MISION TO THE IVORY COAST APRIL 2014

Maeva Sev Health Centre in partnership

The first mission in the Ivory Coast

I went to the Cote d’Ivoire for a mission originally scheduled 1^st to 15^th April 2014. The mission was to take place in two stages. At the invitation of Dr Germain Kébe-Mambo, Medical officer for sanitary works of Maeva Sev, Cote d’Ivoire branch, currently and solely Maeva Sev local branch responsible. The mission I had to start in Bouake from April 1^st to 7^th were I had to evaluate the work of this department of our mission after years brake due to the events that took place in that country. After Bouake I had to go to Dabou in the south from April 7^th to 15^th for a programme organized by Pastor Michel Koffi who was then in position to replace Mr Jacques Essoh at the head of the Ivorian branch of the mission.

First Mission in BOUAKE

When I arrived at the airport the evening of April1st, Dr Mambo met me with the clearance documents for

the package of drugs that I had brought for the Maeva Sev Health Centres. Not wanting to travel to Bouake at night, he had reserved some rooms in an Abidjan Hotel from where we left very early in the morning to Bouake. Despite our early departure, we arrived late in the afternoon in Bouake where we were expected since morning. A car brake down forced us to stop for several hours in a place near Yamoussoukro pending a replacement of our hired car which was coming from Abidjan. So this gave us opportunity to visit the famous basilica of this city the first president of this country built in Africa. After dinner with the team that was expecting our visit, we held a meeting to reorganize the program that was expected to begin this morning.

Two actions were planned for my stay in Bouake: firstly, teachings and preaching, then humanitarian activities.

The teaching and preaching

First of all, I planned training seminar for church leaders in the community. For this reason I had prepared a teaching very important to our mission, the “Theology of development”, a three days seminar we had to complete in two days only given the delay that was due to transportation. Ultimately, most of the members of the Methodist Churches of the district took part in this training and appreciated. And then, I was invited as the main speaker to the night of prayer organised by my hosts. This took place in Canaan Parish from Friday night at 8.Pm, to early in Saturday morning around 6.Am. Also participated as special guest, the Prophet Blaise BITTY. The program was substantial and there was no place for time out. The evening was punctuated with praise, prayers of confession and proclamation, as well as prayers of repentance and thanksgiving followed by numerous testimonials. The Prophet BITTY shared a short message with a time of intercession for the revival of the church, the city, the country and family. I continued with the main preaching for nearly an hour followed by a time of ministry with prophetic actions and prayers for deliverance and healing until dawn. It was a blessed time when the Lord has shown His grace! Praise Him!

Saturday’s was not either a rest. Indeed, after a few hours of sleep, we had to tour the works which will be discussed further. We ended on Sunday with a solemn service. The Methodist Church has then organised what they considered as a small harvest festival but for me it was a big one. During the festival a biblical rally was organised. Three people were out winners, two ladies and a young girl aged 11. But the parish had only provided two trophies to be given to winners, two Bibles. Only the two ladies were rewarded. Finding this unfair, on behalf of the Maeva Sev I committed to provide this young girl when I come back next mission, a children’s Bible in compensation and I invited her to chose what kind of bible she wanted me to bring. It also during this worship service that we made official presentation of the gift of medicines and medical equipment our mission provided as donation to the one who was in charge of the Maeva Sev Health Centres, Dr Germain Kebe-Mambo.

After the service, we shared together a meal and I took the next day the Bus to Abidjan, the second part of my mission in the Ivory Coast.

Humanitarian Actions

It was actually my main mission this time. I was invited to do so by Dr. Mambo who as LP, he was the chairman of the parish Lay Preachers of Canaan had organised the whole program with the church.

After the events experienced by this country, our Missionary organisation was concerned about the state of health projects undertaken, including the proposed health care for pupils and students designed and proposed by Dr Mambo and that our Mission had previously funded and supported. What was my joy to discover that Dr. Mambo had kept the same fervour as in the past and had set up in a number of private schools and colleges that joined this project! Thus we visited:

- The High School “Henri Poincaré”: an infirmary was established there by Dr Mambo. Students pay in the beginning of the School year a rather small fee and then are treated free of charge throughout the year. This system is very much appreciated by the leaders of these institutions and the parents as well.

