Many of the pastors, directors, and workers at the conference work in challenging areas, including northern Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

For countries in this region, it can be challenging to conduct street work ministry. Working with teams like Every Home for Christ allows World Missionary Press booklets to be distributed in closed areas.

Helen Williams with WMP says that despite persecution, jail time, and loss of family members, the workers keep on going and sharing the written Word of God.

While at the conference, Williams met with a young woman from Namibia whose husband was a WMP contact and national director.

Despite his passing in an accident a few months ago, Williams says, “I was just so blessed by her spirit

The One Africa Conference encouraged partners from several countries. (Image courtesy of WikiImages on Pixabay)

and by her willingness and by her friendship.”

“She was his partner in ministry, and she came up to me and thanked me for our prayers, hugged me, and told me that she’s going to continue the work. She’s going to do the paperwork and keep the office going,” says Williams.

“The ministry will take over and provide another director, but she’s going to stay with the work. We have a container in process and a language project in process, and she’s going to pick it up.”

Williams also met a coordinator from Angola who sent a sudden request a few months ago when the northern part of Angola had opened up for more outreach.

Williams met the contact early in the trip when he approached her and thanked her for the materials WMP sent him.

“This is the Lord’s plan, and we were able to respond. He came to us, and we were able to respond and get it there,” Williams says.

Another blessing was the opportunity to meet with a new coordinator from Zambia. As the previous one had too many other responsibilities, he knew that WMP was looking for another Zambian contact.

“His son and his son’s wife came up to us, and he said, ‘I can do this. I want to do this,’ and they were so excited,” Williams says.

Williams met with them and went through the expectations and logistics process, and says meeting them was the Lord’s time.

Ministry partners were grateful to WMP as they work to provide the Word of God in small booklets.

“It is just a unique piece of literature, and they know that literature in Africa is vital. They have the internet and they have digital and all of this, but the written Word is still well received and needed,” Williams says.

Please pray for those on the ground and praise God for their consistency and faithfulness. Pray for the Word to change villages and cities and to disciple believers.

WMP can print a booklet for $0.06 apiece, so even a small donation can bring the Word to somebody. Please pray over financial and logistical needs to be met as WMP works to fill orders during a transition time.

Photo courtesy of World Missionary Press.

Michael Cardy with MegaVoice tells the story of a local pastor in that region who first felt the Lord calling him to reach the Himba people in 2017. 

At the time, Scripture in Dhimba was scarce. 

Bible Society of Namibia, Wycliffe, and Samaritan’s Purse formed a collaboration to begin translating the Bible into the Himba people’s heart language. Working with a well-known storyteller, The effort eventually produced 35 Bible stories and Gospel songs, which were downloaded onto MegaVoice audio units. Michael Cardy says he’ll never forget the first time the pastor played Scripture for the local children. 

“As he turned it on and they heard the Gospel story in their heart language – the creation story from Genesis – the children were just absolutely dumbfounded. They were so excited they got up and started dancing,” he says.

The children placed a ring of stones around a tree and began regularly meeting there to hear Scripture (photo courtesy of Michael Cardy with MegaVoice)

The children placed a ring of stones around a tree and began regularly meeting there to hear Scripture. As the Bible stories started to impact children’s lives, parents started asking questions. Next, they joined the gathering. 

“Around that circle, eventually five villages would gather,” Cardy says.

But as monsoon season approached, the community looked for a more suitable meeting place than their singular tree. Samaritan’s Purse responded by helping build a stone church, a sort of “source and sending place” for this newfound treasure of Scripture. 

Now, the pastor says he has no idea how many churches have grown out of the effort. Why the spread? Cardy says it is a natural outgrowth of the Himba’s nomadic culture. The cattle herders send out children and cows every spring to follow the way of growing grass. 

“As the season changes, thus goes the herd and the children,” Cardy says. 

With the introduction of solar-powered audio units: as the herd and children go, thus goes the Word of God.

