INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES 2015 YEAR END REVIEW

INTERNATIONAL MINISTRIES 2015 YEAR END REVIEW

In This Issue What a wonderful year! In this year end review, you ll learn more about our ministry partners and some of the victories and challenges of the past year. We are grateful to have added our partner - China Sees - in 2015. Your commitment to our efforts of encouraging and assisting national missionary initiative has helped our partners share the gospel in areas that have never heard the good news of Jesus, supplied clean drinking water to over 35,000 people, provided education for thousands of children and adults, and trained lay leaders and pastors that are now out ministering in the field! We are so incredibly grateful that you have partnered with us to share the hope of Christ! And we ask that you continue to pray for each of our partners as they work for the Kingdom. To learn more about the work of Harvesters and all of our partners, please visit our website at www.harvesters.net. Also follow us on Facebook (Harvesters International Ministries) and Instagram (harvestersinternational) for regular updates. Seira Community Church - Rwanda Aphrodice Mutabaruka Seira Community Church was founded in 2012 to serve the people of Rwanda through evangelism and education. In four short years, the ministry has grown to 12 churches throughout the country with over 3,500 members. We have worked diligently to promote unity and reconciliation among the Rwandans and neighboring countries by focusing on solidarity and mutual help. We provide humanitarian relief to refugee camps as a practical way to show the love of Christ to our neighbors in need. We want our church communities to be self-supporting. To that end, we have provided goats to each church for both milk production and breeding for an additional food source. We seek income generating activities for both the church and its members and emphasize the importance of savings. This is a new way of thinking as most have never had any extra resources to save. We strive to promote gender equality within our church and the households of our members. After many years of violence and strife, we especially want women and girls to realize their true value in Christ. Empowering women through education is an important part of our ministry. With a substantial number of widows left to care for their families, training programs were established to offer sewing and basket weaving classes for women. These new skills allow them to earn an income to support their families. Through your gifts, we were able to provide transportation for a few of our pastors and add electricity at one of our churches. You also helped us provide school fees for 60 children that could not afford to attend on their own. We have also been able to provide clothes and food for almost 50 widows and orphans. Some of our goals for 2016 include planting two new churches, providing training for our leaders, and holding two crusades. Please pray for us as we continue our efforts of sharing Christ with the people of Rwanda. 2 3

Kerith Ministry - Uganda Samuel Mwesigwa Kerith Ministry aims to reach vulnerable communities in Pallisa, Uganda, and the surrounding areas through evangelism and church planting, orphan care, education, and health care support. Through River of God Church, we provide numerous opportunities for discipleship. We regularly conduct Bible studies for both men s and women s groups. We also hold specialized conferences including marriage conferences and an annual spiritual emphasis conference. The theme of the 2015 conference was Empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and the conference attracted almost 800 people. We routinely travel to different communities to hold evangelistic rallies and continue to have large turnouts of people who want to learn more about Jesus. This opens the door for planting new churches. We recently completed construction of a new health center. Not only do we provide medical care, we also conduct community health awareness sessions, mobile clinics and immunizations, and deliver home-based care. In a community that is plagued by HIV/AIDS, having easily accessible medical care is vital. Kerith s orphanage provides 26 children with medical care, food and shelter, clothing, and an education. They are loved by two foster parents who work tirelessly to ensure they have what they need to succeed. We recently completed a poultry project at the orphanage that will provide an additional food source for the children. China Sees - China Mr. & Mrs. Jones (Names are withheld for security) The China Sees ministry began their partnership with Harvesters in January 2015. In that time, they have made significant strides in growing both their ministry and the lay leaders. The countryside ministry addresses the leadership needs of a rural house church network. Their focus is to equip their leadership to self-sufficiently conduct the work of the ministry. The primary vehicle for achieving this goal is a lay seminary, which teaches Bible exposition skills, basic theological doctrines, Bible survey, expository preaching, and fundamentals of evangelism. One class has graduated with two others in progress. The cityside ministry is the complete opposite of the countryside group in every way. Here, the couple is more focused on serving a group of house churches or club. House churches are growing exponentially and are in desperate need of additional leadership! The primary initiatives with the cityside ministry are: Club Governance: The couple is leading the club through a study of eldership, which will culminate in the selection and appointment of their first elders. Expository Preaching: This is an ongoing effort to train the club s internal leaders to regularly staff the pulpit. Previously they leaned on outside speakers with little continuity or content control. Three men have completed a full year of study and now carry the preaching load. The couple had just begun working with an additional three men to help with this task. House churches are growing exponentially! Super Saturday is one of our programs that reaches out to all children in the area to build their social and spiritual lives. The program also includes a nutritious meal. Because of this, we have seen tremendous health changes in the children in the reduction of malnutrition and the addition of body weight. Approximately 400 children attend each week. We ask that you pray for us as we determine the best ways to serve our Lord and our community. Small Groups: The couple will begin a pilot program to repurpose the weekly message into a discussion guide for small groups. The club has a vibrant small group program, but struggles with staffing the leadership and preparing the lessons. This program will allow leaders to focus caring and fellowship while still conducting a quality Bible study focused on going deeper and applying the prior week s pulpit message. Caring for and ministerinf to small group leaders is a big challenge and major focus for 2015. Biblical Caring: During 2015, Mrs. Jones trained almost 30 people in Blblical Counseling. This was a significant undertaking starting from ground zero! The goal for 2016 is to deploy these people into the small group network to provide counseling and support. Please pray for the health and safety of this couple as they continue to seek God s will in expanding their ministry. 4 5

