Mission India’s indigenous partners teach Adult Literacy Classes to men and women throughout India. These year-long classes primarily provide a fifth-grade education level in reading, writing, and math. Attendees also learn about important topics like finance, hygiene, nutrition, and small business development.

But that’s not all. Bartholomew* with Mission India says, “The whole goal really is to introduce individuals to the love of Jesus and showcase who He is and what He’s done for them — but also help these adults go from really no education at all and get them over to a fifth-grade education level at the end of that year.

An Adult Literacy Class with Mission India. (Photo courtesy of Mission India via Facebook)

“In John 10:10, Jesus says, ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’ At Mission India, we focus on a holistic change of those we serve just like Jesus did so that people in India can look forward to eternity and live life to the full here on Earth. This integrated impact is seen in all of our programs, but especially in our Adult Literacy Classes.”

Nazila is a wife and mother in India who recently attended an Adult Literacy Class. Growing up, Nazila never received a formal education — something that is, unfortunately, not uncommon for girls and women in India.

“She didn’t really know the basics of how to keep her family healthy [with] food and hygiene,” Bartholomew says. “Nutrition was an issue and her children were malnourished and always sick. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t know what and how to adjust that.”

Once Nazila joined an Adult Literacy Class, her world opened up with her new literacy skills! She also learned about health and nutrition through the class.

“She started to plant a garden at her house and started eating vegetables and feeding her vegetables to her children. Over time, her kids became healthier, which was fantastic and she was so excited.”

A lack of rain in Nazila’s community presented a horticultural challenge, but she got creative and began using kitchen wastewater to continue growing her garden.

“She’s not only helping feed her family, but she’s helping supply vegetables to her community.”

(Photo courtesy of Mission India)

As Nazila learned how to plant and grow a garden, the Gospel seed was planted in her heart. But as the Apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3:7, only God can make it grow.

Bartholomew says, “She still hasn’t received Jesus as her Savior yet, but she’s learning about it and is very inquisitive about who He is and what He’s done for her. So we are, as a team, praying for her to understand and come to know Jesus and accept Him as her Savior. But we’re just so excited to see Nazila’s life change on the physical side as relates to education and nutrition for her family.”

Please be “praying that the partner leading that class and living in this community can continue to invest in Nazila and continually share the love of Jesus each and every opportunity they get.”

You can support an Adult Literacy Class student like Nazila for a full year! The cost, amazingly, is just $40.

Give to Mission India’s Adult Literacy Classes here!

*Last name omitted for security.

But SAT-7’s audience in the Middle East and North Africa needs the programming SAT-7 provides. Although they’ve canceled their Network 2020 conference and implemented work-from-home mandates for staff in many SAT-7 studios, they’re continuing production.

But why the urgency? Nicoletta Michael says SAT-7 is focusing its programming and its pandemic response into four main categories.

1. COVID-19 Awareness and Prevention. SAT-7 is making efforts to spread news and precautions directly from the World Health Organization to its audience. Their goal: teaching safe and healthy practices to anyone who may not know what it takes to keep their communities safe from COVID-19.
2. Education. Education was hard enough for families to access in the Middle East and North Africa before the pandemic hit. Now, in addition to families who could send their kids to school in the first place, kids who did have access to education are stuck at home with no way to learn. That’s why SAT-7 “designed and redesigned our program… so that we could respond to the educational needs of the children [and] support parents in homeschooling.”
3. Mental and Relational Wellbeing. According to Michael, “We felt it was important to address this issue and how those viewers could maintain their physical and mental wellbeing by taking care of [not just] their body but their minds as well.” SAT-7 also addresses some of the relational challenges that face families in lockdown, such as an international rise in domestic abuse.
   

   Photo courtesy of SAT-7

4. Spiritual Support. In times as tumultuous as these, people have questions. They want to know where God is, how they’re meant to stay a part of a body of believers, and where they can find hope in the middle of chaos. Fortunately, SAT-7 was “able to address those questions, bring the church to people’s houses, and bring support to people [while] also answering these questions.”

