One of our teachers in Ukraine, Andrew, has sent us a very informative report about how things are going in Ukraine. The pictures he includes won't be seen on the news, but our brethren continue to need our prayers. See Andrew's report HERE.
More souls added in Tanzania!
More Souls Added to the church
For the past few weeks Arusha church family has been blessed to have 16 evangelists from various congregations to aid with the pre-campaign work going on at the Arusha church of Christ. These evangelists have devoted themselves to go out in the community and attempt to reach many with the Gospel. Over the past 9 days, 4 souls have been added to the Kingdom. We are so glad that brother Erick and his wife were baptized; we have been studying with these two for the past two months. Please pray for these new babes in Christ as they begin their spiritual journey.
This week in Arusha
Our brothers and sisters from Mt. Juliet church of Christ in Tennessee (USA) have join our effort since October 27th as we go out and begin studying. We had set up 87 classes and God is so good since 36 more souls have been added to His church. One baptism was a result of our radio program, Irene Hassan come from a Islam religion, she was following our studies in the radio since May 2016 and she was persuaded by the truth. She called us through our number and came to worship service for more studies, after answering all of her question about salvation and the church, she realized that she was totally lost. She was then baptized into Christ and she is very happy. She said “ I now came to the end of my searching the truth thank God”.
On Sunday we had a wonderful worship service, our average attendance was 154 including children. We had brother Daniel teaching a bible class on serving. Our brother David Burca taught a new convert class about the one true church. We had a very good sermon during the worship service by our brother David Shanon on the 1 Timothy 3:15. Truly we were blessed to have our brothers and sisters from USA. Keep the new converted souls in your prayer.
Thank you our brothers and sisters from abroad for your love and desire to serve our God. Knowing that your labor is not in vain.
In Him,
Godfrey Mngoma
Dean of Students, Andrew Connally School of Preaching
A Bear Valley Bible Institute of Denver extension school
Arusha, Tanzania.
Great news in Chimala!
I’LL TAKE ONE!
We are so very thankful to God and His great mercy for all that He continues to do for us here at Chimala. We see the seeds of growth growing and taking root in many aspects of our work here in Tanzania. We are also seeing the fruits of hard work and perseverance at the school at Chimala. One of the great blessings of God lately is the huge number of students expressing interest in attending school at Chimala.
As of today, we have 10 students who would like to start in January in the English program and we have 20+ who would like to start in January for the Swahili program. That would mean we would have almost 50 students at Chimala! Many of these students have been waiting for a spot to open up to join the school. We have had to limit the number of students due to the lack of student support. However, we know that if God has brought them to us, He will bring us what we need to see it through. We know that you can help us meet the needs of these students and the church here in Tanzania. It costs $125 to train a preacher student here at Chimala. We know that God can work through you as you partner with us here at Chimala. Why not take one in 2017??!!
ROGER’S FAMILY BEGINS MINISTRY AT CHIMALA
We are very thankful to God for Richard and Carol Rogers coming to Chimala. We know that the Lord will bless them in their commitment to the work here at Chimala. They arrived a few weeks ago and have been fitting in nicely in the operation at Chimala. Willing to teach and preach, Richard has quickly become involved in everyday life here at Chimala. We are also thankful for his wife and her helpful attitude in the work at Chimala. May God continue to bless them in the work here.
GRADUATE INTERVIEW
CBI will soon have another graduation so we would like to share some of the thoughts of our students with you regarding CBI and the work in Tanzania.
Alphonce Simion is one of our English graduates this year. He comes from Kyela which is on the border with Malawi. He is married with six children. He came to CBI for “further studies of God’s Word.” He also has this to say about CBI: “After graduation, I would like to be a teacher of the Gospel of Christ. CBI is my favorite place. The cooperation which I had with the teachers and the classes influenced me so very much in my studies at CBI. Also, the work that the missionaries are doing has been a big influence on me as well.”
