April 2016 Missions’ update

Dearly Beloved,

Greetings in Jesus name. God has remained excellent in His dealing with us. We are incredibly grateful to Him for considering us worthy to be fellow-labourer with Him to reach the unreached people, vulnerable and orphans with the much-needed light and love of the gospel. We have seen His mighty hands since this year began and the last one month has been very great. We are grateful to you for making the work easier for us via your partnership.

AMS 2016

The 21st African Missions Summit (AMS 2016) has come and gone. We appreciate as many of you that sacrificed time to attend. Your presence was a huge encouragement. We also appreciate as many of you that prayed and gave your money to sponsor the program. It attracted almost 300 delegates representing over 30 missionary organisation/churches. God visited us and strengthened the missionaries to improve on their labour for the Lord. Some of our partners and friends also attended, and it provided a medium for them to meet with the missionaries and interacted with them on their challenges and breakthroughs. Ministries represented including our missionaries from various countries gave the report of their work. The reports fuelled prayer burden, and networking relationships were built and consolidated.

Mission Fields

Fulfilling the mission mandate - 2016 Furaka Water baptism

           Fulfilling the mission mandate - 2016 Furaka Water baptism

As usual, the work on the mission field has remained the core of the ministries operation. Every other labour is simply supportive. Our missionaries working in both local and foreign fields have kept sending news of more and more people surrendering their lives to Christ. At Furaka, 16 persons were baptized after weeks of intensive baptismal class. Thanks to our missionaries, Ayuba Ajikovi, and Ezekiel Ganagana. We have some of our brethren restored. Five of our team were at Oma in Benue State with our visiting evangelist; Elsie Govender enjoyed mighty harvest of souls there. Many sick persons had an encounter with God and testified of divine visitation.

The more we continue to extend our work to more jungles, the more the responsibilities to provide accommodation to our missionaries. In most of these fields, there are no houses to rent and where they are, they are owned by Muslims, who sometimes will prefer to hike the rent or eject the missionaries from the rented houses. The church at Libentee where the new work among the Bokko people in the Benin Republic is located is completed. We want to start a mission house to accommodate the missionaries and serve as discipleship centre. It requires fund. We just got a donation of N150, 000 from the Gospel Bankers Inc. We want to begin moulding blocks now. The work in Burkina Faso has being put on hold for two reasons; the cost of living there is so staggering and secondly the experienced mission couples to pioneer the work require more time to pray.

We continued with the project at Bolu and Zabutanci (Yerwar 2) with the support from one of our pastor friend in Maryland. The Bolu mission house (Three bedroom flat)has been fully plastered and floored.  The Yerwa mission house has been fully plastered, floored and doors/windows fully fixed now. The mission house at Ahole in the Niger Republic is currently on a standstill for lack of fund. 2500 blocks have been moulded. A land has been bought for the Tibiri work also. We estimate N3.6million for the mission house there, and the first phase may gulp N800,000 for excavation, blending forming and raising of foundation block. All these works are capital intensive. Pray with us for God to raise men of substance that will fund these projects.

Reaching the Poor and the Vulnerable

Distribution of wrappers to the poor/widows  at Oma

 It is traditional for mission agencies always to be on the receiving side, but the nature of our ministry operation is to reach the whole man which includes meeting the physical need of the people we are reaching. The Oma outreach was one of such where Grace Foundation gave wrappers to poor windows in the land. One of the men watching the distribution of these clothes busted into tears.  He testified that he once dreamt of this but never knew when and how it will come to pass. Please pray that God will breathe on this effort to bring the people closer to God. We are surrounded by many needy people.  Pray for God to continue to provide fund to use as a channel to bless the people.

On the Home of Grace(HOG), the Psalmist was correct when he remarked in Psalm127:1 that except the Lord builds a house, they that labour, does so in vain. Our children at the HOG are growing. A good number of them are teenagers now. It is entirely a new experience for us in managing them. Besides the increase in the financial term, character-wise, we count on God to tame them. On a general note, they are doing well. Yakubu came first in his class. As a reward for coming first consistently for three terms, he went on an excursion to Abuja, visited Shoprite, International airport, three churches, etc. Daniel and Jacinta came second; Michael came fourth. They are warming up for the final term for this session. Pray with us that they all remain in good health.

Mission Training

The School of Cross-Cultural Missions (SOCM) has remained our gateway to the mission field

School of Cross-Cultural Missions graduation

where missionaries are processed for the nature of the work we are called to do. We currently have sixteen (16) missionary trainees undergoing training. Seven (7) more persons including the spouse of one of them want to join, but we have financial challenge. Two of our supporting agencies suspended their scholarship last year and another fellowship for five years now. We desperately need support for some of these candidates as the only means of ensuring more labourers for the field in future. Please pray along with us in this regard.

Once again, thank you, we cannot thank you enough. May the Lord reward your labour of love in Jesus name.

Yours in His vineyard

Rev. Andrew Abah

International Director