SAT-7 is covering each one of these topics with minimal staff and while following all government-instructed safety precautions. Staff members are either working from home or rotating in set crews to avoid contact with one another in case of contamination. SAT-7 personnel maintains required distancing. They’ve minimized the amount of content they’re producing.

But they’re still producing.

So pray.

Pray for staff. “During this time, they have shown extreme adaptability and flexibility and courage,” Michael says. “They have put themselves second so they can be responding to the needs of the people in [the Middle East and North Africa].”

Pray that they will continue to stay healthy and that their families will remain safe during this pandemic.

Pray for viewers. Some members of SAT-7’s audience have been in the hospital, so pray for their safety and health in the days ahead.

“We would like to pray for God’s guidance in giving the right answers to people that are caught now in different dilemmas and questions.”

You can support SAT-7 directly right here.

Header photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Set Free Ministries works both in the United States and overseas. Domestically, they’re primarily focused on bringing spiritual freedom and healing through God’s Word and what they call freedom appointments. Internationally, they’re bringing these principles into the work they’re doing to build stronger communities and educational opportunities.

A year of hope

Looking back on the year, Pete Noor of Set Free is grateful for the hundreds of people who came through their door and were able to grasp at hope once more.

“We daily have people coming in here, right, that are broken, hurting, struggling with depression and anxiety and so forth.”

Noor says that when these individuals arrive in the lobby at their headquarters in West Michigan, you can see that they are downcast and depressed. The team regularly starts the day by praying for everyone who will come in that day. They ask God to reveal himself to the hurting.

Volunteers take participants through the freedom appointments. These one-time counseling sessions help people identify harmful lies in their life and replace them with the promises of God.

“Often times we will have the opportunity just to see these individuals and to see the actual difference in their countenance as they leave, the hope that’s in their eyes,” Noor says.

The volunteers walking these people through the freedom appointments, exposing the lies that are dragging them down and sharing the truths and promises of God, are blessed to be used by God to bring spiritual and emotional healing. Just about every day, Noor says, they get to see God transform lives in a big way.

Noor recalls how this year, they received a letter from a woman who tahenked them for helping her husband find healing through the Gospel. He had once more assumed the role of spiritual leader in their household.

“Hope. Hope is just something everybody needs, right? And it’s just, so many are searching for it in all the wrong places. And so when they come here and get connected to the true Healer– what a great thing.”

A growing ministry

This ministry offers freedom appointments free of charge to participants. They feel strongly about this because they don’t want to put up any barriers to God’s free gift of mercy and grace. Noor says they often have people break down in tears of gratitude because they didn’t know there was anyone who could help them in their financial difficulties.

But providing these free services requires the time, talent, and treasure of others.

Jim Faber of Set Free says as they finish out the year and look ahead, there are a few ways they are asking God to provide. First, he says they want to meet their basic budget and finish the year in the black. Second, they are raising funds to build a high school in Uganda. And third, they are planning to build a new ministry building so that they can expand their operations in West Michigan.

All of these financial needs have come about because of the growing demand for what Set Free provides. But time and time again, they’ve seen God provide, and they’ve seen the people involved in that provision greatly blessed.

So, what exactly does it look like to be blessed through giving? Noor gives an example.

Lives changed

Several years ago, there was a man who accompanied their executive director, Dean VanderMey, to Uganda to visit the schools Set Free supports there. During their visit, they met a student named Robert whose leg was so deformed, he was unable to walk. His future was bleak.

“The gentleman that accompanied Dean on this trip saw this, and they inquired about the possibility of having surgery done, found out how much it was. And he committed on the spot to take care of this boy’s surgeries,” Noor explains.

The boy went through quite a few surgeries to try and fix his leg. Last year, a team went back to visit the school he attends. Dean was excited to bring the news to this donor that Robert not only walked up to him, he ran across the classroom!

Robert underwent several corrective surgeries.
(Photo courtesy of Set Free Ministries)

Today, Robert is the top academic student of his class. Noor believes this boy will one day be a leader due to his personality and drive. His donor is blessed to know he was part of making that possible.

