Tragedy
On Thursday, January 20, a very sad tragedy struck a village in the Western Region of Ghana. A truck carrying dynamite was passing through the village of Bogoso, Apiate, when it was involved in a collision with a motorcycle. The driver of the truck saw that a fire had started and immediately started yelling at the onlookers to run for cover. Some listened to his warnings; some did not. There was a massive explosion, which left 17 reported dead and 59 injured! Here is a news article about the explosion: https://tinyurl.com/GhanaExplosion. The people had very little warning, and much of the village was destroyed from the blast. Many of the people are still displaced and living in temporary tents.
Eleven days after the blast, we sent a team of four men to the village; three men from our church met up with our graduate, Nicholas Ansah, and all four shared the Gospel and rice and oil with many of the displaced. Here are some photos from their trip:
In addition to distributing tracts, these men shared the Gospel with over 40 people, and 39 professed their faith in Christ. Please pray for God to have mercy on the townspeople as they recover.
Pastors’ Refresher
Last month, we invited some of our daughter churches’ pastors to join us for a 2½-day refresher course. (Please see our group photo below.) This was a time of teaching, fellowship, and inspiration. The pastors were very happy about the instruction and went home encouraged. One pastor was inspired to start an information center ministry out of his church. [An information center is a neighborhood loudspeaker over which one may rent airtime. It is like a local radio station. We have found these to be an effective way of getting out the Gospel.] This week, we sent two men to help this pastor get this new ministry started.
Prayer Requests
The team family we are asking you to pray for extra this month is the Micah and Abbie Christiansen family. Their latest updates can be found here: http://fbmi.org/missionary/christiansenm#updates. Also, as mentioned in our last update, please pray with us that God would provide the $350,000-plus we need to extend the lease on our church property for another 50 years.
God bless,
Ted Speer