As you can see, CBI is a great place to be. We will be featuring more students and their comments in the coming weeks.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
May the God of all peace continue to bless us in our ministries and work. We know that He continues to bless the work at Chimala. We also ask that you continue to pray for the work at Chimala. We are enabled to do the work due to your prayers.
Thank you,
Chad Wagner
Finals and graduation approaching in Cameroon
Dearest in Christ,
Greetings from this end and join with us to appreciate God for the month of October which came with lots of blessings and challenges to us and the work in our hands.
We do hope this reports meets you in good health and a sound faith. Things are going on well here and lots of preparation for the end of year activities in Wotutu is going on in our congregation and the school of preaching.
The last week long course successfully came to an end with revisions from different instructors. Greek language was one of the courses that came up twice during our schedule , we sacrificed spare time to make sure the students gather good knowledge from Greek . Keep them all in your prayers as they will start long courses final exams tomorrow morning.
Examination fever is common with some students in different institution, but our students are not scared for the final exams. Some students will refuse to do any other thing in other to have enough time to prepare for their exams, but our students because they think souls and weekend evangelism is very important in the life of the school. They were on a rough road where our van and small car cannot make it, so we drove to a reasonable distance where our van is safe, stopped, and continued the journey to save souls on a motor bike to reach Bova village, which is behind the Cameroon mountain.
Annual Bible lectureship, graduation, matriculation and celebration of the 10th anniversary of the wotutu congregation is almost here. The program remains 23-27 of November 2016 and all roads leads to Wotutu. Keep these programs in your prayers as we are expecting close to 5000 to 6000 people all over Cameroon.
Your brother,
Elangwe
BVBI-Wotutu, Cameroon
The Director in India reports
Dear Brethren in Christ,
Greetings to you in the precious name of Lord Jesus Christ our saviour. By the grace of God and your prayers I have arrived in India safe and feel very glad to be back home. I was really excited to see my wife and daughters after a long time. However, it was a wonderful time to visit the brethren and share the progress of the Lord’s work in India.
I was delighted to meet brother Mark Reynolds other brethren during this visit, that makes my visit very special. It was pleasure meeting brother Mark Reynoldswho recently took over the responsibility of working as Coordinator for the Bear Valley schools in Asia. It was wonderful to talk about our future plans to work together in India in our first meet itself, this tells how much excited he is about the Lord’s work in India. We are looking forward to working with him soon.
I have been busy ever since I returned home. So many events have taken place during the time of my visit to USA. Even though these have happened in last four months time period, they absolutely convey the busiest schedule we had at our school.
Master Classes: We had two sessions of master classes conducted by brother Denton Landon and Jerry Bates. Brother Denton visited in the month of July and brother Jerry visited in the last September and first week of October. I really thought I would get to visit brother Jerry bates upon my arrival, unfortunately I missed my connecting flight to India from Newark so my journey was delayed for 24hrs, this made me to miss brother Jerry Bates, however I had the opportunity to talk to him about various issues of our school.
We are certainly privileged to resume the Classes for this Master Class batch, earlier batch was unable to fulfil required amount of work, due to which that class was cancelled. Brother Garry Fallis under his kindness has agreed to start another batch from this July. Brother Denton was the first person to teach this batch of students. We had an enrolment of 9 students for brother Denton’s classes and two others joined during the classes of Jerry Bates. According to what I heard from the students, they are very thankful to Bear Valley for conducting these Master Classes, they are very helpful not only for them personally but also very useful to teach their home congregations.
During the visit of brother Jerry his wife Paula visited with him. She almost wants to keep her calendar busy. We were able to hold classes for Women & Preacherswives at our school premises, sister Paula always does a great job of teaching these women.
Brother Denton Landon during the Weekend break has visited Skinner’s Garden and preached at couple of congregations and witnessed three young ladies being added to the Church.
Gospel Campaigns: During the last four months our students have done two Gospel Campaigns in two different districts. Our students certainly gets a hands on experience during these campaigns. Before they go out of the preacher Training school they would learn to speak to strangers about Christ our Lord. During these campaigns they conduct personal Bible studies, Bible Classes and Gospel meetings. As a results they witnessed 9 people being added to the Church. We do hear from our students time to time about the addition of souls to their congregations.
