November prayer letter

Dear praying friends,

We send you greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus.

We are rejoicing that the Lord has met our support needs for the year and that He has also provided the spiritual resources for the demands of ministry. Thank you for partnering with us through your sacrificial giving and the sacrifice of time spent in prayer. The semester has been full of activity especially in terms of speaking engagements for David. We have also proofread huge amounts of our colleagues’ written work for books and Ph.D. and Master’s theses. This year the denomination’s theme is 2 Corinthians 5:7 and we are continually challenged to “walk by faith, not by sight.” Pray we would stay connected to the Vine (John 15:5) and maintain our focus on Him in the midst of our busy schedule.

Otukpo

Praise the Lord for answered prayer for the conference in Otukpo. We were kept safe on the long journey and the response to the messages exceeded our expectation! We were very conscious of your prayers. Thanks. Please pray that those who committed and recommitted their lives to Christ would grow in their faith and stay strong in the Lord. Pray too that the Prayer and Witnessing Team would see many more come to Christ through their outreach programmes.

Graduation

Preparations for graduation on 27th November are underway. Please pray for those who are working hard to get everything in place. Pray that the students would know the Lord’s guidance as they serve Him (2 Tim. 2:15). It is expected that 118 students will graduate, among them the first to gain Master’s degrees from the Seminary.

December Outreach

This is the time of the year when the students are being mobilised for involvement in various evangelistic programmes during the Christmas break. Two groups of students plan to go to Chad and Cameroon and one group will work locally alongside missionaries from the denomination’s missions wing. The teams need the Lord’s protection and empowering as they share the Gospel in new places. Pray for a fruitful ministry.

SIM Spiritual Life Conference

We always look forward to our times of prayer, Bible teaching, worship and fellowship at our annual conference in January (5th-9th). The great food (especially freshly made donuts) is also a highlight! This year David will be part of the team leading the worship. They would value prayer as they select songs, practice together and lead us in worship.

Thanks again for your prayers.

Debbie and David

Update for September

Dear friends,

We send you greetings in the Name of Jesus our Lord.

Thank you for praying for the conference at Otukpo. It rained for almost all of the 240 mile drive there and we saw several recent accidents along the way. The conference went well with a large number of people coming forward for counselling after the Sunday morning service. Others were also counselled after the other sessions by members of the Prayer and Witnessing Team (see attached photo). We believe some people at Otukpo came to faith in Christ and others put some things right in their lives as a result of the conference. Praise the Lord! The journey home was mainly dry and accompanied by some great African scenery along the way. As we neared Kagoro, the evening sun illuminating the mountains of Plateau State was magnificent.

We arrived back at Kagoro right at the start of the new semester. Debbie has fewer students to teach this semester and she is thankful this should make it easier to keep up with the marking. Debbie has three courses to teach and I have two since I am still working as the registrar at the seminary.

Preaching opportunities seem to arrive like buses: you see none for ages and then several all come at once. In August I was asked to preach twice at Fada Gospel Church and I have three preaching engagements lined up for September. The Bible passages to consider on each occasion have already been set by other people so I know where I am supposed to preach from but I haven’t done the preparation yet. Please pray as I work on these while also carrying a full load at the seminary.

Other meetings I am involved in have to do with administration. On 8th we have a long-overdue full meeting of the Academic Committee. I am the secretary for that committee and am working on the agenda right now. SIM has its area council on Friday 3rd and I have a another meeting in connection with SIM on 24th (D.V.).

This month Debbie prepared a meal for a Mission Africa team which is working in the area for two weeks and we had Donna Pridham over for some meals since she has just returned from Canada. On Sunday we were visited by a total of 17 people. Some of these were small groups of children and teenagers who wanted to report how the recent CEF camp went. We don’t normally have quite so many people come on the same afternoon.

As always, we appreciate your partnership with us in prayer (Rom. 15:30).

In Christ,

David and Debbie