The past couple of months have been trying ones for us, with a lot of red tape and going back and forth with the government about both our radio station and our work permits. It seems like we take one step forward only to be faced with another shut door. As it stands right now, our visas have been “deferred,” which means that they are still needing more documents verified. I am in the process of trying to get these documents, but it is a lot of back and forth with government agencies and a lot of waiting . . . and praying. Montana Morrow, who is moving here to work in our ministry, had his permit rejected, but he is coming anyway, by faith, to repeal the rejection from this end. Please keep him, us, and our ministry in your prayers. Obviously, this matter is very heavy on my heart.
On the ministry front, things are going very well, and we are blessed with many people attending services. Each week, people are being saved and baptized and are joining the church. We are constantly amazed at what God is doing. We can sense a moving of His Spirit among the people here.
We had wonderful Easter services. We started with our annual English Easter service. We were blessed to be able to worship in English. Our Swahili service was a warm and wonderful time. We had great attendances in both services.
We were able to launch a new Bible Club in a different area of our city. We were blessed, as a church family offered to run the Bible Club at their home. These Bible Clubs are a tremendous way to reach young people who would otherwise have no way of hearing the good news of salvation. As of right now, we have five Bible Clubs that meet each week around our city.
We are thankful for two young men, Aaron McCullough and Benjamin Stahlman, who are here interning with us for about a month. They have been a blessing to us, and they each truly have a servant’s heart as they work on the many different projects that I have thrown their way. They have taught in many different outreaches, and we have seen them shoulder up under the responsibilities that have been placed on them.
We were holding an evangelistic ladies’ meeting in a certain area of our city. This area is one of the poorer areas, and there are many people living in close proximity of one another. Our ladies’ meeting was in the backyard of one of our faithful church ladies. There were over 40 ladies in attendance; and, as usual, many children also came to the meeting. Although the meeting is not specifically for the children, we allow them to come and provide a mat for them to sit on as long as they will sit quietly and listen. There were 65 children in attendance this day. The meeting was going well, but just as my wife was reaching the salvation part of her lesson, we began to hear the most awful, loud, crashing, and banging noises coming from the dirt road just down from our meeting. The ladies all started jumping up and running toward the road as utter chaos erupted in the neighborhood. A car had been traveling down the road at an extremely high rate of speed, lost control, flew off the road, hit and crashed into a home, flipped, and then was stopped by a tree. We tried to get the meeting back under control the best we could and finish up, as there was a large mob of people gathering around the accident.
The lady at whose house we held the meeting later told us that the people in the neighborhood were telling her that her God must be powerful because the very area where the car flew off the road and hit the tree was the exact same area where the neighborhood children gather to play. That is one reason that such panic ensued, as everyone rushed to see which children had been hurt by the car—but there were no children at the play area that afternoon. They were all sitting on the mat at our ladies’ meeting, hearing the Bible taught. We had originally scheduled the ladies’ meeting for a few weeks before but, due to circumstances out of our control, had to move it to that particular day. There is no telling how many casualties there would have been had not God, in His providence, had us hold that ladies’ meeting on that day in that area. We were thankful for God’s protection of these precious little children and for His hand of mercy and for showing Himself powerful.
Your missionaries to Tanzania,
Jerry & Rachel Wyatt III