Another example from Africa involves the rescue of 18 young girls from an area where they would have become victims of female genital mutilation. These girls were taken in by the schools that Set Free supports, but they needed to be enrolled in high school. This meant that tuition funds needed to be raised.

Set Free approached one of their donor couples and told them about the girls and their need for school. This couple decided to pay for their tuition. They’ve been able to give these girls a hopeful future and a chance to succeed, and to know the love of Jesus through all of that.

Faber says God is working through donors and prayer warriors all the time, and he’s doing incredible things.

“It’s a joy to come in every day and to work with these people. They have such tremendous hearts. And God is using Set Free Ministries in a tremendous way.”

How you can help

If you want to be a part of this incredible work, there are a few ways to get involved. First of all, consider becoming a prayer warrior for Set Free. You can learn more about that, here.

Second of all, consider supporting them financially so that they can achieve their exciting goals for the near future. Learn more, here.

And finally, Noor says, “We need more volunteers, frankly… We’re becoming more known. And we’re getting referrals from a lot of different sources now. We’re having people come here from out of state. And we see a real need for more people whose hearts are moved by this type of ministry. Who would like to be used, to be the hands and feet of Christ.”

Volunteers just need to be willing to be trained and go through their own freedom appointment. They need to have a desire to “get in the trenches and experience the rewards that come when you answer the call,” Noor says. “And you are able to actually experience the power, the grace of God, flowing through you to others. It’s unlike anything you’ll ever experience.”

For more information on this, click here.

If you are looking for some help to work through addiction, depression, anger, or any other emotional or spiritual difficulty, you can reach out to Set Free here. 

Header photo courtesy of Pixabay.

That’s because although two-thirds of the world doesn’t read, they still need Jesus.

“There’s probably about two billion people that fit into that category, that really can’t read anything, whether it’s a trade language or their own mother tongue, so it’s important that we understand what the audience is that we’re really trying to focus on,” says Spoken Worldwide’s Ed Weaver.

In total, 5 billion people in the world don’t read, but only 2 billion of those actually cannot read.

“The two billion that really can’t read are the ones who will miss out and have fewer funds, less engagement, and less mission focus than probably any other people group on the planet.”

That literacy barrier means people are distanced by their own communities and often forgotten by missions groups. As a result, people who can’t read often have no concept of the Gospel.

“They might have their own worldview that talks about a Creator God, but they don’t know him personally, and they don’t know that that’s even possible,” Weaver says.

“Our goal as a ministry is focusing on the people who can’t read, those people who, if you put a book in front of them, wouldn’t be able to read any of that. If they can read a sentence, they certainly wouldn’t be able to comprehend a paragraph or the entire book.”

These are people who often live in extreme poverty. They face religious, governmental, cultural, and even tribal oppression, They lack basic medical care and cannot access basic hygiene and health information. They’re some of the least reached people in the world since missions money doesn’t often go toward illiterate groups.

Photo and header photo courtesy of Spoken Worldwide

As one of Weaver’s friends once told him, “there’s a reason why they’re unreached; they’re so hard to reach!”

“It takes more money, it takes more manpower, it takes more logistics and planning, and they’re farther away from anything, but as I think we’d all agree, that just means we need to put that much more effort into it.”

And for Spoken Worldwide, it’s paying off.

Consider one team they sent to Nepal. The largest cause of death in that area was dehydration, because locals thought if a person was diarrhetic, they needed to stop drinking water. The missions team brought informational recordings about health care along with Gospel recordings, and the recordings set the record straight about the importance of hydration.

The result? Locals came to the group saying, “Please tell us about your God. We thought you just wanted to convert us, we didn’t know you actually loved us.”

“When we pay attention to the poverty, when we pay attention to oppression, when we pay attention to basic medical care, that creates a great opportunity for us to talk about the Gospel,” Weaver says. It’s important to consider and address the conditions of the people we want to reach.

So what’s the moral of Spoken Worldwide’s story? Weaver says we can’t give up on teaching people just because they can’t read. We have a responsibility to get someone the Gospel, regardless of their capabilities. We can meet people where they’re at.

Photo courtesy of Spoken Worldwide

And most of all, a relationship with Christ should not necessitate the ability to read.