Pokot Outreach Ministries - Kenya Julius Murgor Thank you for your continued support and prayers for our ministry to the Pokot people of Kenya! Peter Siwa and a team of our preachers had a truly amazing year! After a mass killing between the Pokot and Turkana tribes that took over 200 lives, the two communities have decided that there has been enough bloodshed and have agreed to uphold peace. We have held peace meetings and organized soccer matches to bring the two communities together and to share the good news of Christ. As a result, there have been seven new churches planted in this region! for protection from FGM and forced marriages. We continue to hold training for tribal leaders, women and men, and church leaders. We also recognize and reward those that stand against the practice. These are some of the ways that you can pray us: - That God will use physical water to open the eyes of the Pokot to see the spiritual water. - That God will bring more people to be trained in our training center - That God will provide the $70,000 needed to establish a mission station in Uganda - That peace will come to South Sudan, and that people will come to the the Lord and more churches will be established. 6 We continue to add clean water wells throughout Pokot villages. One of the most common statements we hear is: This water is like blood transfused to a sick person who needs blood. It s miraculous to see the change in the health and wellbeing of villagers as the clean water begins to stamp out waterborne diseases like thophoid and cholera. Women are saved from hours of walking to find water, as well as the physical burden of carrying the heavy weight. Spiritually, boreholes have played a major role in church planting as people will settle and build new villages adjacent to the wells. The meetings we hold in villages when surveying drilling sites and turning over boreholes give us the opportunity to expose the people to the gospel. We continue to see the tide turning against FGM as we continue our education on the dangers of this horrendous practice. When we first started this campain, many thought we were out of our minds. But now, we are seeing increased support from some of our country s elected leaders. Girls are seeking refuge with us as they flee their villages looking Good Samaritan Sewa Kendra - India Kamlesh and Ranu Bairwa We covet your prayers as we continue to take the blessed light of the Gospel to the remote, dark areas of India. Our schools serve the lower caste in India, providing a Christ-centered education to those that would not otherwise be able to attend school. During 2015, we took on an additional 200 students from nine surrounding villages and now serve almost 500 children in two schools. In this primarily Hindu land, we want to reach these children before forces of darkness creep in. Ninety percent of our new students are girls. In India, daughters are unwanted and viewed as burden, ill-treated and under-fed, and are married off in childhood. After marriage they are forced to work long hours, often facing physical and mental torture. Our goal is to empower these girls so that they are taught to stand up for their rights and fight injustice with God s help. With these additional students, our most urgent need is construction of additional classrooms. Please join us in praying for God s provision! 7

