Kerith Ministry

We want to thank you so much for your continued support and care. As Kerith ministry, we would have completed so little without you, but we are so grateful to God for you. Your continued prayer and support has enabled us as a ministry to accomplish all the Lord has enabled us accomplish.

In the same way, we want to let you know about the projects that we are embarking on for the betterment of the community and our orphanage children.

School Block Roofing

There is a tremendous need for a primary school in the place where the ministry is located due to a large number of children. We have studied the expenses from previous years in terms of gas for transporting the kids to and from school in town, school dues, and health risks. As a ministry, we thought it wise to start up a school project to cut down all those expenses and meet the general community need of a school. God is faithful! Through your support and prayers, the first three-classroom school block was built and roofed, and it is already being used.

Most of the second phase, a four-classroom block, has been completed. We have a great need to roof this building which will enable us to accommodate the anticipated number of children in the next academic year, which starts in January 2019. We are believing God for a total amount of $3,800 to have that project completed so that we see the school being used at full capacity.

School Furniture

With the increasing number of children in the school, there is a need for more desks. We would like all of the children to be able to have a place to sit with their books to study. Currently, we have a need of about 20 desks. Each desk costs $25 for a total cost of $500.

Skills Training Center

In the past, we successfully trained 14 women in tailoring. They are currently using that skill to earn a living and sustain their families.

Our community is faced with a large number of young adults who have had access to partially attend secondary school, but have not had money to take them for higher education or to attain a skill which can take them through life. This makes the young people opt for early marriages, which has resulted in having irresponsible young parents. Because they have no skills or way to support their family, we have a substantial number of street kids in the community. Our ministry has observed this need and started up a skills training project where we are equipping people with tailoring skills. We started with four sewing machines. There were so many that wanted training, but we could not meet the number of students needing training. Because of limited sources of funds, we are finding it hard to pay the trainers on a consistent basis. This results in a lapse in the training and increased time to complete training. It will cost $100 to pay for the trainers for one semester. Due to number of students, we would also like to add five more sewing machines which would cost $600.

Union of Baptist Churches

Harvesters’ partner in the D.R. Congo continues to grow their ministry and impact lives there through church planting, training pastors and leaders, educating children, assisting widows, and providing orphan care. Recently, a team from the United States spent several days in Goma conducting sessions for pastors, leaders, women, and children. Everyone was blessed by how God used the time to encourage both the team and the Congolese people involved. It is impressive to experience the joy that is present among God’s people who live in such a difficult place.

In our recent newsletters, we’ve described several efforts to strengthen the Congolese churches and open doors of evangelism through efforts to meet material needs. Ongoing, there are continued opportunities to bless people and communities in special ways. Our partner there is praying for funding to install a second water storage tank to serve widows in Kibumba, typically referred to as “the widow’s village”. The tank, which costs $2,400 to build, is used to capture rainwater that is stored for later use during the dry season. This project “pays for itself” since it reduces the amount of water that the women must purchase to sustain their families when the rainfall stops for several months each year.

As with widows, the orphans of the D.R. Congo also have pressing needs. At our “Orphan’s Framing Center” there, $500 will provide 1,000 meals, and $200 will cover the annual cost of education and needed uniforms for one child.

Thank you for your willingness to be part of what God is doing in D.R. Congo!

Good Samaritan

We praise God for all of His provision! We continue to serve the children of our community and trust that God will bless our work.

Each year, we give our 195 students a new sweater, socks, and shoes for Christmas. For many, this will be the only new clothing items they have. The cost per student is $13.50 for a total of $2,632.50.

Happy in their new sweaters!

There is a long waiting list of 120 students to enter the Kollukhedi Village School. Only $19 per month will provide each student with an education, uniforms, and text books. These children are a great asset to our ministry for the present and the future. Through them, we get to meet the parents and grandparents at our monthly Parent – Teacher meeting. We are able to reach many in the village with Christ’s love through teaching these children.

In 2005, your donations provided a four-wheeler for our ministry. After so many years, it required frequent costly repairs. Thus, a new four-wheeler has become an urgent need. The cost to replace this vehicle is $12,900.

Thank you for your prayers and support as we continue to show the love of Christ to our students and their families!

Note From Our Director

Authentic love leads to action. It’s more than just a passive acknowledgement of need or a brief thought about what ought to be done. In several verses, God’s Word defines genuine love in terms of how it reacts to needs, with right attitudes mixed with helpful responses. That’s the kind of love that led Christ to offer Himself for the redemption of us all.

That’s also the sort of love that leads people like you to share their financial resources with ministries like Harvesters International and our partners in Asia and Africa. Your gifts result in the spiritual and material needs of countless people being met in the name of Christ, accomplishing the end result of the kind of love that is described in the Bible.