“We wanna make sure that as an organization, we don’t leave anybody behind,” Weaver says. “We want to make sure they have all access to the Word of God, regardless of their ability to read.”

It’s not something Spoken Worldwide can do alone.

“That’s a lot of people to engage with… it’s more than we can handle as one organization,” Weaver says.

Pray for possibilities and wisdom in collaboration for the future, and consider partnering with Spoken Worldwide yourself.

“In the business world, we’d be competitors, but in the Kingdom of God, we’re all soldiers in the same army,” Weaver says.

“We want to lift up that non-reader, we want to let them know that God loves them just as much as if they could read. There is no lesser-than position that they have just because they can’t read.”

State persecution of churches began ramping up around November last year.

“They were sending around health and safety committees which were strangely formed of officials from intelligence, security, and other government agencies, and they started the process of shutting down churches in some of these places,” Windsor says.

Another recurring tactic is the claim that churches don’t have “the right permits to operate places of non-Muslim worship.” The problem is, the law requiring these permits went into effect in 2006, and since that time, not a single permit has been issued, even when churches made every effort to comply with the new law.

It’s not just about full congregations, either.

“The issue of laws related to sharing the Gospel is being used on other separate individual cases against individual Christians,” Windsor says. Those laws are so vague that even miniscule offenses can be skewed to make trouble for believers.

“I heard about one Christian who was asked if he would give a person who asked for the Bible he was carrying his Bible,” Windsor says. “His answer of ‘yes’ was used as an excuse to take apostisism action against the individual.”

But why justify persecution with health inspections and permit challenges in the first place? Windsor says the state is trying to be subtle so the international community doesn’t have a problem with their actions. More smokescreens means less outside pressure.

Photo and header photo courtesy of Middle East Concern

That doesn’t mean everyone’s turning a blind eye.

“Since that time, actually, we’ve been encouraged by a degree of pressure that has come on Algeria from the international community to encourage a different approach, to encourage them to cease this persecution of Christians and closure of churches.”

Because of this pressure, three churches have reopened. However, they still haven’t been given permits, so their safety is rocky at best.

“The picture seems to be that we’re taking five steps back and one step forward in the hope that our one step will be enough to take the heat off of Algeria.”

It all speaks to why Algeria needs your prayer. The local Church is asking the global body of Christ to pray for boldness and security for Algerian believers so that they can stand firm and live out their faith. You can also pray that pressure levied against the Algerian Church would ease up.

Still want to do more? Consider contacting your local government representative so that the persecution in Algeria does not go unnoticed. Middle East Concern can help keep you posted about the situation so far.

“It’s encouraging to see how determined the witness of that Church is and how it is growing,” Windsor says. Pray for the continuation of that growth as pressure mounts.

The Rohingya people are a stateless minority from Myanmar who fled ethnic violence. Many of them ended up in Bangladesh. While the repatriation process was postponed, most have no desire to return to Myanmar.

(Photo courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

The Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh is now the largest in the world with over one million people. But it is not in a great spot.

Gary Edmonds with Food for the Hungry explains, “They have…created these what are called ‘spontaneous settlements’. In other words, they find some open land [and] they find some places where they try to create a little bit of shelter, get some food, water, [and] sanitation conditions. But it so happens that where they have settled is also in a highly vulnerable floodplain.”

The monsoon rain in the refugee camp brings the dangers of collapsing buildings and tents, floods, landslides, and waterborne diseases. Bangladesh’s monsoon season typically lasts from June to October. The first weekend of monsoon season in early June saw 15 inches of rain and winds roaring in at 43 miles per hour.

“With the rains as well as these very, very concentrated living environments, you’ve got a situation where malaria, cholera, diphtheria — waterborne illnesses — are likely to be spread, and spread rapidly.”

Food for the Hungry is trying to get ahead of the problem in the Rohingya refugee camp, along with fellow ministry partners.

(Photo courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

“We have been a part with Medical Teams International of building health clinics…and then educating the people and training healthcare workers to allow them to navigate this kind of a season. [The problem is] you just can’t get to the health clinics right now. Roads are literally washed out. There is no way of transport.”

