Friday, May 8, 2015

God of contacts!



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

[The following is Zach’s paraphrase of what he shared with me during the lunch break.  Understand again that each night this week we have never gone home before 9pm, often later.] 
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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