While you are heating your houses at home, we have to consciously remind ourselves that the winter season is coming closer. But in our hearts we know that the birthday of our Lord is coming near and that we get to celebrate it again this year with the Dinangat believers. Even though we miss home, we are still very much looking forward to that celebration!
At this time we have the impression that the church here is a bit tired and needs some new excitement and motivation. Do you feel that way sometimes? In our weekly meetings with the Bible teachers we now talked about those things more and prayed about how we can help the church to move ahead and to get to know their God even more. Let me share a bit about how one of those meetings went:
Lukas: “I think that the families should sit together in the church service, why do we men always separate ourselves from our women?”
Felix: “And we sit way too scattered! Maybe we can build a fence or plant bushes to make the people sit closer together.”
Jaspa: “I think the young people need to be integrated more. Maybe the young girls can sit by the boys with the guitars and lead the songs together?”
Basa: “I really miss it that the older people don’t share what they have heard and learned from the sermons. They need to say more in order to strengthen our talk.”
Felix: “Yes, that’s right, and we need to encourage the people to get up and share what they have learned to encourage others also.”
Last Sunday we already saw a difference. After the sermon which spoke on how we need to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in our lives instead of listening to our old nature, some men got up and shared the following:
Boringke: “As I got up this morning and saw how the sun slowly came up and the darkness became more and more light after a while, I was thinking about my own faith and how I was in darkness, but now as I’m hearing more and more of God’s Word I understand more and my faith becomes more and more like a light to me.”
Tom: “I have something important to say. Urungneyo and Kejuk (two older women), you need to stop talking bad about the church. You are ruining the faith of many. You two need to stop quarreling around!”
Emma: “We need to truly take to heart what we have heard this morning, and we need to put it into practice. Let us all learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit!”
Next Sunday the church will receive for the first time the chapters 1-8 and 12 of the book of Romans printed in a little booklet. We are excited about the fact that we can hand out the Word of God to them. Please pray that they will get better at reading and that they will read the Word regularly and learn much from it. This week 2 NTM carpenters are here to help the church build an office. The office will be used by the Bible teachers and Literacy teachers to study and prepare their material. They will also have a storage place there for all the church and Literacy materials. We hope that this will be a great help for the church. We are sending warm greetings to your chilly fall weather and thank you for all your prayers for us and the Dinangat church.
Ralf and Elli Schlegel with Naomi, Rebekka and Mirjam