Dear HeartCry and Supporters,
Greetings in the name of our Lord. I am grateful to the Lord for the grace and strength to continue to serve him. I have been engaged in travelling to and teaching and preaching in churches and in the open air. Thank you so much for your partnership by faithful prayers and generous supports. I have taught at over twenty local churches during the past three months. It was a great opportunity for us and the local pastors and members to be mutually encouraged by the Word and fellowship. I taught the topic of Perseverance. Christians are to remain faithful to the church and to continue to bring fruits in life as a result of the saving faith in Christ.
The gospel ministry is advancing. On the recent occasion of the dedication of another new church building, an elderly member happily told me about how he had witnessed others about Christ. This former animist priest was visited by other animist priests from nearby villages. They asked him if he felt good after he became a Christian. They asked that because they thought he would end up with misery after he abandoned animism. It seems that they have been watching him for the past three years just to see if Christianity is better than animism. For him it was a great opportunity to share his Christian experience. He told them that he is now free from the fear of evil spirits, that he has peace of heart, and that he has this blessed hope of eternal life. In my experience of gospel ministry in this context, individual witness is powerful particularly when those individuals were formerly among those whom they witness to. It is the step whereby unbelievers first become interested in this religion. Then they wait for a certain period of time to study those new Christians. They become potential converts when they have tasted Christian love, care and generosity. Therefore, we preach the Word in season and out of season being assured of this very thing that in God’s appointed time people will receive the gift of salvation through our preaching. Doing so, we continue to see a fruitful ministry. We’ve preached in the open air at different locations to hundreds of unbelievers and also baptized over thirty people.
The other HeartCry missionaries in a particular area are cheerfully laboring in the Gospel preaching and church planting ministry. A recent relocation of one of the churches there gave us a huge opportunity to spread out the gospel to a larger community. Thank you very much for your support to that congregation for a new church building. They too have preached the Gospel to many hundreds of people at five major locations in the area this month. This year we were able to reopen the Bible training center there. We had twenty students and our men are teaching them with the text books we arranged for them. The overall ministry in the region has become more active and effective. Last month they preached for two days to over five hundred locals at the new church building dedication service which you supported. They planned to teach for three days. But they were stopped by authority after two days over COVID concern because of the large crowd in the evening while they were preaching in the open air. However, there’s still another way to expend the work. They started to preach on every Sunday in two animist villages since last month. We have seen over fifty new believers baptized and were added to local churches in that area in the abovementioned events.
It is encouraging to see that thousands of people across the region have heard the Gospel and many were called to faith in Christ within the last three months through the hard work of missionaries and evangelists despite the difficult situation, oppositions, hindrances, and deficiencies. God’s is manifestly working in us (Phil. 2:13). Thank you very much for every contribution you’ve made to this ministry. May our God bless each and every one of you.
Yours in Christ,
Elijah (February 2022)