State wide Fellowship Meeting: Congregations in the state of Andhra Pradesh have decided to meet twice in a year at a certain place in the state to have a fellowship meeting. This is to help each other to grow in the faith and build up in unity. These meetings have been giving great results in the brotherhood, our students were privileged to attend this meeting travelling for 12 hrs on train. Director of the School M. Samuel Raju has lead our group for this special meeting. Our group has gotten the attention of the 600 preachers that represented various congregations in our state. In this way our school was well notice among the brotherhood.
Gratitude: We are very thankful to the brethren at Lake Houston for their kind support and much thankful to the brethren at Strickland for their continued Oversight. I really had a great time to visit with both of these congregations during this visit, this has helped increased our relationship and continued trust and confidence. We would look forward to keep up great relationship for betterment of the Lord’s work India, especially training the Men. If everything goes well a group of 14 students will receive their course completion diplomas in the month of April’17, kindly pray.
There are more to come in my next email with more updated information about our Preacher Training program in Visakha. All the staff, faculty and students of our school convey their heartfelt greetings to you all. Kindly pray for us that our efforts may be successful in rescuing the lost souls.
Please greet your family and the Church family for us,
In Christ,
John Dean M
Visakha Valley Bible College
Church of Christ, Visakhapatnam.
A.P - INDIA
Classes resume in Ghana
SOUTHERN INSTITUTE OF BIBLICAL STUDIES
(BEAR VALLEY EXTENSION PROGRAM)
REPORT FOR THE MONTH OFOCTOBER, 2016
GRATITUDE
We wish to express our heart felt gratitude to the Almighty God for the spiritual blessings He continue to shower upon all of us. On behalf of the director, the teaching staff and the students body, I express our appreciation and gratitude to the sponsors of all the extension schools of the Bear Valley Bible Institute of which Southern Institute Of Biblical Studies (SIBS) is part of it. We pray more blessing for them. So also do we pray for our coordinator, Brother Steve Ashcraft.
LAND PROPERTY
I wish to put on record that final payment had been made for a piece of land the school intended to buy. SIBS can now boast of a land of her own. However, documentation is yet to be completed at the Land Commission. Hopeful, students population would be increased when a school building is put up.
SCHOOL REOPENS
The regular students are back from the holidays. Classes began on 10th October with all the twelve students present. Six courses would be taught within this quarter. This is last quarter to end the first year for the regular students. Nevertheless, the week-end classes is on going without break. Their number had increased to fifteen (15) strong young men.
BRAVO
Management would like to congratulate our teaching staff for the able manner and self-less effort they had been contributing of training and building our students up.
CAMPAIGN
Interestingly to note that our students continue to visit sister churches on every Sunday as part of their training. The Lord’s church at Buduburam (a refuge camp) had requested for the services of two of ourstudents namely: Brothers James Borniea and Alexander Opa Zulu. They would visiting the church on every Sunday.
FOLLOW-UP
A follow-up program is being put in place so that our past students would be monitored. This program would help management to ascertain the progress of our graduates.
Compiled by Emmanuel Amoo-Gyimah
My visit to Cambodia
I bring you greetings from Cambodia, which is where I am sending this report from. I have been blessed to be able to teach a seminar on the topic of Leadership, as well as meet with the teachers of the school. I was also blessed with the opportunity to teach two addditonal bible classes.
I can't brag on the teachers enough! I have witnessed their growth in the past few years and I am encouraged by it and proud of them. I was also impressed by the students, who are in their 2nd year of study. Please continue to keep them in your prayers, as they grow in their faith, to be a light for Christ in a country that is 95% Buddhist.
Yours in Christ,
Keith Kasarjian
An entire denominational church converted in Togo!
Yes, you read that correctly! Willie Gley has sent us a very encouraging report from Togo and you will want to read it HERE.
A great youth camp in Nepal!
Greetings to you all in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May grace of God, love and peace always be with you.
