First week of training

Right now, as I write the post, several of my colleagues are out on their second observation of a real appointment with a potential ministry partner.  I write from the hall where we study, work, pray, worship and eat.  It is hard to believe that we have only been in this room for five days now.  It feels like almost two weeks considering all that we have experienced so far!

Here are some quick praise and prayer items:

• Praise God that all but one of the trainees has their minimum of forty contacts (all people they don’t know!)
• Praise God for his encouragement in the first two appointments yesterday—the response of the individuals was very positive and the trainees felt they learned a lot from the experience.
• Thank God for the sacrifice of two experienced Nigerian missionaries who are teaching us what they know about ministry partner development.  Praise God for how he has faithfully provided for them!   Their stories encourage us!
• Praise God for a successful first calling night.  It was a bit rough and unexpected things happened in many of the calls—which is just what we wanted because it was a great learning experience.  Also, nine of the ten who were making calls that night have set an appointment for Monday.
•  Please pray for the people our colleagues will meet for the first time on the Monday appointments—their first ever PD appointments with this new program.  Pray for the wisdom and peace for our colleagues.  Ask God to make these appointments not only good learning opportunities, but that these people will become ministry partners!
• Pray for the ten to fifteen appointments we hope to make daily.  Pray for God to prepare these peoples hearts to embrace the vision for Bible translation, to encourage our mission, and even to become ministry partners with us through prayer and finances.
•  Pray for our colleagues as they have many assignments, including memorizing and getting used to making calls and giving appointments.

If you are joining us in praying for this program and have a short message you would like me to share with us here, please just e-mail or text me (my e-mail and phone number are in every e-mail I send)!  I will read it aloud (if I can get a chance in this intense program!)  Thank you so much for praying with us!