The Zambezi Gospel Church was founded by an Australian missionary, Joseph Booth, in 1892. In 1964, the leadership of the church was transferred to the indigenous people. From 1964 to 1986 there were only 35 ministers. They served in 50 mother churches and in 100 subsidiary churches.
In 1987, a biblical college was established to prepare leaders of planting new churches. Every year we graduate around 20 to 30 pastors. They received a diploma with the contingent to open a new church. Every 2-3 months they went to evangelize. Thanks to this training our union has grown several times. At the moment, funding for the Bible college has stopped, and we were forced to close it. But since we still have the building, we want to provide courses for pastors who want to plant new churches.
We have 5 districts in the north of Malawi where Islam dominates. Here we would like to establish new churches. We wish to train 20 pastors during the year, who will begin this ministry in Malawi and Mozambique. The cost of accommodation, food and tuition per person will be $ 100 per month. We believe that this ministry is pleasing to God!
Malawi has a population of 18.1 million, and 40% of them are young people under the age of 15. Most children have lost both parents. Many families are headed by an older child who takes care of the younger ones. Economic difficulties force children to go to the streets and beg, or steal.
Children need both, daily bread and the Word of God. We would like to lend a helping hand and invite them to the children’s camp. Here they will experience the love of God, and will be able to eat plenty. We have not conducted children’s camps before, but we see this as an unique opportunity to reach not only the children with the Gospel, but also the parents, we, for our part, are ready to do everything to start this ministry!
Please send us workers who can teach our people how to effectively conduct children’s camps. Share your experience with us. Through this ministry, many children who have never heard of Christ will be able to get to know Him. It is not difficult for us to gather 200-300 children for several days in the camp. Help us to make it happen. To sustain one child in the camp will cost us around $3.00 daily. Thank you for participation in this ministry.
I have over 300 children as each month more children are registering. The children who do not know Jesus are just too many. I would like to bring more children to Christ. There are serious threats for our children as Islam is growing so fast and they are enticing children to join Islam. The Muslim Community takes advantage of the poverty in our community and uses money, food, clothes, and scholarship. Most of our children are coming from very poor families, who cannot afford such things.
Camp meetings will help to bring many children & youth to Christ. I will invite them to attend such camps in order to reach them for Christ. This concept is new in Malawi that is why I would like to invite your team to come and train us. After training we will be able to train other congregations.
I am also a youth leader. Youth Camp will also be required to reach out our youth I will need your assistance. We have limited resources to motivate and reach out other youths. This will be treated as a training of youth or empowering the youth spiritual growth and training them to reach out the lost.
National youth leaders need your assistance too to develop it to reach out its fellow youths in the country. Our youth needs recourse to enable it trains its leaders for effective leadership. Major priorities are training in discipleship and spiritual leadership. We would be glad if you can assist us with such training or funding such trading programs. We have a little over 10,000 youthmemebrs who we would like to train and use for the great commission.
The youth program has been extended from churches to public institutions like primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities. We have access to both government and private institutions to share the word of God. With your help we could do more as far as training and equipping the church for ministry. Well trained youth is a very important tool for the expound of Gods kingdom.
Psalm 127:3-5 3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
GIRLS BRIGADE
We also have another department of girl child empowerment. An African girl is disadvantaged because of cultural beliefs. Women have been treated not as equal partners but were taken like a property of a husband. Because of this cultural understanding, girls has been denied opportunities to go for higher education like their male counterparts.
This department helps young girls to rediscover her identity as God created them in His own image. Young girls are freed from bad cultural practices and develop them to serve her family and God as intended. Girls are trained how to take care of her home, children and her husband according to the Word of God
On this picture are the national leaders of the department of the Girls Brigade. I will need your support to equip this group as well as to make resources available for training needs.
Girls are the majority of our members. They are dedicated but without resources we have too many challenges.
We held an evangelist service at the end May 2019. Ten Thousand of people gathered to listen to Good News. The group that arrived to serve in Tanzania consisted of 27 people. Among them were evangelical pastors, counselors, photographers, and cooks who were especially concerned about the safety of our food.
In the morning they held discipleship seminars. In the evenings, we called for people to follow the Lord. The number of people who responded ranged from a few hundred to a thousand and a half. When interacting with people, we saw that a certain part of society is involved in occultism. People carry the imprint of occult religions in which they and their ancestors were immersed. During prayer, when the name of Jesus Christ was proclaimed, many people fell to the ground unconscious; these were the first signs of being possessed by demons. Many brothers picked up these people and carried them out of the field so that the crowd whould not step on them. Among the posessed were very young people who needed to be freed from demonic forces.
During the summer this year, we are to hold ministries for the first time in Damascus. The doors opened for the US. In Syria, they are waiting for us, and we have the boldness of the Lord to go and preach the Gospel. We ask the people of God to support us by prayer in this spiritual struggle.
Please pray for us to be able to pay for our travel expenses on time. May our Lord be exalted!
Vicki, a widow from South Sudan who currently lives with her four children in the “Bidi – Bidi” refugee camp in northern Uganda has finally received her long-awaited prosthesis! As we wrote in our previous update, she lost her right arm after an accident, which further aggravated the situation of her family!
After getting Vicki to know, we promised to help her with the prosthesis and buy her a mechanical embroidery machine. When we were returning from Moyo to the capital, Kampala, Vicki traveled with us. A day later, she was already at the doctor’s office at the Hospital. And a few weeks later, she was finally done, and now has a temporary, but artificial arm. Now she can finally work with both arms, to sew and but also support the material with the other.
Vicki loves embroidering patterns for a tablecloth and, until recently, she had to do everything with her left hand. She spends hours on this painstaking and delicate work so that she can sell it at the local market and buy food for herself and her children. At the end of May, we found a mechanical embroidery machine in Kampala and bought it for Vicki. We believe that the machine will help her to provide for her family!
Thank you for not forgetting the orphans and widows!
In 1964, Malawi gained its independence from the UK! About 17 million people live in this small African country in the southeast. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. There is a high percentage of HIV infected people. One of the leaders of the local union churches, Willard Muvalo, told us until recently everyone in the hospital was using the same needle to take blood. The disease spread and was ignored for a certain time and forbidden to talk about. Infant mortality is also high.
The church in Malawi, despite the economic difficulties, is growing. Over the past 30 years, the union “Zambezi Evangelical Church” has grown 10 times. Starting with several dozen churches, they now are up to several hundred churches. Such growth was contributed to the training pastors received when they could not complete a theological school and didn’t know how to plant a church! They asked us to continue training for the pastors who want to plant new churches.
We invited over 200 people to the pastoral conference. We paid for the food and the arrival of some of the ministers. Pastors from the most remote corners of Malawi arrived first with their wives in Blantyre. The practical classes were well received. Talking to their wives from heart to heart, taking her hands and looking into her eyes, they never tried that before. And here we had to step over some cultural barriers. We spoke openly about many things that prevent us from serving God. After the service, they sincerely asked us to continue such training!