We are always busy in the Kingdom of God. We had preacher's lectureship last month of September. We could able to do youth camp this year. Due to political strike and the border blocked, we couldn't able to do youth camp last year. This is good timing for youth people to refresh themselves by God's word from book of Daniel and some games, Christian movies, and picnic.
All our classes went well with some discussions. Arun, Gajendra and some of our graduated youth students lead main classes. We had some games for fund. We had farewell program, more games, Bible study and baptism program at picnic spot.
Without including men and women, we had 131 youth people in our youth camp. We had participants from 21 congregations of Nepal and India. We believed that our youths are doing well in their local congregations. Seven new souls were added in the Lord in this camp.
There were lots of joy and fund in our camp. All youths were enjoyed a lot. There were tears in their eyes of youths when they leaved each other. Christian love and fellowship bound them together.
We are spending our time, labor, and money at the right places of God's kingdom. We strongly believe that these youth people will encourage and motivate other youths in their communities.
We would like express our gratitude to all our visible and invisible brothers and sisters at USA, who are always supporting and encouraging God's work at Nepal. On behalf of Nepal Center for Biblical Study we are so much thankful for your generous love, financial help and spiritual encouragement.
Thank you.
Brother in Christ
Gajendra Deshar
Kathmandu, Nepal.
The latest from New Zealand
The Director of BVBI-NZ, Lance Mosher, has posted his latest report HERE. I am sure that you will enjoy reading it.
Students progress in Wotutu, Cameroon
Dearest in Christ,
Greetings from your brothers and sisters from this part of the world Cameroon. We do hope you are fine and God is using you to accomplish His work in many ways as you serve Him.
We are doing fine this way and we are glad to report to you what God is doing here through us as vessels in His hands. Students are extremely busy in school as they are rounding up with long courses in few weeks and thereafter the last course will be marriage and family. Brother David Ballard, the coordinator, will be in Cameroon to teach that to our current students alongside their wives . Keep this in your prayers for success.
Last week all the students are doing fine in their studies but few still having trouble with health, except brother Martin who traveled to his village to help the wife because there was a serious accident in Cameroon where a train went off the rails and many people died. His son was in the train he sustained serious injuries and is in the hospital for medical attention. Keep that family in your prayers please.
This weekend some students went to 5 different locations, while I took a group of students to a virgin land in Ombe village to preach and teach and to establish a new congregation. It was a call from a brother who just moved there with his wife and cannot afford to go to Mutengene for worship. We are always ready for calls like this , so we made it to that village and Christ was felt by many.
Your brother,
Elangwe
BVBI-Wotutu, Cameroon
Vocational training in Nigeria
Dearest in Christ,
Greetings from students and staff of Bear Valley Bible Institute of Nigeria & Southwest School of Evangelism, Ibadan, Oyo State. We closed all first semester classes and tests on Friday afternoon, October 14, 2016.
VOCATIONAL WEEKS:Twelve students are now with me for their vocational training in Electrician, Tailoring, Welding, Computing, Aluminum work, and Video Coverage & Editing. Ten are with Bro. Kayode Solomon Eniafe for Agric and NAPPMED while five are also in the campus for Agric (Fisheries ,etc) and the remain aged students return to their congregations to help in evangelism.
ONIKOKORO /GBONGUDU CONGREGATION : Bro. Emmanuel Okpachui led in songs at yesterday open-air Bible lectureship and Bro. Lawrence Dada taught on "Save yourselves from this. crooked generation" while Bro. Iyiola Segun served as the interpreter. On Sunday, October 16, 2016, Bro.Emmanuel Okpachui taught the woman on Preacher's responsibilities to the church while Bro. Makinde Emmanuel taught the men class and Bro. Godwin Ofem handled the children class . We are 56 in attendance with a total collection of N4,470.
AT ASEJIRE IN OSUN STATE: Bro.Kayode Solomon Eniafe reported the conversion of a soul at Asejire congregation as the result of our studentsoutreach of Saturday.