Part of the solution is to train local Rohingya people in disease prevention and sanitation so they can teach others in the camps. Footbridges will also hopefully be built over flooded roads and gullies so people can still get across.

Tangible aid is also still needed. “We try to equip them as best we can with boots and rain slickers and garments and so forth…. The second side of it is to get clean water and to get food to these people. That’s what Food for the Hungry is working at as well right now.”

As Edmonds puts it, “A hard place has simply just become harder for us to work and operate in. But nevertheless, it doesn’t inhibit us in a sense and it doesn’t create a situation where we’re simply just trying to wait it out.”

As believers, there are multiple things we can do to respond to the Rohingya crisis. But one thing we can’t do as a Church is nothing.

Zohrab is one of thousands of Rohingya mothers who fled Bangladesh and barely survived with her baby, Noor. (Photo, caption courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

“This is the kind of thing that breaks God’s heart as a father who has created these people in His image. Therefore, might it break our heart in such a way that it will lead us to respond, and respond appropriately [at] this time in history. I think this is one of the crucial ways that we can be witnesses to the love and the grace of God that comes to us through Jesus Christ.”

Edmonds suggests, “First of all, search, go on the web, get yourself educated. Many, many people are not educated about the Rohingya people and the crisis and all that is happening. This is viewed as likely one of the biggest humanitarian emergencies of history — more than one million people who are stateless people.”

Additionally, Father’s Day was earlier this week. With this focus recently on our minds, Edmonds says we can pray that the Rohingya people would come to know their Heavenly Father.

“God the Father has actually fashioned, created these people. They are handmade people by the Father of Heaven. He loves them,…He knows them by name, He knows their gifts and their skills and their abilities. So pray that God would intervene.

“Then lastly, if you are inclined, if you are looking at this, we would love for people to give. This is one of those kinds of crisis areas. We do get some grants from larger groups, UN bodies, and so forth, but we need to constantly supplement that for our staff. Private donations, people who give, churches who give are the instrumental way for us to actually respond.”

Click here to give to FH’s Rohingya Refugee Crisis fund!

(Header photo courtesy of Jordi Bernabeu Farrús via Flickr: https://goo.gl/daSWrS)

Last week, we shared how the protests in Nicaragua have negatively impacted some Compassion operations. However, despite the challenges, Compassion workers continue to reach out to the children and their families to make sure they are provided for.

Compassion International works alongside the local churches, called Implementing Church Partners (ICPs), to run Child Development Centers. Here, children enrolled in their program receive holistic care.

(Photo courtesy of Compassion International)

Virna Segovia of Compassion International says in the area near the protests, the programs usually look a little like this:

“Depending on the number of children that an ICP has, children attend three times over a week, or daily to the church. And they will receive four hours of essential content. That includes spiritual teachings, help in their studies, it includes things like medical checkups or social activities like birthday celebrations, trips to the zoo or to different places.

“Children learn how to pray, how to do handcraft, how to read the Bible, study the Bible, learn Bibles verses. They learn how to relate with each other.”

And it’s the impact this simple program has that inspires Segovia and the other workers to keep doing what they’re doing.

“When you see a child that is new to the project and you ask them, what do you dream about? What is your dream for the future? And you look into their eyes and you see there’s nothing—there’s no dreams.

“After a few months at the project, after a year in the project, you see those children laughing, smiling, you see they have gained weight. You see their [hair] is looking really nicely combed. And you ask them again, what’s your dream for the future? And they have dreams.”

Segovia says these child development centers are a safe haven for children and that the program gives hope because it breaks the cycle of poverty. She explains that children even begin to aspire to have a career.

(Photo courtesy of Compassion International)

“For me that is what is amazing about this program. And that’s what keeps us moving. That is what keeps teachers and pastors and the people at the projects the hope and the energy to do lots of work, because there is a lot of work at Compassion projects on a daily basis. There is a lot of work at the office.

“But when you see those smiles—when you see that boy that used to be in the program is now working at Compassion as an assistant to the accountant— that for us, it’s a blessing. It’s a dream come true.”