Everyone at Harvesters looks forward to the future, with a great sense of both calling and urgency to continue sharing the love that changed our own lives. God has blessed us with a great means of doing so through our work to support and encourage national missionaries. We are thankful that you have chosen to be part of that effort as well, through your prayers and giving.

Blessings & Thanks,
Doug Radford
Director

Leaving A Legacy

By J Lucarelli

This past Christmas, we were given a gift that we didn’t really want to receive. The week before Christmas, Ed Hirshman, a beloved friend, mentor, and recently-retired-director of Harvesters, passed away at the spry age of 73, as a result of complications with esophageal cancer. Ed is certainly “in a better place”, and “is no longer suffering.” I have to admit, though, that the cliché sentiments that people often use to bring comfort to those who have suffered a loss are not sufficient to soothe the hurt of losing someone like Ed.

He faithfully served as a Marine on active duty for 22 years and on staff at Harvesters for even longer than that. He led Harvesters around the globe, prayerfully expanding the scope of the ministry’s partnerships from a focus solely in Kenya to 11 partnerships in 10 different countries.

Around the time of Ed’s passing, I watched the Christmas classic, White Christmas, which gave me a picture that helped me relate to the death of my dear friend.

In the opening scene, we see General Waverly, who is retiring from the Army, say goodbye to his men. He starts out insulting them and telling them how worthless they are, but ends up melting (in a macho way, of course) and tells them how great they are. The crowd of soldiers send Waverly off singing “We’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go…” Even as bombs fall around them, they continue to sing as Waverly moves through the crowd and gives his men a final salute before exiting into a waiting vehicle.

Even though Ed would probably lose his mind because Waverly was in the Army, not the Marines, there are similarities between Ed and General Waverly. Both were rough and brash on the outside, but wise and compassionate on the inside. Ed was respected by those around him, sought after for his advice, and endured for his stories. He didn’t mince words and told it like it was. He was much smarter than he gave himself credit for. Dave Wilson called him a “true warrior with a big heart and compassionate hands.” Ed finished well and had the respect of so many as he gave his final salute.

At his memorial service, when tears weren’t blurring my vision, I saw a room full of people that loved and respected a man whose legacy will not be in monuments, fame, or wealth, but in the people into whom he invested his life.

As one of those people, I must admit, that there is a huge hole in my life where Ed Hirshman used to be. He was a friend, mentor, confidant, and someone I knew was always on my side. It is because of Ed that I am now in ministry. I realize my grief is selfish because I miss my friend and regret things that went unsaid. But I know that God is in all things and that my friend now has a new audience to whom to tell his stories.

Goodbye dear friend. May your legacy continue to bear fruit as the lives you touched touch others.

Sion Assembly Church – Ministry Update

By Rajendra Kumar

Thank you for your support of our ministry. We have had an eventful year here in India with two new churches planted, the addition of new programs for assisting people affected by leprosy and AIDs, and the opening of a satellite campus of the North Carolina Theological Seminary (NCTS).

In September, we began training pastors, evangelists, and church leaders through NCTS. Almost 160 men and women from two different states travel to our facilities for two days twice a month to receive training that will culminate in a bachelor’s degree in Biblical Studies. Meals and lodging are provided during these intense training sessions. Some of our first class are pictured here. We ask that you pray for these servants and their families as they pursue God’s call on their lives.

Our children’s home is attached to our church building in Vellaturu. Our desire is to give abandoned and orphaned children a chance at life – both physical and spiritual. We embrace them with the love of Jesus! Not only do we provide their basic necessities of food, shelter, clothing, we also provide for their education. In 2017, we began holding classes on the roof of the children’s home. This year, we are planning to begin construction of a school building. We hope to provide an English speaking school for those in the children’s home, as well as children in the community.

We ask that you pray for the construction of the school. Also, please pray for Rufus, the son of Pastor Venket, who was recently diagnosed with leukemia.

Pokot Outreach Ministries – South Sudan Update

By Reuben Meriakol

Our ministry’s primary focus is bringing the good news to everyone through evangelism and church planting. Besides this, we also engage in community development activities such as education, health campaigns, and capacity building on social and economic matters.

In the ministry of preaching the gospel and church planting, we have missional leaders leading our missional hubs with evangelistic teams reaching a particular area of focus. For instance, the evangelism team of the main mission hub in Kapoeta ministers in the town’s outskirts, hospital, and prisons. The team conducted three house to house evangelism events in which over 50 households were reached. We also followed up with the Jesus film and other Bible videos, which was attended by hundreds of people (it is difficult to give a precise number because we normally conduct film ministry at night). We can confidently report that our main hub’s ministry impacted over 800 people in the past year.