Hope for Life Homes - Russia Jeff Ballard Hope for Life Homes provides care for Russian orphans in a loving, Christian home environment. Currently, 33 children are cared for in three homes. One of the main goals for 2015 was to raise funds to expand two of the homes. We are pleased to report that God has provided those funds and the expansions are underway. This will allow HFL to care for even more children! HFL also provides an annual summer camp that is also open to orphans living in the area. In 2015, 104 children attended camp where many learned about the love of Christ for the first time. Our goal for 2016 is to develop a program to work with orphans who are graduating from the orphanages. Please pray for us as we seek God s direction in how to help these young adults. Pokot Outreach Ministries - South Sudan Reuben Meriakol The goal of POM in South Sudan is to reach all people, regardless of tribe, age or circumstance. I have been serving here for almost two years. In that time, we have made significant progress in establishing relationships with the local Toposa tribe. Our church is growing and we continue to send pastors out to nearby villages to share the good news of Christ. We have established a ministry for street kids. Playing soccer and volleyball with these kids opened the door for worthwhile conversations. We are pleased to now be sending some of the boys to school and hope to see this program to expand and include many other children. Omega Ministry - Pakistan Christopher Bhatti and Shakeel Bhatti God continues to grow our ministry in Pakistan despite threats of violence against Christians. During 2015, we planted 50 new churches and reached 10 new villages! We now have 120 churches! Our team of 50 pastors and evangelists travel each week to preach and minister to these communities. We are currently training another 12 men for evangelism. Please pray that God will continue to raise up men to join us in sharing the Gospel. With your help, we were able to put a roof on the church in Sialkot, which provides much needed shelter from the rain and cold. We were also able to purchase a sound system that is used during our evangelism outreaches. We ask that you continue to pray for the safety of Christians here in Pakistan, and that the Lord will continue to open the hearts of the Pakistani people. Union of Baptist Churches - DR Congo Athanase Habimana The Union of Baptist Churches is an extensive network of over 200 churches with nearly 13,000 members in the Democratic Republic of Congo. During 2015, 15 new churches were planted, and over 1,000 new believers were added to the Kingdom! We are currently training 60 men as pastors and evangelists. The DR Congo continues to suffer from war and ongoing violence, and the area is plagued by poverty. In an effort to break that cycle, UBC offers extensive training programs for women, giving them with a way to provide for their families. Sewing and tailoring classes are offered, as well as animal and agricultural farming. One major victory of 2015 was the addition of a feeding station for homeless children in Goma. Because of your generosity, these children are now fed daily, have a warm and safe place to sleep, and are enrolled in school. Though we face violence and unrest in our area, we are determined to continue sharing the Word. Please continue to pray for us as we grow our ministry in Kapeota. Thank you for praying for us as we serve the people on DR Congo! 8 9

Grace Outreach Ministry - Kenya Phillip Ochieng The campus of Grace Outreach in southern Kenya houses a church, children s home, and meeting space for skills training and discipleship classes. Our church continues to grown and we have planted a new church in a neighboring community. We also operate a 40-acre farm nearby. One of our primary goals is to disciple men and women as they grow in their faith. We offer regular Bible study classes and provide translations of study materials, which we encourage our members to share with others. We have a well-stocked library that serves the church and the community. We provide care and support for 26 orphans including medical care, sending them to school, and other necessities, such as food and clothing. We are grateful for our new partnership with nochild.org that is providing sponsors for each of the children. We hope to be able to increase the number of children that we serve. In an effort to generate our own resources, our farming program produces sugar cane, corn, beans, and sweet potatoes. It also includes bee keeping and a fish farm that raises tilapia. These items are also sold to the community to generate revenue. Many young people are not able to continue their education through secondary school, either because of ability or lack of financial resources. It is vital that these youth learn a trade so that they can provide for themselves and their families. It is our goal to develop a vocational training school where they will receive training in computer literacy, carpentry, dress-making, and welding. We currently have enough space and some tools that will allow us to get started. We have also identified people that have the ability to lead the training. Thank you for your continued prayers for our ministry! Fellowship Bible Church - Myanmar Pastor Ben The ministry of Fellowship Bible Church in Myanmar focuses on three different areas: evangelism, education, and orphan care. We now have 14 churches located in villages throughout Myanmar. These churches are served by 20 pastors and evangelists. We are grateful that several new bicycles and motorbikes were provided in 2015, allowing pastors to travel more efficiently between churches. During 2015, we graduated our first class of students from Myanmar Bible College. Some of these graduates are working in the mission field in their native villages. Several are continuing their studies toward a Master of Divinity. Another ten students graduated in February 2016. Average enrollment is 35 to 40 students. Twice a year, MBC students travel to remote villages to share the Gospel. This is a prime opportunity for them to put all they have learned into practice. They also provide disaster relief in areas that are hard hit by annual monsoons. These service opportunities are vital preparation for their work on the mission field. Our greatest challenge for both church planting and the college is poverty in Myanmar. Inadequate salaries become discouraging to church planters and ministers. Some have left ministry, and even the country, in search of a better life. Young men and women are no longer encouraged to attend Bible school, but rather to look for a job or secular training that they think may be beneficial to their survival. Poverty has the opposite effect on our ministry to children. It produces more needy and vulnerable children and more orphans. FBC cares for 143 children in five different homes that are staffed by church members. We want them to experience the benefits of living in a loving, family environment. Children are provided with all of the essentials - food, clothing, and education The older children help care for their younger counterparts and many serve in our church worship ministry. Please pray with us as we seek God s direction on the purchase of land for the MBC. We have identified several potential sites and will need funds to complete the purchase. 10 11

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