In May I had a meeting with Ken Rout and one of his board members and tried to understand the nature of the work of Harvest Partnership a little deeper.
The work has grown slowly year on year and is now significantly larger than when BHW first began to support it in 2007. There are now hundreds of Bible reading groups throughout the Great Lakes region of Africa. In 2007 they had two full time people, now there are five full-time missionaries, three part-time associates and three people waiting in the wings to become full-time missionaries.
The work began in the Great Lakes area based in Bukavu, DRC but since then it has grown out wider in the Great Lakes, wider in the DRC and into Burundi and Rwanda. It has also developed in East Africa as well, particularly Kenya and Uganda.
So the work can continue to develop they have initiated two regional coordinators, one for the Great Lakes and one for East Africa.
a) Abel and Anita Nzoa are the leaders in the African Great Lakes responsible to oversee and develop East Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and West Uganda. Abel is based in Bujumbura.
b) Bob and Lillian Abdalla are responsible to oversee and develop Kenya, East Uganda and North West Tanzania. Bob is based in Kisumu. He is one of Daniel Ogutu’s men and has been a BHW partner in the past (KEN05).
The African Great Lakes Team: Led by Abel Nzoa
In the DR Congo there are two key missionaries:
i) Alimasi (and Chance) Wakati, based in Uvira covering from Kalemie, Lake Tanganyika to the Rwanda border in the Rusizi River Valley. Under Alimasi there is Pascal (and Yohanna) Mwakiti in the Fizi region.
ii) Daniel (and Jolie) Utchudi based in Bukavu and responsible for the work from the north Rusizi Valley to the rural areas in the Lake Kivu area. Alongside Daniel there is Pastor Munga in Bukavu.
Under Abel’s direct care there is Jean-Pierre (and Afua) Kitoko in Goma. Although he is in the DRC and Abel is based in Burundi, Abel oversees him.
Under Abel in Bujumbura there is:
i) Alex Busaka who has been working well as an assistant.
The East Africa Team: Led by Bob Abdulla
Under Bob:
i) Shaban Kalama is a full-time missionary leading the Kensha street kids football outreach in coastal Mariakani. Shaban is single but has a family of 250 youth involved so there is always pressure for compassion funds. He also encourages local churches involved with Harvest Partnership.
ii) Robert is a polytech teacher and pastor and now travels to many south west places of Kenya being trained by Bob. Bob needs someone else to take over part of his work as it continues to grow in width and depth.
“I encouraged the 12 leaders of my dear friend Pastor Wamalwa. Last year I trained 7 leaders who started 7 Daily Bible Reading Fellowships. These have now increased to 45 house fellowships! He says that the size of these Fellowships is such that they know everyone’s name and they visit and encourage each one in their homes.”
“Through these, many men and women keep being saved and are able to worship God every day by being led in prayers, reading and listening to God's word. I trained them in Step 2. Everyone was excited to become a disciple. One of the young men who received Jesus as his Lord and Saviour became active in sharing the Good News with friends. He has led 20 to the Lord using his story of how he got changed through the daily Bible reading and listening to God. He started a DBR-fellowship in his mother’s house. His story is below."
“My name is Denis. When I was 19 my 21 year old sister told me, "You can't get into heaven if you've sinned, but if you are sorry for the bad things you've done and believe that Jesus loves you and died on the cross for you, he'll forgive you and let you into heaven." Her speech touched my heart and I believed her. To be honest, my life didn't seem to change much as I was very addicted to smoking and drinking changaa [home brew]. I had developed too many habits that I needed to give up in order to follow Jesus. I just added another thing to my life – going to Sunday church. I didn't understand that Christianity was about getting to know God and becoming like Jesus.
In church I'd been told that the only unending, unfailing source of satisfaction is God. But I had no-one to teach me how to develop my relationship with Him. For many years I lived a double life. I went to church on Sundays and participated in any Christian activity that didn't conflict with my smoking, drinking and adultery. I could not choose between pleasing God or pleasing myself. So I tried to do both.
God got my attention early one morning when I attended a Church Planting Movement (CPM) seminar. I got help to take an honest look at my life. I saw I was wasting my life on temporary, self-defeating pleasures, and it wasn't good! So I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and take control of my life. I wish I could say that my life immediately improved after I returned to God, but it didn't. Removing the destructive behaviour that I had come to depend on took a while. But after I was trained and involved in the Daily Bible Reading and Prayer group they helped me to hear and listen to God. Through this the Lord showed me how to overcome the consequences of my bad decisions. The Word of God has changed my entire life. I am now serving the Lord in our DBR fellowship based in my mother’s home.”
Mohammed grew up in a Muslim home. He earned the Haji title because he had gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. “All my life I was a very strong Muslim and my family’s main purpose in life was to build mosques and spread Islam everywhere." As a reader in the mosque, Mohammed organized small gangs that prowled the streets looking for Christians. "We would beat Christians who are going to church. In that area I burned seven Bibles." He even attacked one Christian with a knife. That was Mohammed’s life until one night he had a strange dream.
"While I was sleeping, some kind of strange voice was speaking as from heaven.” – ‘Mohammed you are living in darkness. Come out of that cave and follow me.’" Mohammed knew it was the voice of the Christian God. When he told his mother about the dream, she refused to listen and kicked him out of the house. Because Mohammed grew up in a strict Muslim family he refused to follow God [in his dreams]. Then he had another dream. This time God was angry – “Mohammed you will leave this place of darkness and follow me.” Mohammed still refused, but then became very sick. “I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t talk. A very heavy burden just fell upon me. I went to different hospitals to get treatment. But I couldn’t get healed.”
Then Mohammed remembered some missionaries who tried to tell him about Jesus Christ. “I was afraid my friends and my relatives would kill me but I decided to call the missionaries to talk with them. They told me about the Bible and they encouraged me. I decided to receive Jesus as my Saviour. The same day, all my burdens and all my diseases disappeared from my body.” Mohammed wasn’t the only person to accept Jesus after his visions. “I told my mother and all my family members also about my healing, and my peace and many of them received Jesus.” Although he knew his sins were forgiven Mohammed felt guilty for the way he had treated Christians in the past. “Still I am asking for forgiveness for what I have done before." Today the man Mohammed attacked is a close friend.
Harvest Partnership is keen to grow but is limited by their resources. As soon as possible they want to increase the team and require extra resources to do that. Their immediate desire is to:
i) Bring Alex Busaka into full-time service. At the moment they pay for some of his expenses but have no resources to support him.
ii) Appoint Jan-Pierre to full missionary responsibilities.
iii) Call Robert into full-time service.
At the moment BHW sends US$5,700/year. These funds are not allocated to any specific purpose. HP decides where the funding will go and most of it goes to support the key people above.
We have, over the past two years, continued to work with HP to find some small scale business opportunities that their families can start to become self-sufficient, at least partly. However this is proving extremely difficult because of the volatile nature of the places they live. Some are already largely self-sufficient but they would love some extra support for those mentioned above.
I propose:
i) That we look at taking up some support for the work amongst the street kids in Mariakani. This is a great ministry with a football team and is impacting at least 250 vulnerable young people. There is the opportunity for Foundations for Farming training there as well. If we put some direct support into this, it will release some funds from their pool of resources. A proposal is being prepared at the moment.
ii) That we increase support to HP for the ones they want to bring onto the team. I would like us to increase support from $US5,700/year to $US10,000 per year. (This budget increase has been approved by BHW's Executive Committee and will come into effect this month.)