North – Blessings Ndhlovu – Twatasha
The month of February was a month of excitement and challenges. We are in the rainy season here in Zambia. November to April is usually rainy season, and in these months we often experience poor church attendance due to the rain and people going to their fields to farm or harvest some crops. Our members walk to church every Sunday, so when it’s raining some won’t show up for church service. Our evangelism efforts during February also seemed not very effective.
But, by God’s grace, February was also encouraging. On 21st February 2021, we had two committed men baptized after church membership classes. What is exciting is that these men have shown great patience and growth in God’s word. They are some of the most faithful men that we have at church. Our community is full of men that don’t want to commit. They would prefer to be regular visitors rather than committed church members.
We baptized two men, but we welcomed three persons into church membership. The wife of one of the men that was baptized was also welcomed into membership. She had a testimony of conversion and had already been baptized by the other church she was coming from. All three of these have been with us nearly three years, and the men came to know Christ through our church.
South – Enock Sakala – Kalomo
Hope Reformed Baptist Church has enjoyed an improvement in church attendance, which in turn has seen five people lodge requests to join membership. This is interesting because, after 5 years, we constituted our first membership with only 4 members. Yet barely 6 months after that, we have 5 people knocking on the door to join.
As exciting as that may be, and a point of praise to the Lord of the harvest, we are trying to be as careful as possible not to be swayed by the numbers of people who want to join membership. So we are very much in prayer for these prospective members, that the Lord will make it clear to us that they truly are brethren in Christ. Finally, we are not relaxing on the work of evangelism. In our first general members’ meeting, we resolved to make the most of the Lord’s day by rotating Bible studies and evangelism every Sunday afternoon. We want to grow in number as well as in grace.
West – Poniso Kuyumbana – Senanga
Pastor Poniso also reported 2 baptisms among the Lozi people of Western Province. In the photo to the right, Poniso can be seen looking for crocs in the Zambezi River as he wades in for the baptisms!