We thank you all for your love and cares. May The Lord continue to bless our work together in Jesus Christ name, amen.
I remain your fellow soldier of Master Jesus ,
Makinde Ebenezer Olufemi (Director of Studies)
BVBIN & SWSE,Ibadan,Oyo State.
The latest from the Normans
Mason and Haley Norman have been busy in Arusha, Tanzania, as well as preparing for their upcoming furlough. You can read their latest report HERE.
Campaign success in Cameroon
Greetings from Cameroon,
It is great to be on line this weekend with the report from the school and the Church. Our week was a great one with the students and the staff with whom we are doing our best to depopulate hell and to populate the kingdom of heaven which is a very noble job and pleasant to do.
Five of our students went out for weekend evangelism and all of them have come back successfully. We give thanks to God for His doing. The almighty is great and added three precious souls this week including sis Mary the wife of Philip one of our student in Mbanga and we salute that decision of her part.We keep on praying for these souls.
God bless,
Ititi Benedict Nimending
BVBI-Mbanga, Cameroon
New servants in Chimala
We arrived in Chimala, Tanzania just over a week ago. This is our first time to be in Tanzania and we will be here for the next year working with the Chimala Mission and the Chimala Bible School in particular.
I hit the ground running as I have already spoken in Chapel four times. Last Friday, October 14, I started teaching a short course on the book of Revelation to the second year English speaking students. This class will meet for three Fridays and has 3 students. The students will be graduating on November 3 and going back to their respective communities.
We (my wife Carol and I ) are excited to have the opportunity to work with the church here in southern Tanzania. For anyone who wants to follow our work we have set us a blog at rogersafricanmission.wordpress.com. We are trying to keep it up to date, but with the intermittent internet at times we are slow in updating it.
Richard Rogers
Annual Leadership Conference is a success
I am happy for the privilege God is providing me to share with you the happiest and most encouraging moment we had at Andrew Conally School Of Preaching. God is blessing this school richly by giving us opportunity to teach and serve Him. Tanzania Leadership Conference (TLC) is an event, which is hosted by Andrew Connally School Of preaching to teach Christian community. This is first conference done without our beloved brother Cy. I believe that prayers works as God promised. We have great hope and expectation to have our brother back, but all things will be done in the will of our almighty God. (Faithful is the saying, If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work).
This year theme was “seeking the office”. Over one hundred and thirty participants from sixty different congregations around East Africa attended the conference. Many churches were only able to send one or two representatives because of distance but it was amazing conference. On Sunday service (which we did together with Kisongo Church, the congregation close to school) two hundred and fifty people attended that worship.
One of the topics highly debated among the brotherhood especially in East Africa is seeking for a position in the church especially electing elders in the church. The Andrew Connally School Of preaching acknowledged that the only way it can help and serve to the Christian community is arranging seminar which may help to solve the current leadership problem in the church.
Moreover this time we had amazing and an experience teachers on the subject, who helped participants to have great desire to be leaders in the church. This seminar also intended to help our students to be more active in the churches are coming from. Apart from that, students are well trained practically to serve Lord wherever they go through this conference. This year also we were able to get people from Kigoma region, which is at the border of Democratic Of Congo, this place may be far than those who are coming from Uganda. This is to show how the gospel is penetrating to the interior.
Thank you everyone who is working with school and the church in general. Also I would like to thank all teachers of TLC who taught in this conference, always you are in our prayer support on any thing. To our supporters this cannot be done without you, always God is pleased with those who are thinking about Him first. We thank you also for your prayers and the encouragement we receive from you always.
In His service,
Ahimidiwe Kimaro
Director, Andrew Connally School of Preaching
A Bear Valley Bible Institute International extension school
Arusha, Tanzania
My visit to Tanzania
I have just returned from a visit to Tanzania. The visit had three purposes: visit with the staff and students in Chimala at the Chimala Bible Institute; visit with the staff and students at the Andrew Connally School of Preaching in Arusha; and to speak twice on the Tanzanian Leadership Conference.