“Eventually, there were stories about villages no longer meeting around a campfire at night to talk about ancestral worship and the like,” Cardy recalls. “Instead they would play a story and say, ‘What is it we just heard? What does it mean, and how can we apply it to our life?’” 

Himba children (photo courtesy of Michael Cardy with MegaVoice)

As the audio units travel, the Word of God remains behind. Cardy says this effect is thanks to the oral nature of the Himba culture, which cements Scripture in minds even before it permeates hearts. 

“As a village listens to a MegaVoice unit, they memorize everything that they hear and say, ‘We no longer need that,’ so they’ll pass it on to another village.” 

The progress of Scripture distribution among the Himba, while encouraging, is hardly the end of the church’s work. Local discipleship efforts for lay pastors are ongoing. 

“It’s important for pastors not to go wide without going deep,” says Cardy.

From a regional ethno-cultural standpoint, he says the Himba people are respected but difficult for the rest of society to engage. The audio players are a strategic way to reach this group of approximately 50,000 people. 

Pray that the Himba people would come to Christ, and that God would protect their hearts and mind as they grow in their newfound faith. 

“When his word goes forth, it does not return empty,” Cardy says. 

So please pray that the light of God’s Word would brightly pierce the darkness in Namibia and beyond. 

Pray also for MegaVoice as it continues audio player distribution efforts. You may consider a financial gift toward this Kingdom-building work. 

“Somewhere out in the Kalahari Desert, you can actually stop by a village and hear the Gospel in the Himba language,” Cardy smiles. 

But for those of us who may never find ourselves under the Kalahari sun, the music of Scripture sounding from Opuwo is available right here.

Dhimba music courtesy of Global Recordings Network

Header photo of Himba women courtesy of Colin Watts via Unsplash. 

Photo courtesy of The Mission Society.

International (MNN) — “When I was younger, I would think about missionaries and I would think, ‘Wow, that’s really cool! Missionaries are just these amazing people that do amazing things all the time,’” shares Kate Hilderbrandt with The Mission Society.

Mission work can seem glamorous, but Hilderbrandt thinks there’s something to be said for actually experiencing God’s work on the field.

“Getting to be kind of on the field, [you] learn okay, it doesn’t look like that all the time, it’s not so glamorous,” she says. “But knowing that it’s still something that you can be passionate about and loving people every day is so much more exciting.”

The Mission Society has a program that gives young people an opportunity to experience sharing Christ’s name and love the mission field first-hand. They are getting ready to send out their next wave of GreenLight Interns at the end of the month. Internship periods can last anywhere from a few months to a full gap-year.

Hilderbrandt explains, “We pair students up with a mentor who’s a missionary with us on the field or a local partner that we know and trust, and that mentor kind of walks them through, ‘Okay, this is what everyday life looks like on the mission field.’”

GreenLight Interns also have access to The Mission Society’s resources same as the missionaries do. Hilderbrandt is involved in member care and will often Skype with the interns for debriefing and support.

For this fall 2013 season, GreenLight Interns are going to Namibia, Kenya, Peru, Paraguay and Thailand. Ministry opportunities include things like working with orphans and teaching English.

“We try to keep it small just so we can keep the quality pretty good and keep it so that our mentors really are the ones who are passionate and interested in working with these young people,” says Hilderbrandt.

Interns often come back with a new vision for sharing the Gospel. “It’s really cool to see people catch the whole missions bug and run with it,” says Hilderbrandt. “And even the ones who are not wanting to come back full-time yet, it’s really cool to just see them apply what they’ve learned to their lives.”

Hilderbrandt shares one story from an impacted GreenLight Intern. “There’s one girl I know who she just went for a two month summer [internship] in Kenya last year, and this girl is just on fire. She has worked with her church since then doing a mission weekend with them and just getting them fired about missions as well. [She] is planning on coming back in 2014 for a longer internship after she graduates.”

