August 2008

Pack Your Purse with VISION

Feature: "Taste and See that the Lord is Good"
Organize a food-tasting of many different kinds of ethnic foods. Ask any of the women in your congregation who are from other cultures to prepare one of their native dishes, or purchase take-out meals from several different ethnic restaurants in your area. Have just enough for everyone to take a taste of all the many different flavors and textures. If possible, prepare a dish that is native to the Republic of Congo, the country of study for this month. Do not label the food, and after everyone has tasted the various dishes, ask them to guess the origin of each dish, awarding a prize to the one who gets the most correct. Reflect on the many different people groups and cultures represented by these foods, all of whom need to hear the message of the Gospel, and pray that the Lord would increase our vision and give us an eternal perspective of the task before us.

Outreach Idea:
Make a connection with a woman in your community who is from a different background than your's. This could be as simple as saying hello to someone in your neighborhood or as involved as inviting someone you don't usually speak with to have a cup of coffee with you.

Prayer Tip:
Let us remember to ask the Lord for a fresh vision and burden to pray for the lost. Every 24 hours we are closer and closer to the Lord's return. Pray that everyone who knows Christ as Savior will become a harvester.

Discipleship Thought:
We, as disciples, are to love others – particularly our enemies. Jesus said, "But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven." (Matt. 5:44)

Good to Go in Republic of Congo

By Beverly Bellamy
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times; having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. II Cor. 9:8 (NIV)

We can't engage a world in need of God's grace until we have experienced it ourselves. It is the experience of that grace which gives us the credibility and spiritual fitness to share it with others. One of our ministries in the Republic of Congo is our Alliance Bible Institute (IBAC). IBAC is designed to help pastors and lay people prepare to engage their world.

IBAC was originally two programs: a pastoral training program for our Alliance churches and a lay study program designed to minister to the larger Christian community of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire, our two major cities. Since our civil war, in 1997, we have only been able to continue the second program. These courses are month-long modules, taught in the evening. This schedule allows students who have occupations to maintain their jobs and homes and to come to study after work.

Because of this focus, our students are already engaged in various professions. They have included high school teachers, university professors, international bankers, accountants, radio announcers, merchants, a chef and his wife, oil company workers, high-ranking military officers, doctors, judges, and an engineer in the Ministry of the Interior. Among these Christians are also pastors of other church groups who have not had any way to get sound Biblical training before. Many of these pastors, who are now IBAC graduates, have begun to send their church people to IBAC as well. They want to better equip themselves to understand and communicate God's Word to their families, their churches, and the people with whom they work each day. They want to be good to go.

Ordinarily, the students come with optimism for the way that further training will expand their ministries, but many of our students can tell exciting stories of the ways that God has worked through IBAC to heal their wounded hearts and make them spiritually fit to take on the world around them.

Pauline is in her 40s. She and her husband, Benoit, have been married for some time and have grown children. Benoit, who is gifted in languages, was hired as a translator for Jane Goodall's chimp reserve near Pointe-Noire.

By the time he got hired for that position, their marriage had degenerated to the point where she didn't accompany him to Pointe-Noire. They were drifting towards divorce when she enrolled at IBAC in Brazzaville.

In the course of her studies, she was seized by the sense that God was speaking to her. She realized that He wasn't finished with them as a couple either. She started praying for reconciliation and tried to re-establish contact with her husband, Benoit.

Benoit had been a language tutor for missionaries and had made a profession of faith before the war, but had drifted away from the Lord. He saw, however, that Pauline had softened during the course of her program of studies. One night she had a dream in which she saw a baby boy on the bed in their room. When her husband mentioned that he had had a similar dream, she took this as confirmation that God would restore their home. She wanted to move to Pointe-Noire to live with her husband. She was able to transfer because there is a branch of IBAC in Pointe-Noire, so she continued her studies the second year at the Pointe-Noire campus. Amazed by the transformation in her life, he began to attend church with her.

She completed her studies, but was unable to attend graduation because she was giving birth to their son. Their son is a symbol to them of the new thing God had done in their lives. Both she and her husband came individually and expressed thanks for the school, crediting it with the restoration of their marriage. They named their son after the school.

Now each week they attend church together, as a family. Benoit, a deacon, and Pauline a deaconess, are testimonies to the abundant grace of God and the healing that He brings in order to equip his people to reach other broken lives around them.