3 months ago to learn that some of our translation works ended up into the hands of pastors in Mozambique. In the providence of God, someone bought a few titles of our Chichewa translations and shipped them to a pastor’s conference that was taking place in Mozambique.

Christian Faith Book-Store

All these translation projects are distributed by a small bookstore that our church operates in the city. Consider praying for our bookstore which runs primarily by faith. We do believe our book store is one strong arm in the evangelization of Malawi and in a small way some parts of neighboring countries.

How Best Can We Reach Out to the City of Blantyre?

We have spent the last 2 months praying and planning for a better way to evangelize the city of Blantyre. Our church is located right in the middle of the city. How best can we reach out to the city? This has been a question we have been asking ourselves and praying about. It seems best for us to first take a bird’s eye view of the city and consider reaching out to the people based on their location.

On the map below, the labels ‘Hot-Spot’(s), represent places our church members are located and come from. These are small groups of men and women and families of less than ten people in each group, a total of six small groups. In God’s providence we have our members coming from all directions of the city. We all meet almost at the center. Beginning the month of January, we will break ourselves into small groups based on location to conduct evangelistic activities in the form of door to door evangelism, book tables, handing out of tracts in small market places, and bible studies within the neighborhoods, as indicated on the map. We will start with having our small groups go out within their locations two times a month: Each Wednesday or Saturday during the first and last week of the month.

We are very excited about this strategy and we are praying that our efforts will be effective in the spread of the gospel in this city. This is a plan on paper, in our minds and hearts, but we do not know what the actual work will look like. Reaching out based on location seems best because that way we will overcome expenses of transporting people to one location for evangelism as it has been in the past. It will be easy to follow up with people within the location and it will make it easier for us in terms of organization.

Please do pray for our plans to evangelize the city. God willing, we plan to spend all of 2015 evangelizing through these small groups. Going into these locations means that we are going face to face, confronting and being confronted by the false gospel of the prosperity preachers. These are places where it has taken root. Pray for wisdom, pray that the Lord Jesus will open people’s hearts for the gospel and give people faith for salvation. Do remember to pray for us that we will be bold and not fear to go in!

Do pray for us as we continue to reach out to the universities around us. At the moment we are taking a break because of school holidays. It gives us time to pray and re-think what we have been doing and plan better for when schools re-open.