The other mission hubs and village churches led by our missional leaders Nichodemus, Sam Etyang’, Eliya Lokuru, and Lopeyok also did marvelous work. Their village teams were able to do home to home evangelism, night fireplace evangelism, and water well evangelism (preaching to people who gather at water points). Open air preaching/crusades were done in Chukudum (among the Diding’a people), which over 400 people attended. Also, we normally use the Christmas celebration to make contact with many people in the village. Our ministry leaders, along with members of the village churches, organize for food and drinks on Christmas eve and/or day, which becomes an invite-a-friend event. Most of those who are invited are unbelievers, and they get an opportunity to hear about the greatest gift of a savior to the world. This is part of the year that we always look forward to because we make contact with many new people.

Another success in 2017 was the program in Nachilagur village. In this village, we implemented two of our major goals of ministry: church planting and education. We planted a church that is now meeting every Sunday at the Nachilagur primary school. The primary school was one of the many closed down schools in the state until our ministry revived operations. Both the school and the church program have given us contact with over 800 people in a village with a population of about 2,000. Over 500 hundred people, including children, teenagers, young adults, and parents are directly impacted by this twin program.

In 2017, our entire ministry made contact and shared the gospel with over 3,500 people, among whom over 250 came to faith.

This is Martha Lokwale – a woman who believes in God’s power and provision. She walks for over 21 kilometers to our mission home/hub in Kapoeta. She always longs for her people to know the Word. She has defied all odds in a society that gives the lowest regard to women. In this society where women are there to be seen and not to be heard, she has mustered the courage to share her testimony among her village members. Her changed life is the script that her own village reads as they listen to the good news we preach. She has earned respect and influence and has on several occasions brought women to visit our church in Kapoeta. Her hospitality and generosity show the spirit of resilience which rises above the shortcoming of droughts, diseases, and economic crisis that points that her anchor and faith is in Christ, the rock of ages. Whenever there is an outbreak of disease in her village, she takes the burden on herself and walks the full distance to share with us the prayer requests from her village. We normally respond by prayer and sending medical help to rescue the situation. Her faith fans mine into flames and has drawn my heart to dream for a health facility to help the many women she worries about in the village. She has faith that cholera that killed dozens in her village will not happen once they have a source of clean water. I see the spirit of God moving in this woman, and I can’t wait to see Martha’s prayers answered!

We praise God for the provision of the things we have been praying for: completion of the church construction, motorbikes for our two mission hubs and accompanying Jesus film systems. Pray that the use of these resources shall be effective in showing the love of Christ and preaching of the good news to the unreached.

We have a vision of planting 12 or more churches this year; at least three in each of our four mission hubs including Kapoeta, Riwotoo, Chukudum, and Lotien/Mogos. Please pray for our missional leaders Nichodemus, Sam, Eliya and Joseph as they lead their teams that they may be led by the Holy Spirit in rallying the troops to battle for the lost souls. We thank you for your prayers and support!

Kerith Ministry Update

By Samuel Mwesigwa

We celebrated ten years of ministry in 2017, and I am pleased to share with you how the Lord has blessed us this year. During the year, we held seven revival meetings, planted one new church, baptized 496 new believers, and held seven Gospel crusades where just over 1,700 people received Jesus Christ as their Savior!! We held our ninth annual believer’s conference, which attracted over 600 people, and held our fifth annual youth camp.

One of the Gospel crusades was held in the village of Kaboloi. The three-day crusade attracted thousands of people and over 600 gave their lives to Christ. As a result, we planted a new church there, and it is growing rapidly. Among the people saved at the crusade was a former witch doctor. He was so radically changed by the power of Jesus that he donated the land where the church is currently meeting! Church members (seen here dedicating the land) have worked together to put up a shelter for the meetings.

In June, the Lord blessed us with three hectares (approximately 7.5 acres) of land for farming, which has been a long-term ministry need. This allows us to grow food for the children living in our children’s home and also provides income through the sale of food to the community. We were also able to begin construction of a permanent school building. The building structure is almost complete, and soon we will begin work inside to finish the classrooms.

Serving in a Muslim community presents a challenge in finding a place to hold a fellowship. Over the last four years, we have been trusting God for a place in the middle of Pallisa where we can hold midday services. With much prayer, the Lord led us to an unfinished building right in the middle of our town. We contacted the owner, and he agreed to rent us the place for $450 per year. It has been three months since the fellowship started. Within a few weeks, the group grew to over 100 people! We meet every weekday for one and a half hours for prayer and studying the Word. Every Friday, we have a two hour prayer meeting aimed at praying that the Lord will save our town.

