In June of this year we started a discipleship-toward-leadership program to prepare the Hewa believers to appoint their very first elders and deacons at our location. Our plan was to train the ones the Lord was obviously preparing for leadership, by teaching them key lessons that they could take to their homes and re-teach at night. Our focus was to disciple them toward taking a more active role in shepherding their own relatives. Little did we know the Lord had already been working in hearts to prepare them for this very time.
One of the subjects we covered in the early lessons was the stages of spiritual growth, starting with rebirth and progressing toward the kind of maturity and wisdom that expresses itself in the Lord’s heart of love and service. We showed how we are all at different stages of spiritual development and that as they seek to help their family members grow toward maturity, they need to first make sure that each person has turned from trusting in their own good behavior to trusting that the payment Jesus made on the cross has made them right in God’s eyes. After the leaders-in-training took the lesson on being born-again back to their homes, they returned with excitement talking about how some family members realized they were trusting in their good works rather than Jesus and how some of them had asked the Lord for forgiveness based on the payment of Jesus on the cross.
As we have continued our focus on discipleship toward maturity over these last few months, excitement has been growing as the leadership trainees have been sharing stories of how their family members are interacting with the Lord. It was obvious God was working in hearts through their daily evening studies.
Now more recently, as we have concluded our studies and have turned to a time of prayer to seek the Lord for guidance before appointing church leaders, we have been talking about holding a baptism for new believers who would like to publically display their trust in Jesus. We were pleased when we held our first meeting on October 5, and listened to each person tell us about their spiritual journey and how they came to the point where they trusted in Jesus. We were happy with eight clear stories of spiritual re-birth. But then more people arrived, saying they also would like to give their testimony in preparation for baptism. On the 6th of October ten more people articulated trust in the blood of Jesus to make them children of God. But then more people arrived so we met again on the 7th of October where seven more people shared faith in Jesus. But more people arrived and asked us to gather again the next evening so on the 8th of October eleven more people confessed turning from religious attempts to satisfy their sin debt, and on the 9th of October ten more told of trusting in the sacrifice of Jesus! That’s not all. Our own daughter, Mikenna, would like to publically express her faith by baptism along with the others. Over the last days as we have been planning the baptism in a nearby creek, a few more people have requested we listen to their testimonies also. We are very excited about what the Lord is doing and are looking forward to the baptism this coming Saturday, October 13.
We have been very encouraged listening to the testimonies as the variety of stories have shown that the Lord has used many different ways to plant his seeds of faith over these recent years, many by the evangelistic outreaches of our Bible teachers in nearby villages. Then more recently those seeds were watered with deep conviction of sin through the teaching of Revelation in 2016, and with the visual aid of the Jesus Film, and now with the discipleship course. Praise the Lord with us for how he is drawing many Hewa tribal people to Himself. And please pray for Saturday’s baptism service and for the recognition of the new Hewa elders and deacons on Sunday.
And also, please don’t forget to pray for the health of our co-workers, the Georges, as they would very much like to come back to Hewa to continue with discipleship and teaching ministries early next year.