- The Catholic School Group “Saint Viateur”. It is a group that admit children from Kindergarten to High School. Here too, we were greeted as “saviours”, what made me aware of th magnitude of the task to Dr. Mambo.

- The Institution “Coulibaly”, a private general school that welcomes students of 1^st and 2^nd cycle. In this facility, we have seen signs of prevention against AIDS by visiting the infirmary installed by Dr Mambo as part of this project.

- We then visited a teacher who created an NGO that projected to bring together neighbourhood children whose parents cannot afford to send them to school, in order to give them free education. This lady goes every morning in the streets of the area and collect children in age of education she find and gather them in her house and teach them. She is a consecrated person who needs to find financial help to carry out this mission which currently is helpless.

Health Centres

We also visited the works, including health centres, some of them are part of multipurpose institutions. Thus we went:

- To the Health Centre “Saint Viateur” of which our Missionary Association is partner. We made the turn just before visiting the school of the same name and toured the facilities.

- To the “Center for Literacy end Health In Rural Areas ‘ASR’, another of our partners in education and health. It is a centre that works with very few resources and still has plans for expansion given the state of the surrounding populations.

- To Canaan Health Centre. This centre is initiated by the parish of the same name, the United Methodist Church. It is a centre in process that still lacks every thing and relies on the generosity of donors.

- To the Health Centre St. Camillus of Belleville” which is a facility that also hosts women outcome of mental health institutions, their children and also orphans. The centre includes classes and nursery institutes for training in sewing and hairdressing to allow these ladies, former patients abandoned by their families, to integrate into society by job training.

All these centres are starving of resources, medical equipments and medicines. Some centres perform deliveries in deplorable conditions, hospital are far removed from the often poor neighbourhoods where they are located. Sometimes women give birth on the floor in catastrophic conditions because of lack of adequate equipment and delivery rooms. Following this visit, we decided to start collecting medical supplies once I get back, to send a container of medical equipment to support these works. Thank you to pray for generous donors to help us complete this project before end of this year.

On Monday, April 7^th I took the bus that was to take me to Abidjan. The second part of the mission was to take place near there in Dabou where pastor Michel KOFFI of the NGO Evangelism, Love and Compassion, in association with other pastors in that town had organized a series of events which were to begin on Tuesday April 8^th and to end on Saturday, April 12^th I had to preach in a church on Sunday 13^th before flying back to France on Monday 14^th.

But already, the second day in Bouake, as he was to participate in the whole leadership training seminar, Pastor Michel Koffi mentioned the difficulty of organizing my visit to Dabou and told me his presence was needed there on the spot to resolve the problem. He therefore left the same day to join his city. A few days after he left, he phoned to tell me that these same pastors that helped to make this program did no longer want to receive any one from Maeva Sev because of what Jack Essoh had done to them, even though he was no longer in charge of the mission when he performed his fraudulent business. He had been relieved of hid duties for several reasons but he still continued to use the name fo the mission to mount scams which were then charged to Maeva Sev. Seeing that the only program that was to be hold is a seminar with business women of Dabou at the weekend, I decided to cancel all and go back to France the same day no matter how much it may cost. And that’s what I did.

Be blessed!

CRAF: DAKAR MEETING 2014

plenary session

The Regional consultation for Francophone Africa

From March 25 to 29 was held in Dakar Senegal, the CRAF Consultation (Regional Consultation for Francophone Africa) for the evangelisation of unreached people groups in Africa. It is a movement that aims to encourage Churches, Missions and Ministries in Africa to collaborate to complete the task of evangelization of Africa. This movement promotes partnership end pooling of resources to better achieve the goals of evangelization of people groups not reached yet, to meet the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ to “go and make disciples of all nations…”

Took part in this meeting, church leaders, Missions and Ministries, some leaders with expertise and a special perspective on a specific topic and capable of implementing the resolutions of the Consultation and to whom it was asked to receive and discus during training institutes and workshops on topic to defined, describe the obstacles to evangelization and gather best practices related to these topics. Different worship bands accompanied us throughout the consultation. The meetings always began with a time of worship followed by a moment of meditation.