Since this fellowship (seen left) started, there has been a lot of resistance, but the Lord has helped us to stand amidst it all. The Gospel is preached through our loud speakers and reaches most parts of the town. People can hear our message of hope even if they aren’t physically there. Two former Muslims, and six others, have given their lives to Jesus. This has also grown our church in the area of prayer and commitment to begin more fellowships, since the church is far from the center of town. Our future plan is to buy this property and set up a radio station, which will broadcast the Gospel in eastern Uganda and part of Kenya. We are experiencing revival in our community!

I ask that you pray for our team. Pray for more passion to serve and patience since our staff members are volunteers and don’t receive a monthly wage. I also ask that you pray for the Kerith primary school project that the Lord will give us the right staff and a good environment for our children to study. We are trusting that by the end of this year, the Lord will provide the required funds to complete the building. Finally, please pray for our pastors as they disciple our members and that this would be a year of growth and fruitfulness for the ministry.

What Can I Do?

By Doug Radford, Director

I get asked a lot by people who support our work – “What else can I do to
help?”. That’s a great question with an easy answer! I encourage them
to simply help us connect with more people. We are always looking
for opportunities to share with churches, Sunday School classes, small
groups, and individuals about what God is doing through Harvesters.
These opportunities often happen when someone who is already familiar
with our work encourages someone else to get to know Harvesters.
I’ve seen first-hand how a simple phone call to a friend has eventually
resulted in a great blessing to the people we serve.

Would you consider helping us meet new people or groups who might
want to be part of blessing the lives of people in some of the most
difficult places on earth? We will always approach these opportunities
with no pressure and no expectations.

If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can
email me at doug@harvesters.net or give me a call at 252-230-9742.

Thanks for all you do! The work of Harvesters truly consists of what
you and other supporters do alongside us and our international ministry
partners to make Christ known and show His love to people.

From the Field

Proverbs 16:9 says, “The heart of man plans his way, BUT the LORD directs his steps.” Ironically, and with some surprise, unplanned circumstances over the past few months dictate that we begin this update with this Scripture and its attendant meaning!

We unexpectedly returned to the States due to a significant trial in the club we are serving and the potential fall-out arising from our presence. We enjoyed an extended season of rest in America over the past several months and were ticketed to return to China September 9th, only to have our departure flights cancelled by Hurricane Irma – which struck our home on the West Coast of Florida with a fury. By God’s grace, what first appeared to be an inevitable direct hit from the eye of the storm was rerouted a mere 20 miles to our east, sparing us from the most fearsome effects of the winds, rain, and storm surge.

The airlines rescheduled us to depart September 14th – only to suffer another unexpected setback. Mr. Jones had been battling an unexplained hand infection for about a month. Making a long story short, he required immediate surgery on his right hand on Wednesday, the 13th. The surgery was successful! After a short, but intense, period of prayer, we determined that Mrs. Jones would return as planned and her husband will remain in the States until the wounds have fully healed, and he has completed his physical therapy to restore movement and range of motion to his pinky finger. This is expected to be anywhere from 6-12 weeks, depending upon how the finger responds.

Now these two things alone would be trying enough… but two days after Mrs. Jones’ return, a sister club (with a foreign influence working with them – just like us!) received a foreboding message from government authorities. Translated into English, the notice says, “You are to immediately cease conducting worship services and you are “requested” to gather for services at the Three Self Church. You are further “invited” to a meeting at the police station to discuss your “unlawful meetings.” As you may remember, about this time last year, the religious bureau published new… and draconian… religious regulations for public comment. Like all bureaucracies, things moved slowly, but the new regulations have traversed the political system and been approved into law. They will become ‘official’ in February of 2018 – though functional immediately. Many of the regulations under this law have been in place before. What makes this iteration different is the articulation of specific enforcement mechanisms (lacking in previous regulations) and substantial financial penalties. Physical persecution did not impede the church… now they move to economic persecution. The full extent of these newly implemented regulations is beyond the scope of this update, but the net is this: Government scrutiny is returning to the Chinese house-church network after a ten year period of relative peaceful coexistence. One area of particular government focus is the presence of ANY foreign influence in the church, along with sources of church funding.

As you continue to strive with us in God’s work, please keep the following matters in prayer:

1. Pray for our Chinese brethren as they face an uncertain future and a season of increased attention… and likely persecution… from the government;

2. Pray for Mrs. Jones’ safety, stamina, and “invisibility” as she ministers alone for a short period of time;

3. Pray for a quick recovery from surgery for Mr. Jones; and

4. Pray for discernment as we ponder how God will direct the ministry in the coming year.

As always, we deeply value, and never take for granted, your participation in the ministry. We say the same thing every time simply because the same thing needs to be said… namely, that without your support, we could not do what we do! We extend our deepest and most humble gratitude to each one of you.