“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Romans 12:12
“Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:4
Please pray for our Bible teachers Basa, Felix, Lukas, Jaspa and Ronny. For right now they are going through a difficult time. It all started like this. Basa’s son W. (about 17 years old) had a secret relationship with a girl (about 16 years old, she is Jaspa’s sister and also Lukas’ wife’s sister) who then got pregnant. Against the will of his father, W. got secretly married to the girl with the support of Felix and Lukas. Basa is very angry about that because W. did not finish his school and now wants to raise a family without having any possessions nor money. Basa always wanted his son to finish school and also to learn a profession to be able to get a job. But now all this is hardly possible and so Basa is very much against this marriage. This is causing lots of tension amongst the Bible teachers because everyone is somehow involved. Basa is very strong on his opinion and even mentioned that he would not care to lose his work in the church over this.
Our Bible teachers are a very important core of the church and what they do and don’t do is being watched by everyone as an example. We do invest our time mostly in them for we know that once we missionaries are gone, they will be the ones leading and helping the church to grow and mature. Basa is a very good leader and teacher and we would hate to lose his part in the work.
We believe that God can use hard things to do amazing things and we want to ask you all to help us as you pray for the Bible teachers and potential elders of the church.
Great news is that our co-workers, the Markleys, made it back to us from their furlough a couple weeks ago. We are super excited to be together again with them, in fact we are a complete 3-family team now again after almost three years. It is so refreshing and encouraging to be together again and we pray that we can be as efficient as possible to do the work here in Dinangat well.
Thank you so much for your prayers for us as a team and for the Bible teachers!
Serving HIM together,
Ralf and Elli Schlegel with Naomi, Rebekka and Mirjam.