Miles In Missions

“As Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” – Proverbs 27:17

This has been our motto in Egbe for the past three weeks. It is our memory verse, our prayer for the people of Egbe, and more practically our whole goal. We want to “develop co-leaders”.

We were privileged to have a SouthEast Christian Church (SECC) member here for three weeks and his wife has stayed for almost five weeks. He does not come from a medical background, nor from a construction background so he didn’t feel like he could help our ministry with the Revitalization Project. He had concerns,  “what will I do?” and “how will I be effective?” After some collaboration, we decided he had all of the right things at his fingertips and God would take care of the rest.

This member and his wife are dear to our family. (I will not name them, because sometimes they visit “closed” countries and I do not want to endanger them or the people they meet in the fields there). We met them a little over four years ago, when Patrice and I took the Prospectives class at SECC. They were the “course facilitators” and this class was instrumental in helping us to become missionaries. With their heart already set for missions, this couple was determined to go to the field to see graduates of their class, SECC members, and friends (us).

Also at SECC is another great program which many know as simply DC which means Developing Co-leaders. It is a 21 month class based on bible study and meeting in a small group to discuss many topics throughout the two years. It can also be thought of as discipleship training. Both Patrice and I have completed this course in the past, which is dear to our walk with the Lord and so had our fellow SECC member who was coming to join us on the field. It was brought up one day that he could come here and teach a few of these classes and build into our sphere of influence here on the ground in Egbe. We picked two topics, Managing Conflict and Intro to Leadership.

We used the scriptures for many discussion questions on judging others, tolerance, where each of us sees conflict in our lives, how to handle that conflict, and many more topics. We even covered the book of Philemon (only 25 verses). Where Philemon was asked to take back his old slave who had stolen from him and ran away. Talk about conflict!

We had classes with the ECWA DCC (District Church Counsel) President and 22 other pastors from in and around Egbe. Classes with the Hospital leadership including the Medical Director and HODs (Heads Of Departments) in the hospital. Classes with the building and maintenance crews for the Revitalization project. And even classes with the older boys from C.A.R.E. Africa. In total, there were more than 75 people that have been impacted by these classes!

However, our motto for the three weeks wasn’t about managing conflict, it was about iron sharpening iron and one man sharpening another. Our thought and prayers through this teaching is that a few of the 75 in attendance will step up and say they want to be able to sharpen other men (and women). We offered the entire course of DC lessons to them when they are available to start up their own small groups. We ask you to pray that the seeds that were planted bring good fruit, that at least two or three of these groups gets started and we begin to have a multiplication process of leaders developing co-leaders, in turn developing more co-leaders, and so on.

Stay tuned for a story on this man’s wife, who is a great nurse and worked in the hospital for the five weeks she was here….