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| Discipleship Group |
Ministry in Africa gets more joyful when you see faith and
love put into action. My ministry at Gitega International Academy has focused
much on putting faith and love in action. We started our ‘Love in Action’ by
going to serve at the Homes of Hope (Orphanage). It has been so rewarding to
see our students who are almost exclusively from affluent families, enjoying to serve the
less fortunate, and do it joyfully.
So far we have done love in action in a bit more safe
and familiar place such as Homes of Hope, which is also run by Youth For Christ. But tomorrow will be different as
we will be serving beggars on the streets.
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| Discipleship Group |
We have been meeting for about two months now with my discipleship
group of 24 students. I have challenged these students to live out their faith
and to be sacrificial. Tomorrow, Saturday morning we will go with the 24
students and about 8 staff and volunteers to serve beggars on the street. We will
cook beans and rice and we will also provide them with bread.
One thing that is neat about this project is that the students and
staff have all embraced the idea and have joined in the sacrificial
participation. Students and staff have given up their breakfast bread in order
to serve the bread to the beggars. Staff and volunteers have contributed their
own money to buy rice, beans, cooking oil, salt, plates, cups, rental pots, and
other items.
I have asked one of my discipleship student to preach a
sermon as the beggars can only be addressed in Kirundi as most of them are
unschooled. I also asked one of our staff to share the gospel. As we have
prepared ourselves for this ministry to the less fortunate, we know the devil
is not happy. This is why dear friends and partners, we need your prayers.
Please pray that the sharing of food with the beggars will minister to all who
will come. Pray even more that God’s kingdom will be more populated tomorrow as
sinners get saved.
God has been so good to us and has given us favour. More students
are giving their lives to Christ and having real tangible transformed lives. One
of the house parents told me, pastor, whatever you are doing, keep doing it.
Lives are being changed In a very surprising way. He said your discipleship
team has made students come together 2 days a week and all the 24 students
praying together. Parents are testifying to the change in their children. Glory
is not mine but God’s.
Please pray as well for this one big need, a baptism service. After
many of our students received Christ, a student came to me and asked to be
baptized; we decided to think about the possibility of baptizing students who
have clearly placed their faith in Christ. Today and tomorrow, the Burundi
Youth for Christ Board is discussing the possibility of allowing
baptism at Gitega International Academy. The BYFC National Director told me
today that they will be discussing about baptism at GIA. He said, you know you guys from Canada and USA, it is easy
to decide to do the baptism and just do it. But here in Burundi, we have so
many things we have to consider and to examine the possibility. It is surely
different here than it is in Canada. So please pray that we get the go ahead to
baptize these students who are so eager to publicly declare their allegiance to
Christ. Please pray that Christ culture will be valued above the local culture
and yet that we will still be respect to the local culture.
Thank you for your prayers, support and partnership in God’s
ministry with us. Just as Paul thanked God for the Philippians, we thank God for
you for your partnership with us. We thank you from deep down our hearts.
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Winning Poster |
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| Students checking out the posters |
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| Condom Education |
Please pray also for Darla for strength as she is more than
over-loaded with overwhelming number of sick students and even staff. The last
2 days she has been seeing sick students the moment she put her feet into the
school and she had to force her way out as the students kept coming up to her
way out of the doors. Please pray that the current outbreak of the virus will
go away as soon as possible. We have been teaching some half full classes due
to sickness.
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| No More Teen Pregnancy |
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| HIV/AIDS in Africa |
Darla has been working on a poster project with the students almost since we arrived at GIA. April 30 we had the deadline for the GIA school project to be done. It was a challenge as the students started from not even knowing what a poster was! A few of the posters are included below, as well as our winning poster. We will be submitting the poster to the Segal Family Foundation - youth engagement facebook page for another poster contest. If any of you get a chance, you can go to their page and check out our poster! They will be marking according to activity of the poster on their facebook page.
Many blessings to you all. Thank you deeply.
Charles and Darla Balenga
We truly thank God for being with us and enabling us to put
love into action today. We were provided with a compound area where we could control the number of people we let in. We needed to be strategic with this event as without proper control, a riot would have ensued. We had expected to feed about 50 people, but we ended
up letting in about 150 people, not counting our GIA students, staff and volunteers of
over 40 people. Unfortunately we had many more street people that came but we
could not let them in as we were already stretching the food as much as we could.
Staff and some GIA students gave up their bread from 1 meal to be able to serve
bread and 2 ladies from the community volunteered to cook beans and rice for
this day.
There were many children, many babies, many old, many
handicapped and many young people. Some that came were so hungry that they
needed more food than what we could give. Even though they were hungry, they had some of the biggest smiles and brightest laughs. We thank God, those that came in the gate were all able to receive something to eat
and drink. Our discipleship team and a few other students who joined us
did a great job of serving our guests.
led
a prayer for salvation. Around 90 people responded to receiving Christ into
their lives.
