“An Incredible Pace”

August 17, 1998

    We pray that all is well with you, and that you areable to praise God in all circumstances.  We are doing fine. Our family is reasonablyhealthy, with the exception of a few runny noses. Pray especially for Faith who also has acough.

The work continues forward at an incredible pace. Yesterday Iparticipated in the first worship service of the new church at Djoumahou (Jew-MA-hew). Itwas exciting to watch as the young Christians led prayers and songs, gave testimonies, andread and discussed some of the scripture passages that we have translated and given tothem. I also presented a lesson to them. After church services were over we walked at afast pace for 45 minutes to the river, where I watched some of the young Christiansbaptize 9 more believers into Christ! We praise the Lord for the increase!

I am especially excited that the young Christians are taking on theresponsibilities of the life of the church so early in their new life. Our goal is toplant churches that will be able to stand on their own regardless of whether or not we arehere. We want them to not only be able to maintain what has been started, but to be ablecarry forward the movement of Aja people back to God with more efficiency and rapiditythan we, the missionaries, could ever do.

Please continue to pray for the village of Avedjin (a-vay-jeen).There has been some discussion about baptism in this extremely pagan village. We have notyet planted a church in this village, so this would be a new beginning.

We ask for your prayers o behalf of Odile, a 3 year old girl whosemother is in the church at Kaiteme. Her older sister, one of those baptized last week,dropped a pot of very hot water on her, burning her badly. Odile is in a lot of pain, andas you can imagine, the capabilities of treating burns here are not too great. There havebeen numerous struggles that have come on the members of the Kaiteme church since thebaptisms last week. We know that Satan would like to steal their faith. Let’s praythat he will not be able to succeed.

Pray also for our sense of priority, as we seek to arrange ourschedules, and give adequate time to our family and the work.

May God be praised through all of our efforts! For the girls, love,

—-Greg