Segovia says we can be praying that God will continue to be in control over the civil unrest taking place in Nicaragua.  Pray for the nearly 60,000 children under Compassion’s care who are depending on these projects. Ask God to give them hope for the future, and to touch their hearts so they might come to know Him as their Savior.

Segovia says thank you to all the people who are praying.

If you’re interested in sponsoring a child, click here.

Today is World Malaria Day which is dedicated to finding solutions, together, to fight malaria. This year’s theme is “Ready to Beat Malaria.”

While most malaria cases take place on the African continent, we can’t ignore that it’s also a very real issue in India, as well. WHO noted earlier this year that India has made great strides to fight malaria in the last 18 years, but that the state of Odisha, for instance, was still struggling. In other words, the fight against malaria is not over in India. This is particularly true in rural areas where poverty also is prevalent.

Donna Glass of India Partners says, “The greatest problems exist in rural villages because the people cannot afford to have what’s called a long-lasting insecticide net.”

(Photo courtesy of India Partners)

Long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) are a recommended form of malaria prevention. And, as the name suggests, these nets are treated with insecticide and can last for many years. They are extremely effective at protecting people from mosquito bites while they sleep.

But just because it’s a simple, long-term solution does not mean it’s attainable for everyone.

“When you’re living on less than $2 a day and you’ve got a family, [these] nets that are about $10 becomes out of your range of what you can afford for your family,” Glass explains.

In urban areas, the government steps in to help with controlling mosquito populations. Glass says during the monsoon season when water begins to pool in parts of the city, the government will spray or bomb insecticide throughout the cities.

“That helps to reduce the incidences of malaria within the cities. But, when you live out in a rural village, you don’t have that option, it’s not available to you.”

Malaria is well known to be a treatable and preventable disease, and many decades ago, it was almost eradicated from India. But there’s a reason that impoverished people are at greater risk of getting seriously ill. First of all, they typically cannot afford prevention tools. And when they do get sick, they can’t afford medical care. Furthermore, when adults are sick, it means they aren’t earning a wage, restricting their ability to get health care for the next ailment.

And, Glass says, “Children, if they get sick, they can’t go to school. So, the lack of education—that cycle just continues to spiral down when you’re affected with malaria, or any kind of illness. So, it definitely contributes to the poverty issues.”

In places like the United States, $10 is a relatively low cost to be able to save lives, especially when you consider that these LLINs are not only preventing malaria, but they’re also preventing people from sinking deeper into poverty.

India Partners works with several indigenous Indian agencies who are operating in high-risk villages. When you come alongside India Partners in this project, you’re allowing these agencies to purchase nets within India and distribute them where they are needed.

“Sometimes several members of a family will sleep in the same bed in India. And, so, several people are being protected with one net because the mosquitos are most active at nighttime. And, when we give folks a net… they are taught how to… use it properly over their beds,” Glass says.

So, what about you? Do you want to make an impact for World Malaria Day? Would you consider helping India Partners realize their vision of an India rich in hope, justice, and compassion? Consider walking alongside India Partners to provide a net or two for people in India. You can give, here.

“With the summertime coming, and some of the monsoons will be coming up, this is really a time, a preventative time to get the nets in place before we have these incidences of standing water and… greater numbers of these mosquitos being active at night.”

He says, “We presented to over 2,000 people and out of those 2,000, over 800 received Jesus Christ as their King and accepted him.”

PCC is a ministry in South Sudan offering medical help through their hospital and satellite clinics. During this trip, the hospital provided him with an ambulance to travel to different communities to offer health services and to share the JESUS Film.

(Photo and header photo courtesy of Stuart Bowman)

Bowman says the success of the trip was all God’s doing as He worked through the team. In an area of the world where violence is prevalent and people struggle with major issues like poverty and poor health care, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a welcome message.

“He provided a way for us to leave our shame, to identify with Him, and to have a righteousness be with Him. And that’s really where healing comes from, is at the foot of the cross and when we accept Him for our salvation,” Bowman says.

And while it was God’s work being done, He called together several groups of Christians to make the trip happen.