During plenary sessions, some Missions and Church leaders introduced their Ministries and shared their experiences. Afterwards, in training institutes and workshops, we discussed various issues such as partnership, church planting movements, orality, training, recruitment, sending and supporting missionaries, the biblical stewardship and local funding of missions, evangelism in urban areas, the role of missions in West Africa, the media etc.

Each of the working groups produced recommendations for the Church to be implemented in partnership at the local and national and regional level by evangelical leaders. These recommendations are consigned in the final document. They are in line with the vision of CRAF that the Church in Francophone Africa paves the way for engagement in Africa and beyond to reach all nations with the gospel through strategic partnerships.

On the sidelines of the Consultation, we held MANI meetings - Movement for African National Initiatives – a pan African movement for evangelism whose aim is to reach population groups not yet reached by the gospel. The purpose of this meeting was to prepare the States General for evangelism that will gather the African Denomination Leaders of the whole Continent in Accra, Ghana in February 2015. These meetings allowed completing the organization of this great meeting of leaders of Churches and missions, Federations and Unions of African Churches, with the participation of global partners. This organization remains to be put into practice by the various committees set up for this purpose, including the Local Organizing Committee in Accra.

The MANI Team

THE LAUSANNE MOVEMENT DIASPORA ROUNDTABLE GERMANY 2014

 

The Lausanne Movement Europe Diaspora Leaders

The Lausanne Movement Europe Diaspora Round Table

During the Diaspora Consultation in Amsterdam, September 2013, Brother Hun told us about the Lausanne movement Diaspora Congress in Manila in March 2015. We subsequently agreed to meet at least once, either in the U.K. or in Germany for the preparation of the congress and he asked me to invite African Ministries to participate in this roundtable.

So this meeting was held in Burbach – Holzhauer near Haiger in Germany from 9 to 11 February. Gathered around the same table, Various leaders from Ministries of immigration from Africa, Asia, India and Latin America, and the European leaders of movements and Missions acting in and among the Diaspora communities in Europe, such as Allianz Mission, the European Ministry for Refugees, the “Diaspora Church and Reverse Mission”, “KIT – Migrant Church Planting” a Danish Ministry established due to the Danish authorities awareness of the importance of the religion in human life, after many foreign representations of this country had been burned because of Islamists wrath… I regret that African ministries, numerous in Europe, especially in a movement called “GATE” (Gift from Africa To Europe) did not respond this invitation. Ministries from Latin America and India were also reduced in number, while those from Asia were well represented.

After sharing in turn on the experiences of each other, we analyzed the situation of immigration in Europe and the difficulties in relations between ministries of immigrant and indigenous ministries as well as ministries of immigrants among themselves, we thought about strategies to bring a change of mentalities to partnership.

We have highlighted some difficulties in assessing migrant populations, particularly in France were the statistics in this regard are either inaccessible, or non-existent, unlike in many European countries. It would be a good tool for the study of church planting. We emphasized the need to work in partnership, on the one hand with indigenous ministries to evangelise the migrant population as well as the autochthones more prone to secularization, and on the other hand between the various ministries from immigration. Having identified the barriers to collaboration, (lack of mutual understanding, lack of communication, excessive expectations from one another, often stereotypes from colonization etc.), we decided to investigate how to remedy this situation for the advancement of God’s kingdom. A working committee was set up to work before the Manila meeting, which will meet to develop an initial program and make proposals.

The next meeting will take place in the coming months. We expect at least two meetings before end of year or early next year 2015 the latest.

MISSION IN CAMEROON 2013

Open air evangelism in the Makèpè Round About

Part three

Evangelism in Duala: second step

 

After our trip in North Cameroon, we arrived in Duala in the South on Christmas Eve for a last program schedule for December 25^th to 28^th: three nights of evangelization on the theme of the family “God heals and restore families,” and the last evening closing with a concert of “JOBS” a Christian band.

