Thursday, November 19, 2009

Bainbridge and Baptisms

I just got back from a great week in the bush! I got to go out with one of out teams from Georgia to one of the more southern people groups here. This people group has been notably hard to reach, but God has been so faithful to lead us to a few seekers. One man, Peter told them on a previous trip that he had been waiting 30 years for believers to come. Shortly after, his best friend, Paul, got saved. We have had the privilege of watching them grow and share their faith with people in their village and nearby villages. Both of them have experienced a lot of persecution, especially Paul. He told us the day he became a believer that he would be persecuted, and he was right. He was kicked out of his village and had nowhere for him or his family to live. They told him that he had too much influence on the young men
and they did not want the young men to stray from their muslim faith. He was eventually let back into his village, but he had to promise that he would not try to share Christ with anyone in his village. A couple months ago, he was on a trip to a different city and when he came back he found out that his one-year-old daughter had died of malaria. Because he was a believer, no one was with his wife. She had been alone there with the little girl's body and no one even cared.Through all of this, though, the church there is growing. They now have 50 believers who are meeting together regularly! Praise God! We talked to them on this last trip about the importance of being baptized, and they agreed. Baptism is hard here because it opens them up to even more persecution as they are truly abandoning the muslim faith, but they bravely went forward with it. Please continue to pray for these Christian leaders as they continue to endure through persecution and evangelize their area. They told us that they knew the only way to get through the persecution was to continue to witness. They needed more believers so
that they could encourage each other and work together. Pray for more believers to be added to this number!

Other news, I'll be coming home in a month for 2 weeks for Christmas! I'm so excited to get to see my friends, family, and America for a little while!