In the last decade, Providence Baptist College & Seminary and Temple Baptist Institute have averaged conducting a graduation every two years. Another one of these special occasions occurred on the 11th of January, with twenty-one students from both schools receiving diplomas, degrees, and certificates. We were honored to have as the guest preacher, Missionary Ted Speer—the pastor of Fundamental Baptist Church International of Kumasi, the host of our Ghana Student Missions Institute for Training in Evangelism, and my good friend in the ministry. Just before the commencement, seventeen students, including three new ones, attended the orientation to begin the twentieth semester of our seminary.
When we had our first Soul-Winning & Leadership Conference in 2008, I only hoped that we could continue to have it every year in Abuja. Because the Lord has allowed several of our thirteen different keynote speakers to make multiple visits, various doors have been opened for us to bring the conference to other influential churches. The largest of these, as far as the number of independent Baptist churches represented, is a Pastors’ & Workers’ Conference at Faith Baptist Church of Ogbomoso with Missionary Timothy Ojo. Over fifty Bible-believing churches had pastors, staff, or members attending the third annual meeting, where the guest preachers were Evangelist Jeff Walters of America for Christ and Missionary Evangelist Don Wattenbarger of Bibles Beyond Boundaries. During the first two weeks of February, these two men preached with two great national missionaries in Ogbomoso and then joined me in Aba for another conference at Trinity Baptist Church, pastored by George Kamalu. We preached in three independent Baptist churches on Sunday and welcomed ten pastors to the services on Monday and Tuesday. Evangelists Walters and Wattenbarger ministered in multiple schools during their visit and saw hundreds raise their hands for salvation.
All our ministry updates are sent out by email; and, with this prayer letter, I will be including an attachment of our 2020 schedule (also found on our blog), so that you can be praying with us specifically for our conferences and camps. If you do not currently receive our emails, please contact me at mark.holmes@fbmi.org and let me know if you would prefer the electronic communication rather than postal mail. Our mission board recently helped us announce a building project that will expand our college dormitories, give us needed Sunday school and meeting space, and make it more feasible for our church to start a Christian day school. Please go to fbmi.org/holmes/biblecollegebuildingproject for more details.
Believing God,
Mark Holmes, written 25 March 2020
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