As is always the case, I was blessed for having been with the brethren in both locations. In Chimala there are currently 26 students and the next graduation is rapidly approaching. This year they have ramped up their evangelism efforts and the Kingdom has already grown as a result!
From Chimala I travelled north to Arusha; a place I first visited and taught in 2003. This school currently has 27 students and has been dear to me for many years. The highlight of the visit was to see so many former students! These men are serving God in mighty ways (3 are now Directors of Bear Valley extensions) and they make their old teacher proud!
God bless our brethren in Tanzania,
Keith
New Zealand and Fiji swap teachers
The two newest schools in the Bear Valley family have been able to arrange a teacher swap, which will greatly benefit both schools. Read about it HERE.
Sister School Teacher Trade
Bear Valley Bible Institute in Fiji is just starting out, and I was blessed to be one of the first short course teachers. I taught on The New Testament Church in October. Their director, Rocco Pierce, and I will be in communication about how he and/or his son, Jason, will be able to return the favour.
Studies have continued well. Two more courses are behind us!
We have been planning our first campaign, which is to take place in January (our summer). If the Lord wills, we will work in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, to conduct a gospel meeting and invite the community to join in Bible study.
Please continue to pray for the school–both the instructors and students. We appreciate everyone who supports Bear Valley worldwide. We love you all. God bless you.
Keep serving Him,
Lance Mosher, BVBINZ Director
The French-speaking students in Cameroon
Greetings from this part of the globe,
Hope all is well with the servants of God and the chosen generation.
We are so great full to be among those who think souls because it it a vocation that most precious in the sight of God thus says the writer of the book of Romans 10:15. It is really a beautiful thought.
Our week was characterized with a lot of evangelism at down beach Limbe with the ALUMNI EVANGELISTIC MISSION TEAM combined with the students of WOTUTU and MBANGA respectively.
The team spent four good days in knocking the doors of the population of Limbe composed of both French speaking and English speaking people.They were divided into the morning and afternoon periods in other to do effective work and reach all of our demarcated area of work. Also attached to this, the open air preaching at night which was really encouraging.
The team is gradually becoming bilingual with coming of the french speaking brothers and we experienced their work in that mixed community made up of French and English speaking people. Our mission in down ended on Sunday after worship with a fellowship meal with the souls that added to the Church. A sister was restored and three precious souls were added into the body of Christ.
The dry season in Cameroon is the period where a lot of preaching activities have been organized and the month of October is a transitional period where by we do have heavy rains and good climate.
There was a seminar with only sisters of all congregations in the french speaking part of Cameroon and the Mbanga congregation represented and they spent three days. They had as part of their activity distribution of tracks along the streets of Douala and inviting people to come attend worship with the local congregation.
Thank God every body return home safely. OUR MISSION IS EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISM IS OUR MISSION. Go preach the word to every creature every where anywhere.
In Him,
Ititi
Campaign report from Cameroon
Dearest in Christ,
Greetings from this end. We do hope this report finds you in good health. We are doing our best and we have just returned from mission work in different locations; preaching and teaching the truth with all amount of boldness and zeal.
As I write this report, all of us that went out are back. I was in two locations half a day each to meet up with some pressing issues. Thanks for your prayers for safety as we travel across difficult roads and fast running rivers.
Over the weekend all the graduates of our school and the current students and students from the French school met in Down beach congregation where one of our graduates, Evang Ebage Micheal, is serving the Lord. It was great and we thank God as the lessons were good, not only to win souls into the family of God, but also to nurture the souls who are already in Christ.
More plans for evangelism will be done in Bonjongo, a virgin land and Mile four where we have a young congregation. The evangelism in Wotutu will be mild , because we are already doing more daily through our early morning preaching and our Saturday evangelism house to house.
God bless you. We thank you for all that you are doing for the work here.
Please pray for the Brightland Christian comprehensive college as we are still face lots of challenges to meet up with the government requirements and to make the dirt floor have cements on them.
Elangwe and family
By His grace Director BVBIC-Wotutu