These past two months have been an exciting time for our ministry. A lot has happened, and we have stayed extremely busy. We have watched God move in some amazing ways, and new doors have opened up for us in our ministry.
Faith Baptist Church has been growing and is relatively stable for a new ministry. We average between 30 and 40 weekly, with a solid group of 20 people. Watching the church grow and the people commit themselves to the Lord, we decided to form the church biblically. October 23 was our Charter Service, where we presented our church Constitution and Statement of Faith and signed the founding-members document. We had 38 people in attendance, and the 20 people who were qualified became the new founding members of our church. Please pray over the coming months, as we will also be selecting deacons. God has blessed us in a way that I would have never imagined. God clearly has plans for our church, which is only five months old.
In preparation for our Charter Service, we had 7 baptized. Most of the people we baptized were baptized as children. They struggled with the idea of being baptized after salvation, but after a Bible study, they requested to be baptized immediately to ensure that they qualified to become members.
Many, if not all of you, may be aware of the diversity of our ministry. We have the “traditional” ministry and our “non-traditional” ministry, where we work with various Muslim people groups. This past week we took a very non-traditional trip. To those who were aware of the trip, thank you for your prayers. On this trip, we held a conference with Muslim-background believers. Because of the area we were in, it required much higher security. We had two armed guards on the property, and every vehicle and person entering was searched. In total, we had 472 people in attendance, and 87 Muslims received Christ as their Saviour.
On one of the days, we were teaching about missions/evangelism. It broke my heart to listen to these people sing out in their native tongue a song about spreading the Gospel no matter what the cost. A literal translation would say, “Marching the Gospel forward as we march toward our deaths.” They were praising God for the opportunity to spread the Gospel, knowing they might be killed for it one day. As I write this, one of the pastors from the conference is sitting in prison, awaiting trial for spreading the Gospel. He is being charged with “heresy and false teaching.” If you will, please pray as we are trying to determine if and how we can help him. After the conference, we successfully crossed the border into this neighboring closed-access country, and we were able to carry 1,000 digital Bibles that are now being distributed across this country to various underground churches.
Once again, thank you for your faithful support. None of this would ever be possible without you doing your part. I am honored to partner with you in the ministry as we each spread the Gospel into this dark world.
In His service,
The Newton Family
