It never ceases to amaze me how fast weeks pass. At the same time, it seems like more than 3 weeks worth of things have taken place since the last time I wrote. I will try to be concise in my summary…Classes here at Waama are going very well and we are grateful for the hunger for learning the students continue to demonstrate. We also continue to be blessed by the increased interactions we are able to have with them outside the classroom due to our continual improvements linguistically. By way of the changes here that I mentioned in my last email, it has recently been confirmed that the first 12 students of the new seminary course will be arriving in January. This will certainly mean an increased work load for all the teachers but, again, we are excited about the long-term implications of these changes.
Our weekend ministry schedule keeps filling up and these experiences continue to be highlights of our work here. In fact, just last night (at about 1am) we returned from a couple amazing days in the home village of one of last year’s students. I really wish you all could experience at least one of these weekends with us.
We started out on Saturday afternoon showing the Jesus Film at a primary school. There were about 100 people in attendance. From there, we went immediately to a neighboring village church and held an outdoor showing with 200+ people. The next morning, we had the privilege of worshiping at a new village church where they were coming to the end of a couple days of special spiritual meetings. Ben was the preacher in the morning service and then in the afternoon we each had the opportunity to take a session as they continued with their “special meetings.” In Ben’s afternoon session, he presented the “Wordless Book” as an evangelistic tool and we were then able to pass out a bunch of the wordless books that the youth group at Atonement put together for us. (THANKS, R.S.Y.M.!!) We made sure that they knew we were not just passing out a free gift but we expected everyone who took one to use it with their non-Christian friends and neighbors. I will include a picture in this email of those who agreed to be a part of this new “Evangelistic Team.”
In my session, I presented the “Glove Illustration” which uses a white glove to illustrate our life made dirty with “sin” (iodine) which can only be made clean as we accept the cleansing that comes through Jesus’ blood (a special chemical solution). It actually makes for a pretty impressive illustration and I really feel like it makes an especially important point in this culture where there is such an emphasis on outward conformity or religious form. I think it is going to be a long time before they forget that all the good works we can do (illustrated by scrubbing the iodine stained glove in water) doesn’t do anything to take away our sin before God…and actually just makes it worse (Isaiah 64:6). It is not until we apply God’s perfect solution (Jesus blood) to our lives that our “good works” can actually be pleasing to Him because we are no longer trying to earn something that we are incapable of earning but we are now living our lives out of gratefulness for the gift we have received with the goal of pointing others to Jesus and giving glory to His name. To those who have never seen the illustration personally, sorry, I will have to show it to you sometime.
The final highlight from this past weekend that I will mention came as we presented 28 Bibles to the evangelists working in this mission area. These are Bibles that have been provided by many of you for our work in these villages. We made the presentation just after finishing a meal with several of our hosts. Little did we know that one of the people sharing the meal with us was a man who had just committed his life to Christ 3 days earlier. As soon as he saw the box, he asked how much the Bibles were. It was then that one of the evangelists told us this man’s story and how only a couple days before he had been asking how he could get a Bible of his own so that he could grow in his newfound faith. What a joy to be able to immediately put a Bible in his hands free of charge and see his faith strengthened as God answered one of his first prayer requests as a new believer!! Again, God bless you all as you participate with us in these various ways.
In closing, as you may remember, since my last update, I also had the opportunity to attend the Dubai Air Show on behalf of LEKTRO, Inc. along with my former employer and good friend, Eric Paulson. It was a busy couple days but I very much enjoyed the change of pace and the opportunity to be in the LEKTRO environment once again. It was certainly a huge blessing to reconnect with Eric and I am also grateful for his willingness to bring some early Christmas presents that were sent by my family. Thanks, family!!
Well, I am going to stop here for now. Thank you all for your continual part in this ministry in so many ways. Have a blessed Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for each of you. May God richly bless you as we enter this holiday season! You are in my prayers.
In Christian love,
Jesse Long
Note: A recent prayer letter from Ben Jore has just been posted on our AFLC World Missions Web site. Click here to read it. (PDF Format)
