Introduction
The Lord has been taking care of us to date in the face of a mixed package of events in the unfolding history of the institution. Our courses are progressing slowly with the eighth course almost complete. We have had sad news of the deaths of two preachers and two preachers’ wives in Zimbabwe in the months of July and August. This has been so trying to the preachers’ fraternity. There has been exciting news from different congregations on the progress of our students. The churches in Zimbabwe had a series of lectureships and gospel meetings in the month of August. We are looking forward to the resuscitation of the work in Machipanda in the month of September. We have abandoned the raising of broilers due to the increased cost of production and are now moving to our hatchery plans. There is currently a cabbage crop in our garden alongside the covo vegetables. Your school now has a patron for governance purposes. All the above items are covered in this report.
Curriculum progress
Three of our recent courses have been Life Of Christ, The Old Testament Law and The New Testament Church which is coming to completion soon. Our students have been doing well in many of these courses with a few who need to be assisted here and there. In the process of our learning you cannot avoid the obvious excitement that is evident in our students as they discover so many new things in their journey of faith. The eagerness in them is encouraging and keeps our energy high. We pray that it may continue to the end of the course.
Student Preachers’ Progress
We are excited to note that the student preachers have been engaged in different congregational activities in different congregations. We continue to encourage these congregations to involve them in worship, hospital and sick visits, funerals and other activities. To date their performance has been awesome. The preacher in Messika has given very good reports on sermon delivery and Bible classes by the IBBVM students. Both the women and men have been doing so well according to their activity forms to date and we are excited with the reports that we have been receiving. We pray that God may continue to do wonders with his vessels.