Collaboration on the Mission Field

Overall, six ministries were involved in making this trip a possibility: PCC, Set Free Ministries, Renew World Outreach, Resonate Church, World Mission, and Jesus Film Project.

Set Free Ministries helps to bring spiritual healing and freedom to people around the world. In the United States, they provide counseling sessions and work with inmates. In places like East Africa, they support schools and reach out to communities with the Gospel. Their focus is on spiritual warfare. Set Free Ministries has partnered with PCC in order to pair this spiritual healing with the physical healing.

A Set Free worker named Samuel has been very active in spreading the Gospel in this region. During this trip, he helped with translation and sharing the Gospel message, as well. And now, he has additional tools to expand his ministry and promote discipleship.

Together, Set Free Ministries and PCC have purchased solar-powered video projectors from a third organization, Renew World Outreach.

Along the road in South Sudan (Photo courtesy of Stuart Bowman)

Renew World Outreach creates technology that reaches across borders, even when there is no internet or electricity and in places where it’s difficult to get the Gospel. The video projectors purchased by Set Free and PCC fold up into backpacks, are solar powered, and can play content from a flash drive.

This brings in a fourth ministry—Jesus Film Project. Dean VanderMey of Set Free says he contacted Jesus Film Project to see if they could get the JESUS Film ready to share through these video projectors. They enthusiastically agreed to help.

However, Set Free Ministries and PCC are conscious of the fact that you can’t just share the Gospel and walk away– they wanted to be sure to leave something in place to help with discipleship and spiritual growth. Bowman’s sending church, Resonate Church, is very mission-focused and they wanted to be able to help in this matter. They helped provide Bowman with 80 audio Bibles from World Mission, called the Treasure. Bowman says he is extremely grateful for their help and wants his church to know that their generosity will help to leave a lasting impact on the areas they visited.

“We felt the best use of the Treasure was to actually start Bible studies—to find people in the Church and assign them, and then halfway through the week on Wednesdays to actually have the groups of the villages come in based on their location, to come in and listen to the Bible and have these discussions,” Bowman says.

A Call to Strive for Teamwork in the Great Commission

VanderMey of Set Free says this type of collaboration, while extremely effective and important, isn’t always second nature on the mission field.

He says, “As the director of Set Free, I’ve been seeing for years now, since 2002, I’ve been seeing a lot of ministries worldwide try to protect their turf. And, it drives me nuts because Jesus says, ‘I am the head, you are the body. The hand cannot say to the foot, I don’t need you.’ We desperately need each other. All of us. So, we make it a directive that we are going to work with other like-minded ministries.”

Years ago, Set Free purchased the first backpack video projector to play the JESUS Film. Since that time, God brought them together with PCC when the Bowmans asked Set Free to help them with a school near the hospital. What VanderMey has learned over the years is this: “Collaborate together. And it will be far better than you ever dreamed or imagined when you work together. So, that’s kind of our philosophy and it’s proving quite effective.”

(Photo and header photo courtesy of Stuart Bowman)

VanderMey explains that Set Free first began operating in West Africa in 2005. Since that time, they’ve started 15 different schools, including the school in war-torn South Sudan.

“We now care for about 4,500 orphans and we have about 250 staff. But it’s only because of the collaboration. We’re working together with other people there, with the Body of Christ there, with people back here. And it becomes quite powerful because there’s synergy: everyone working together for the glory of Christ, and to spread the Gospel and go make disciples of all nations. That’s the point.”

Bowman agrees that this approach is certainly biblical and that ascribing to one ministry, one denomination, or one pastor can actually damage the movement of the Gospel.

“Christ heals the brokenhearted and sets the captives free. And so, bringing the news of Christ’s love and what he’s done for us to the Body in a real way, working together and not thinking so much about, you know ‘I’m a disciple of this person,’ or ‘I do this,’ or ‘We’re evangelistic.’ No, it’s not about that. It’s about how can we partner together, to build the Body of Christ?” he says.

If you’d like to join this collaboration, take a moment to check out these two ministries and how you can get involved. To learn more about Set Free Ministries, click here. For more about PCC, click here.

