20 baptisms in Chimala, Tanzania

CHIMALA BIBLE INSTITUTE EVANGELISM REPORT

The following is an Evangelism report from one of our CBI teachers, Joseph Haonga. You will be blessed in reading this report. Chad Wagner

Greetings we hope that God our creator is with you all.

Here at CBI we are doing well and have finished the year of our school with great blessings from our heavenly Father.  We have done a lot these few weeks in classes and evangelism as follows:

We had a wonderful seminar with the Form IV graduates at Herring Christian Secondary School with 58 students were taught about sin and it effects, the church, and God’s plan of Salvation. The students had a lot of questions; like, “if there is only one true church what are the conclusions of those denominations?” Really, they understood the truth although they made their heart hard to repent and being baptized. They just promised to do later. This seminar was organized by Remmy Mfaume (HCSS Bible Teacher), Lenkos Mkwama (Elder at Mission Church), and Alphonce Simion, one of our CBI graduates this year.

Second, we have several village trips with students, teachers and preachers at Mapangala, Tukuyu, Mabadaga, Mbalizi and other areas for preaching the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Fortunately, we had our practical evangelism campaignn for one week at Igurusi Church of Christ where our students attended accompanied with teachers, preachers and Christians from various congregations. It was wonderful for our students to have experience in public preaching, house to house and congregational seminars.  As the results of this week of practical evangelism, five souls were added to the Lords church.  

We had great time around the Chimala Mission as the efforts of the dedicated student results 5 souls have been added to the Kingdom of God.  Also, we have 2 souls at Mbalizi and one soul at Ilongo.

It was a shocking thing at Tukuyu this last week after the devotion when three people received the Gospel and ready for baptism. When they were in the car to the river, one restored Christian died in the car. Really was a very hard time because this brother, Anthony Mwaihojo, attended the preaching school at Kitekelo in the 1960’s and he was back sliding for long time. But when we start the church at Tukuyu, we met with him and he was one of the members there for two weeks before his death. He left his family Sunday morning with the message that if anyone wants to worship God among of his family, they must be a member of the Church of Christ. We thank God for all because of his funeral. We had a great opportunity to preach about Christ and His church and many people was amazing the way Church of Christ teaching and doing. Some have already invited us for more teachings for Tukuyu. We had 5 Baptisms for a total of 20 for this month.

Thanks for your prayers and support. 

Joseph Haonga and the Chimala Bible Institute Team

They're excited in Wotutu, Cameroon!

Dearest in Christ,

Greetings from Cameroon. We are doing great and God is blessing us with many good things. All our hearts and minds in Wotutu congregation now is tilted towards the upcoming events.

Students are better in health and all of them are back on campus after the 3 days given to them to go back home to discuss graduation plans and other things with families. Keep our students and staff in your fervent prayers as this period, that God will take us through to the end without any problem.

Last week went on well and we already have brother David Ballard and sister Jackie here in Cameroon, brother David will teach a short course while sister Jackie came to help many sick people as a nurse. After worship today, she started with our Christians to check their health conditions for free. The news about a medical person in Wotutu congregation attracted many unbelievers to come seeking their way to see her for health reasons. Keep them in your prayers as the serve in the capacities that God has called them to Cameroon.

 All our plans are towards the end of year activities that is coming up in Wotutu. Pray for a smooth success.

Please pray for the many brethren who are preparing and planning to come to Wotutu for the events. God bless you all.

Your brother, 

Elangwe

Campaign results from Arusha!

Greetings Everyone,

This week we are VERY happy to say that we finally have working internet!! We apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused. Thankfully now we should be more consistent with being able to send the reports. Thank you all for your patience in this. 

Please keep in your prayers those who are our new brothers and sisters in Christ from the Arusha Campaign. It was very successful and all the glory goes to God! Please continue to pray for everyone involved in the follow up work from this campaign. It was a blessing to be a part of.

We are also very thankful to everyone who came with the Mt. Juliet group for this campaign. They were such a blessing to us and we pray that they will be able to return next year and many years to come, Lord wiling! 

We apologize for not sending a regular report out last week, but we wanted to have the final and most accurate numbers and information to put in the report. 

Thank you all for being a part of this great work. May God bless you for blessing others. 

To see the full report with pictures, click HERE

In Him,

Mason and Hale 

Exciting news from Zimbabwe!

One of the newest Bear Valley extensions is in Gweru, Zimbabwe and I could not be any prouder of these men than I am! They have hit the ground running and you will enjoy their latest report HERE. 

An update from Ukraine

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

rrogers33@hotmail.com

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