Over 80 Moi have expressed a clear understanding of the gospel.
Thank you all for faithfully praying for this last outreach. It is with great joy that we share about the wonderful work God has done here. We along with the Moi Bible teachers were able to individually follow-up with most of the 110 or so Moi who had faithfully listened to the seven weeks of evangelistic Bible teaching. Over 80 of those have given clear testimonies of salvation. What a praise as the Moi church has grown by nearly 200%! The total amount of believers now makes up more than half of the population of adults and older children within a full days hike from Daboto, our home. Many years ago the prophet Habakkuk wrote, “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. ” (Habakkuk 1:5) He’s right. Not only have we heard about it, but we’ve seen it with our own eyes and still we can hardly believe it.
Karen and Iyodogotabo (Karen’s left) following up with some ladies
So many of those who had been entrenched in fear and were subjects of the Enemy (Heb. 2:14-15) are now liberated. People like, Apabo, who had been adamantly opposed to the gospel are now praising The Creator with tear-filled eyes. (You can see for yourself on our YouTube video “The Joy of Salvation”.) On Friday, September 24th, after the presentation of the gospel everybody was so excited they planned to return a week later to celebrate their new life in Christ. With so many adults and older people saved this time they chose to do it typical adult Moi style, by throwing a feast.
The Moi celebrated their new life by singing and dancing.
We were privileged to have some guests right after our teaching. First some of our MAF friends came for an overnight. Right after they left we were joined by some of our family friends, Jason and Jodi, (Jason is a co-leader with Rich) and Mike, our Church Planting Consultant with NTM. They stayed for four days. It was great timing as they also got to join in the celebrations with us and the Moi.
Mike (w/hat) and Jason share some encouraging words with the eight Moi Bible teachers
I’m sure many of you may be wondering how our three girls have been doing through all the busyness of the last few months. We believe because of your prayers they have not only “survived”, but truly grown. They have done so well. This evangelism has really acted as a catalyst for further growth in their understanding of the Lord and His love for sinners. We’ve been amazed at the amount of understanding they’ve shown over the last few months. To us it’s just a testimony of God’s power to not just sustain, but over-sustain those who choose to seek Him first. He has truly blessed us in an abundance.
Now that company is gone and most everybody has left, we’ve had a chance to rest a little and catch up on some things, like this update and our video.
As you can imagine, with such an expansion of the Moi church, our responsibility to disciple and lead them to maturity in Christ has grown that much more. We covet your prayers as we now endeavor to facilitate the Moi church to care for and nurture all the spiritual newborns. Many of those who haven’t reached a point of understanding the gospel really want to. We need to also take time to do some reteaching for those who are interested. Thankfully us missionaries are not alone in helping with these needs.
We can’t say it enough, thank you for your part in this endeavor. The light of Christ is illuminating the dark valleys of the over 400 square miles of Moi land. With only about 1/4 of the estimated 100 hamlets spread all over considered “reached”, the work has only begun. We look forward to sharing what God is going to do to continue to build His church here, not only numerically, but spiritually.
By His Grace,
Rich and Karen