“What a week!”

8-9-98

    Hello everyone, We hopeyou are having a great week! We have had quite a week here in Benin! It has been awonderful 8 days, but we are exhausted!  The week started out with a bang lastSunday, the 2nd of August. The Chownings witnessed the birth of a new church inthe village of Kadahoue, with the baptism of 12 new Christians.

    Our joy continuedSaturday as I baptized 19 people from the village of Djoumahou. This great occasion markedthe birth of a new church in this village. I was accompanied by two interns from ACU whowere visiting us for a few days during their internship with the Fon team. We walked for40-45 minutes through the farms and “bush” to the place where the baptism was totake place. It was truly a blessing to hear the testimonies of these people that I havebeen teaching for the last 2 ˝ months. I was so thankful for the basic truths that theyhave grasped about God and what He has done to bring them back into relationship with Him.We sang, prayed, and I exhorted them and answered their questions, before walking the40-45 minutes back to their village. They whole affair lasted for over 4 hours.

     Today, Sunday, wecontinued to watch as God worked in the lives of the Aja people. I baptized 4 people fromthe village of Kiateme. Melanie and I were especially excited today as we watched the wifeand mother of our good friend and language teacher, Joseph, become Christians . We praiseGod for working in their hearts to bring them to this point. Joseph said that a few yearsago, he would never have imagined that his wife would become a Christian. She comes from abig family of fetishers. I know personally that some of her brothers, at least, aredevoted to a certain god. That means that their entire life is dedicated to the worship ofthis god. We pray that she will have a big influence on their lives. Some of you who haveread our past newsletters may remember the story about his wife becoming sick and beingtaken to a fetisher’s house. It was Joseph’s mother who turned to the power ofother gods at that time. That shows you how far she has come in her faith in just a littleover a year. God worked through that incident to bring her to Him, and He continues towork at this moment to bring others back to Him.

    If you are counting, thatmakes 35 people that have been baptized in the last 8 days! What a week! After the eventsof this week, we can now say that we have 4 churches among the Aja people! We have been inthe church planting stage of this ministry for less than 6 months! We give all of thepraise and glory to God! We are anxious to share this great news with you, not for therecognition of our own efforts, but to encourage you with what God is doing! He has farexceeded our own expectations, and He continues to amaze us!

    You are an important partof this ministry! Please join us in prayer as we plead with Him for the souls of the Ajapeople. Pray especially for the villages of Avedjin, Dandjihoue, and Hougbame where we arecurrently teaching on a regular basis. We are also receiving requests to teach in othervillages. Pray that God will give us the strength to do the work that is before us. Thechallenge is great, especially considering the fact that their is no Bible in Ajagbe, andthat we have to translate every bit of Scripture that we use.

    Pray also for our health.Currently all the members of my family are sick with colds. It is nothing serious, but itsure is a drain on our energy! Richard Chowning is also a little sick today, and we askfor your prayers for him.

    We have faith that God isworking in your life too, and we look forward to hearing what he is doing. We will keepyou updated on what is going on here. Until then, for the girls, love,

—-Greg