Dear Friends,
Thank you for your continued prayer for the ministries here in Tanzania. This year has been the first year that we have had a church calendar. It has been a blessing to have most of our special days, Vacation Bible School, and many other main events already scheduled; but it has also kept us very busy.
In March we had our annual Kids’ Day. One of our young men, who was dressed up as a clown, and I visited each one of the schools in which we teach Bible to invite children to this special day. The response was overwhelming. The Lord blessed with over double the children we have ever had on a Kids’ Day. That Saturday morning, over 700 attended, and 52 trusted Christ as their Saviour. Another blessing of the day was how the church folks got involved. Not only did they invite children and help run the day, but they also sacrificially gave the exact amount of money needed to pay for these children to eat a meal.
The last week in March was the start of our Spring Program, ending with Easter Sunday. The first Sunday was Motorcycle Sunday, where we invited motorcycle taxi drivers in our town to our church. Even though it rained for most of the day on Sunday, God allowed us to see 12 people saved on this special day. The second Sunday was our Cookout Sunday. We prepared two cows and invited folks to enjoy some spiritual meat and physical meat. It was a tiring day, but it was a good tired. The Lord allowed us to see 40 visitors, with 33 saved and nearly 600 in attendance. Our third Sunday was Orphan Sunday. We endeavored to reach out to orphans and their families. It was a great opportunity for our Orphan Ministry, along with the Kessel family, to work on this special day. It was a blessing to hear the children’s choir from our “Children of Love” orphan outreach program sing and quote scripture during the service. During our services we saw 95 adult visitors attend, with a total of 637 in attendance and 143 saved.
Once again, we have made a trip to the village of Kolelo. We have been endeavoring to go there to hold evangelistic meetings each month. We are still in prayer that God will allow us to have a part in starting a church in this village. On this trip we gave a water system to a doctor in the village. This doctor will be able to provide clean water to the many villagers. The wife of the doctor begged us to start a Baptist church there in the village. She had attended our church here in the city before and said that she would love to attend a Baptist church in her village. During our trip we were able to see 23 people receive Christ.
Each Thursday I hold a Bible study in the home of a new convert. Recently these Bible studies have been in the home of the Diamond family. It was a blessing to see the father of the home, along with another man who is a new convert, follow the Lord in believer’s baptism. I have been working with the Diamond family since they came to our Family Day.
Please pray for our upcoming ladies’ conference. Our theme is “A Spiritual Makeover.” We also will be having a men’s conference in a few weeks. Our prayer is that we will see many visitors come as a result of these conferences and that many people will be saved and begin attending church.
Your representatives to Tanzania,
Jerry & Rachel Wyatt