PETITIONS, PRAYERS, INTERSESSION AND THANKSGIVING BE MADE BY ALL PEOPLE
So much has happened that it is hard to mention all that HE has done and allowed us to do. However, I will endeavour to mention the big things, and what we sometimes think are the small things.
The Lord answered our prayers in sending us, literally, a new all-round cleaner, gardener and security assistant in the person of Paulus. After a probationary period, we asked him to come and live on the premises so Sylvia and I don’t need to run up and down the stairs in the mornings and evenings, making sure all the security protocols are in place. He just passed his learner’s driving license test and is looking for a reliable driving school to obtain his driver’s license. He is over the moon about that.
Work has continued here at the Headquarters Training Facility (HQTF) to renovate one of the old rooms we’ve never had an opportunity to fix. We are considering moving the main offices into this room, which will be subdivided, using all the materials we can find in the store so we don’t have to buy any. We are not in a hurry to complete the project as Josef, our freelance handyman does all the other maintenance work at the facility and is paid per job. He is a real blessing to us as we have an arrangement that he comes when I call. We’ve only used materials we’ve had available and spent the minimum on buying extra materials.
Rusalia, the general cleaner is another blessing from the Lord. She is very reliable and a cleaner par excellence. Once she has cleaned a place, you can be assured and don’t even have to go and check. It is clean.
Please pray with us as we need to upgrade the general security at the HQTF. A local shop built their generator cage, right next to our boundary wall, making our premises accessible to burglars, who can now climb over out 4,5meter high boundary wall to gain access. We are working on this. Estimates were obtained and now we are waiting for the company to come and install a razor wire fence on top of the boundary wall. We are so grateful to the Lord that in the 20 years we’ve been here, no major burglary or theft has taken place. He surely protects HIS property and we feel secure under HIS protection.
Also pray for the protection of the large walls from graffiti vandals. Markings that we believe belong to gangs appeared overnight on the walls facing the main street. It really looks terrible, but even if we paint over them, we are not sure how to avoid it happening again. We can only call upon the Lord to stop it.
At the next their next meeting, the Global Council will be asked to consider the overall renovation of building in the form of painting it in new colours reflecting Genesis Design. Please pray with us for this project and the possibility of getting some teams from churches to come and do the work for us. The buildings have not been painted for 20 years and it is obvious.
The garden looks great and we’ve tried our very best to revive the small patch of grass. The trees we planted in 2015 are now so big that during the hot summer months we enjoy their cool shade. We planted some more trees to hopefully shade most of the driveway and also bring coolness to the entire centre in the summer months. Unfortunately, they drop a lot of leaves between seasons, but the blessing they are in the summer outweighs the effort of cleaning.
We believe the Lord has answered our prayers by helping us find a graphic designer who can do the professional layout of our lessons. Please give thanks to the Lord for Tanja. She is also a gifted illustrator. This will save us many hours of making our own illustrations or searching the web for free images.
Many hours of hard work and double checking the doublechecked work of each lesson for the 6 to 8-year-olds are paying off. We are about to submit the first 6 lessons for Year 1 for this age group to the graphic designer for a print ready copy. Rejoice with us as the Lord has made the funds available to print these 6 lessons in BOOK 1. This will happen in early 2024 DV.
The East African staff rejoice in all the rain they have already received this year. They are working hard at teaching Genesis Design in their local churches to children and teens. They have also been identified as responsible leaders and have organised and run different camps for their local churches. We are very thankful to the Lord for their gifts and skills.
We are still at a dead-end as far as obtaining 2-year work permits, for two staff members from Kenya and Uganda respectively, to join us at the Global Office. Remember us before the Lord as we approach this matter from a different perspective by asking for an audience with the Executive Director of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Windhoek. We really need them to expedite the completion of the age-appropriate lessons.
We are enquiring about printing some of our already-published resources in Kenya to save on the shipping costs from Namibia. We are about to make a decision on this and will appreciate your prayers as we source funding. To begin with, we only want to print about 120 copies of BOOK 1 & 2 and about 1000 copies of The Voice of Truth. We are trusting the Lord that we will be able to recover some of the costs through sales.
Sylvia continues to do training via the internet and face-to-face with individuals who requested the training. Pray that the end result will produce faithful, reliable and able teachers who live the life portrayed in Genesis Design. This will enable us to be more effective and not have to go to places to teach the curriculum.
Will you please intercede with us for a stalemate we reached in opening a new bank account for the ministry in South Africa? Our faithful and dependable Treasurer, Carmen and her husband have moved to take up a new ministry opportunity. The board decided to move the bank account to the town where the Chairman lives. This has turned out be a difficult and very complicated process! We really need wisdom as to what to do.
Continue to rejoice with us for the impact that the training team recently made in Tanzania. If you want to know more about it, a special report is available on request. It has resulted in Genesis Design being offered a piece of land to develop a possible training centre for East Africa. The Global Council has yet not met to discuss this. Currently, we do not have the infrastructure to manage such a development. We need much wisdom to make the right decision.
The registration of the ministry in Angola is slowly moving forward. The constitution they hope to use to register is nearing completion. Government laws differ so much from country to country that we need to be sure we register under the right laws to meet the requirements.
This week we truly saw the Lord at work. We wanted to renew our USA visas which can be quite tedious with all the red tape and obstacles. After completing and submitting the application forms, we had to book an interview appointment. To our great surprise, we got an email asking if we would like to do the interview waiver, because our visas only expired in October. Now we may submit our passports and photos on December 13th and pay the fee to get our new visas three days later. No bank statements, no letter of invitation, no travel insurance bought and no airline tickets bought. We are still amazed and very thankful to the Lord. God is good!
To those who receive this Prayer Warrior Bulletin, THANK YOU for praying with us and for us. We see the impact of your prayers. We constantly receive feedback and testimonies of changed lives as a result of people hearing the unchanging truth of the Word. Many who have repented and follow Jesus will one day thank you for praying and for giving.