Here’s how you can be praying: “For our interns, we’d just love prayer that they have a great experience; that they have some of those tough times that help them grow as well and that God will just get them through it,” says Hilderbrandt.

Information about summer 2014 GreenLight Internships are soon to come. Want to learn more? Click here.

Mission work can seem glamorous, but Hilderbrandt thinks there's something to be said for actually experiencing God's work on the field.

“Getting to be kind of on the field, [you] learn [that] it doesn’t
look like that all the time; it’s not so glamorous," she says. "But knowing that
it’s still something that you can be passionate about and loving
people every day is so much more exciting.”

The Mission Society has a program that gives young people an opportunity to experience sharing Christ's name and love the mission field first-hand. They are getting ready to send out their next wave of GreenLight Interns at the end of the month. Internship periods can last anywhere from a few months to a full gap-year.

Hilderbrandt explains, “We pair students up with a mentor who’s a missionary with us on the field, or a local partner that we know and trust. And that mentor kind of walks them through, ‘Okay, this is what everyday life looks like on the mission field.’”

GreenLight Interns also have access to The Mission Society’s resources same as the missionaries do. Hilderbrandt is involved in member care and will often Skype with the interns for debriefing and support.

For this fall 2013 season, GreenLight Interns are going to Namibia, Kenya, Peru, Paraguay, and Thailand. Ministry opportunities include things like working with orphans and teaching English.

“We try to keep it small just so we can keep the quality pretty good and keep it so that our mentors really are the ones who are passionate and interested in working with these young people,” says Hilderbrandt.

Interns often come back with a new vision for sharing the Gospel. “It’s really cool to see people catch the whole missions bug and run with it,” says Hilderbrandt. “And even the ones who are not wanting to come back full-time yet, it’s really cool to just see them apply what they’ve learned.”

Hilderbrandt shares one story from an impacted GreenLight Intern. “There’s one girl I know who went for a two-month summer [internship] in Kenya last year, and this girl is just on fire. She has worked with her church since then, doing a mission weekend with them and just getting them fired about missions as well. [She] is planning on coming back in 2014 for a longer internship after she graduates.”

Here’s how you can be praying: “For our interns, we’d just love prayer that they have a great experience, that they have some of those tough times that help them grow as well, and that God will just get them through it,” says Hilderbrandt.

Information about summer 2014 GreenLight Internships are soon to come. Want to learn more? Click here.

Travis and Lorna Curry are doing their part through an orphanage called Children of Zion Village in Namibia. Lorna says, "It's a children's home where we currently have 58 children, ages infant to 21. We are obviously working on discipling them, teaching them about the love of Christ, raising them to be Christian individuals, with our hopes of going back out into the community and sharing the love of Christ."

Travis says there are over 14,000 children in their immediate area.

The children's home relies on the government for children to be placed in their home. Lorna says unfortunately, "We're at capacity. We can't take any more children based on the living situation here and the accommodations that we have. We currently have these older children who need to transition back out into the community."

While they didn't have a plan for that, now they do. It's a brand new program called the Epiphany Transition Home, and Lorna says they just moved in. "We have Christian local house parents looking after them. There these children will learn how to live in Africa. They will learn how to do traditional cooking, clean their place, budget, and do all the things that will be necessary to make them independent in Africa."

According to Lorna, their goal is simple. They want to help the kids to "understand, know and accept Christ's love and also have the basic skills for living independently when they leave the village."

Travis says the Children of Zion Village started in 2003, so they haven't had any children transition successfully yet. But they do have a good track record of Bible study. And the Curry's pray that the teaching has taken root.

Lorna says, "Every parent hopes their children are successful and love the Lord and share His love with others. So that's a little scary. But we are excited to see more openings in the children's center, to get new babies, and to share Christ with a new group of children."

Pray that God will protect these children as they begin to transition into society. Pray that they'll continue to grow in their faith and become a great example of Christ to others in their lives.