Finally, please pray for all the new believers to grow in their newfound faith.

Tomorrow, April 7th, is World Health Day and provides an opportunity to spotlight these health and hygiene needs around the world.

While there are many organizations with health programs, Food for the Hungry (FH) combines health and hygiene education with the Gospel in around 20 different countries! One way is through their Cascade Groups.

(Photo and header photo courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

In a Cascade Group, a staff member with FH teaches 10 mothers in an impoverished community about good health and hygiene practices. The topics cover handwashing, water purification, personal hygiene, breastfeeding, and nutrition.

FH’s Beth Allen explains, “It’s a way of taking messages into the community about caring for children and improving the lives of children where mothers in the community are working together to make life better for their children.”

After those 10 mothers have completed their learning in the Cascade Group, they each go and teach 10 more mothers in a new Cascade Group, who go to teach other moms, and so on.

“The Cascade Groups are important to us because, the way they work, they allow us to move a community toward graduation. That’s one of Food for the Hungry’s key concepts is that we’re going into a community but we will only be there for usually seven to ten years, and then the community will move on [by] its own,” says Allen.

“You can see it multiplies very quickly as far as the number of people in the community who not only have the information and the messaging, but then are ready to teach it to each other and hold each other accountable for what they’ve learned. It works really well.”

In communities with Cascade Groups, the mothers often see results very quickly in the health and growth of their young children.

(Photo courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

Allen shares, “I remember one conversation with a Bolivian mother…who brought me her children. She had three or four children and we were talking and doing an interview. She pointed to the baby and said, ‘This baby is already two inches longer or taller than his older brother was at his age.’ She could see it in the child and that’s pretty amazing where they can see the results of their activity very, very quickly.”

In Allen’s own travels with the ministry, she has discovered that women and mothers in rural communities tend to feel very isolated. “There isn’t necessarily a lot of information transfer going on about good ways to raise your children. They don’t have the blogs with the moms that we have here to trade information. So one of the things this group does is it brings the women together so they’re not trying to be good parents in isolation. They have some backup to try to put new ideas into practice.

“I sat with one mother in Bolivia at one point who, when I asked her about the teaching we were doing in health and nutrition, she began to cry as I was talking with her about the importance of it. I said, ‘What is it that’s so important to you?’ And she said, ‘Well, I didn’t have a single friend in this community until you guys came in and you had me working with the other mothers here. Now I have friends. Now I have people who can help me out. Now I don’t feel so alone in this parenting thing.’ Because parenting is hard; I don’t care what continent you are on — parenting is hard. So she was just so grateful for that.”

But the biggest impact in these Cascade Groups comes when the leaders connect health and hygiene with the value God places on the lives of these mothers and their families.

“One of the messages we talk about to the mothers is that God created us to love one another, and that’s really powerful for a lot of women. One of them is that just the thought that God would have a relationship with them or a desire for their lives. It’s very powerful to walk into a group of moms and say, ‘God has a desire for your life, that you would show love for your children and that your children need you. That is a God-given gift to you.’ [It’s] very, very important for them and it’s very freeing. It’s something that makes them feel valued.”

While the Cascade Groups tend to focus on mothers, Allen says FH’s ministry involves the fathers and the whole family. And when mothers and fathers are effectively caring for the health of their children, it also inspires them to get involved in other community outreaches.

Allen saw this firsthand with a group of mothers in Peru. “Not only were they doing things with the health of their children, but then because of the bonds they formed and because of just the joy of seeing that their kids actually responded, they started to do things like forming up together so they could work better with the government [and] to do things like build schools in their community.”

(Photo courtesy of Food for the Hungry)

You can directly support Cascade Groups with FH by sponsoring a child! “That monthly sponsorship is how we are able to be able to put this program in motion…all over the world,” Allen explains.

To sponsor a child with FH, click here!

And, Allen urges, “[Be] praying for those moms! For many of the people listening to this, you’re a mother or you know of moms who are struggling to make it, just struggling to get through each day, and this kind of program really helps. So be praying for those moms worldwide who really want something better for their children.”