One of the major requirements all our Nigerian missionary
colleagues had to prepare to participate in this training was to get contact
information of people—potential ministry partners—they could call to set up
appointments. Imagine that you are in
their shoes. You are asked to get names
and phone numbers of forty people that you don’t even know! You have been calling people and talking to friends
asking them to share some contact information for about six weeks and you have
only been able to get numbers of about twenty or so people. Then this morning (Thursday) you are told
that if you haven’t yet reached the required forty by 6pm tonight you will not be allowed to
continue to the next step of the program (making calls). How would you feel? Who would you call to get names and numbers
of people you don’t know? It can start
to feel impossible. But we serve the God
of the impossible. Abraham
called God “Jehovah
Jireh”, God who provides. This week we call him “God of Contacts”.
Here are just three testimonies:
Janet
[The following is Zach’s
paraphrase of her testimony on Wednesday.
Understand that each night this week we have never gone home before 9pm, often later.]
Last night I stayed up until about 2:30am.
So when it was time for break, I was feeling very tired. I thought maybe I would just lie down on a
couch and rest. Then I remembered the
lesson we had shared about how to ask for contacts. I knew I had only about thirty contacts, so I
just decided to try to go out and call one or two people for a few
minutes. By the end of the break, God
had given me all my contacts!
Praise the God of Contacts with us!
John
Last night when I went home I met my wife. I was feeling so tired. Then my wife shared with me that she had
found several contacts for me, so now my list of contacts was complete! At that my tiredness left me and I was just
rejoicing!
Praise the God of Contacts with us!
Jeremiah
Believe it or not, Jeremiah
is getting married on tomorrow. Perhaps
that doesn’t seem so surprising until you realize that he agreed to still fully
participate in this thirty-day training, taking only two days leave (today and
Monday). The rest of the thirty days he
plans to be present from 7:45am
until we close at 9pm. Talk about a commitment to this ministry!
Yesterday while half of our colleagues were out on an
appointment with a potential ministry partner, I asked those who were still
here, “Does anyone still need to get more contacts?” Jeremiah
responded, and we went out and sat under a mango tree to make some calls
together.
Jeremiah sketched a
list of about ten people he knew. Then he
prayed for each of them by name. Next, he
started calling them, following some of the “calling blurbs” that we had received
in the training. One of the first people
he called was an “uncle”, an elder in his church. This uncle was willing to stop what he was
doing and start thinking of contacts right then. He told us to call him back in ten
minutes. We called back in ten minutes
and he said we was still working on the list, so he told us to call back again. Jeremiah
finished calling all the other people on the list. Some were willing to get together contacts,
but suggested he call back that evening or the next day. Finally, he called the other uncle back.
The uncle started
listing names and phone numbers. Jeremiah wrote them, carefully getting all the
details we need to know (like what city they live in). Line and after line the Uncle kept giving
names and numbers. When he was done Jeremiah had the names and numbers of sixteen people
in front of him—and he only knew three of them.
After he hung up he smiled, and we started praising God. Jeremiah
just praised God with four simple words “The God of Contacts!”
Praise the God
of Contacts with us!
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