Category: Ministry

One of the ministry tools we use a lot is a map. The mission has a nice program that we can use to produce maps in the local language. We took the maps and print them in poster sizes and laminated them. We have several maps that we use in this way. We have seen […]

Thursday evening at about 8pm I (Elin) was browsing through some of our documents, checking dates and so forth, when suddenly I saw that my work permit/visa had expired the end of LAST month! This sent us into a bit of a whirlwind as we started making calls to find out what we had to […]

Spirit possession is a key factor in Mwinika religion. There isn’t a single Mwinika that we know of that isn’t a part of one or more spirit possession cults. Behind every house you find pots that contain medicine related to these cults. Sometimes you see these pots in more conspicuous places. A friend of mine […]

We had a short week on account of the rain on Thursday, teaching through only three lessons. On Monday we taught the sacrifice of Isaac, on Tuesday the story of Jacob and Esau, and on Wednesday the first part of the Joseph story. Thursday’s lesson completing the Joseph story will now be taught on Monday. […]

The Mwinika people call a rainbow “mudhako wa Mariya” and it means “Mary’s belt.” I assume there is some Catholic connection but all the Mwinika know it by that term whether they are Catholic or not. This morning I went outside and saw this rainbow. It struck me that this was the first rainbow I […]

Strike 1 – Today was a public holiday. We thought it might affect the teaching a little but we didn’t change our teaching plans most of the people attending wouldn’t know it was a public holiday. Strike 2 – Later in the morning we heard there had been a death in the village and the […]

Week 6 is complete. We have taught 24 of the 70+ lessons that we have prepared so we are about 1/3 of the way through. This was a week of contrasts. For one thing, on Monday we had our biggest group in attendance since we started teaching, on Thursday we had the smallest. Fluctuating attendance […]

There are two main religions present in the village here as well as several others that the locals are familiar with. When we first moved to the village we were asked which religion we came to represent. We said we came to teach God’s word and not to promote a specific religious group. One of […]

Thank you for your prayers regarding the lesson on Abraham’s sons. The day we taught that lesson (Wednesday) the Lord allowed for a higher number than usual of religious leaders to attend the session. We started by reviewing some background that we taught in the earliest lessons (see the post called “The trunk and the […]

As we taught the lesson regarding Babel and dispersion of the various people groups we spent some time tying that in to some of the ways Satan operates. We taught that Satan and his evil spirits had a goal of keep all of the various groups from trusting God. They developed various strategies for different […]