The program of this stage had a different purpose from those made previously: the restoration of families. The sequence was identical to the one of the action in the North. We had set a podium outdoors at the “Makepe Roundabout” and large projection panel. The evening meetings were introduced by the praise led by the worship team of Pastor KOUM’s Israel Makepe Baptist Church d he Christian Band “JOBS”. Then a movie was shown in the theme of that night’s meditation and a speaker brought a message shortly before the end of the projection and launched the appeal. After the evangelizing team had taken care of those who approached, the technicians sent the end of the projection and people were invited to come back next day. Pastor KOUM spoke first evening, Daniel Mpondo spoke the second evening and Dominique Dick spoke the third.

Many people gave their lives to the Lord; others came to receive restoration in relation to their families, reconciliation commitments were made. Testimonies comforted us, like that of a young man with a motorbike who was passing by and seeing the crowd stopped to see what it was about. He eventually decided to stay until the end of the movie. He was so upset that when the preacher launched the call he came forward to give his life to Christ. He then committed to do his best for the reconciliation in his family. He told us that throughout the film, he saw the story of his family and when the preacher gave the message; it was like if it was all about him. He was convinced that the speaker was speaking to him and Jesus was asking him to surrender and let himself be restored.

We celebrated a wedding on Saturday 28^th. In Africa events such as weddings and funerals are special opportunities for evangelization. It is Pastor Dick who spoke during the wedding service On Sunday 28^th Rev. Daniel Mpondo gave the message to Israel Makepe Church on the theme “the place of a man in the family according to God” when Dominique Dick was expected at the Francophone Community Shalom.

We came to conclusion in the late afternoon at the “Makepe Roundabout” were the “JOBS” band led us to the presence of the Lord with a wonderful concert of praise. Pastor Emmanuel Koum throughout the concert encouraged the attendance with the word of God and at the end many lives came again to the Lord. What a grace! Thank you Lord for giving us to experience such moments being mere labourers into your harvest!

Glory and praise to the One who was, who is and who’s coming!

MISSION IN CAMEROON 2013

North Cameroon (continued)

Second step: evangelism in Ngaoundere

After a bit chaotic and gruelling journey, through a full of potholes and dusty tracks roads, we finally arrived in Ngaoundere more than five hours after our departure from Garoua.

The program of this stage had a different purpose than the one before. It concerned the planting of an evangelical Church in a suburb of Ngaoundere Town. Four evening meetings were planned. But after three nights we had to agree that it was not necessary to continue, given that it was already crowded to one pastor who did not yet have a team that could take care of all the souls won to the Lord. Therefore, our brother pastor KOUM had to take the decision to stop everything and take a day earlier the road back to Duala where we were expected for another program.

In Ngaoundere the course of evening program was similar to what we did in Garoua: after a time of praise and worship, the projection of the movie was launched and before it ends a preacher gave a message after which a call to repentance was launched. It was only after the work of counsellors that the remaining part of the movie was resumed. At each call many people came to give their lives to Christ.

Again we had extraordinary testimonies of conversion: the second night, a counsellor brought a young man who wanted me to pray for him and his friend. Actually that young man came the day before and gave his life to Jesus because he was moved by the message that spoke exactly of his life. So that same evening he went to seek for his friend to ask him to come and see to what Jesus can do to his life: he would forgive all his sins! His friend told him he had committed so many crimes and atrocities that nobody would forgive. The young man replied that they had grown up together, rose hell together, and there were no atrocities his friend had omitted that he, himself had not committed, and Jesus has forgiven him. He said he had been forgiven and received a new life, there was no reason that his friend misses this: it could happen tom too! Therefore his friend accepted to come with him to the even meeting and went through the same experience: he was convinced that the preacher was talking about his life and also decided to surrender his life to Jesus.

 

When I launched a call to repent that night, he was the first to come before. He received forgiveness and became a new creation in Jesus! We experienced many testimonies of this kind and I will never cease to say t the greatest miracle we encounter when preaching and evangelising is a soul saved!

May the Lord be glorify!