Nigeria:
- Please pray for protection from coronavirus which has been increasing in Nigeria.
- Pray for Zainab as she trusts God to start leading a cohort of trainees by the end of this month. She’s working on preparing a venue. She has doubled the number of trainees (from 200 to 500!). Praise God!
- Please pray for Joy (Zainab’s cousin) who is having a serious kidney problem (she can’t urinate). She’s receiving dialysis and waiting for a surgery. Her blood pressure is also causing her serious problems. She almost died, but thank God that she’s still living. On top of her health problems, last week Joy’s husband abandoned her after 15 years of marriage and remarried suddenly. Joy has two children (one is a girl age 15) whom she can’t care for so they’re considering living with their father who is not a good person.
- Pray for protection, deliverance, and wisdom for Zainab’s friend whose husband has been beating her severely. Pray that the police are helpful to her when she calls them.
- Zainab’s birthday is coming up on January 28th! Praise God for her life!
- Peter Wash is planning to host a training in February or March.
- Praise God that Peter’s daughter started at university! She’s been waiting for admission for the past four years to a public school, and was finally admitted to a private school so this is a miraculous gift, especially the provision of financial assistance given the high cost of tuition.
- Pray for the MBB conference committee that will be meeting this week on Thursday as they continue to plan for the upcoming conference. Pray for the MBB section of the ministry. Pray for wisdom and direction regarding the right people to work with. Pray for guidance regarding the radio and TV programs. Pray that many would come to God’s saving grace through these programs.
- Pray for Rick Cordell who will be traveling to Nigeria, leaving next week and will be there for four months. Please pray for the timing of his COVID test before he goes. Pray for Rick’s housing situation in Jos since it’s still uncertain.
- Pray that the preparations for the new FFICM-Nigeria office would be quickly completed. They hope to be able to move into their new office within the next week.
Ethiopia:
- Pray for training that Eskinder is doing in southern Ethiopia this week. He arrived today at the location of the training and the training will start tomorrow. They expect over 100 leaders to be at the training.
- Eskinder has three women who will be training 20 women in how to follow-up new believers. The women specifically wanted women to train them. Praise God that there are more and more women who really want the training in how to follow-up new believers.
- Eskinder plans to travel to Waleso to train 100 church leaders. One representative will come from each church. Praise God that these churches share the passion and willingness to learn about new believer follow-up!
- Pray for the ongoing conflict between Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia. There continues to be fighting along the border and unrest due to the dam that Ethiopia has built among other issues.
- Praise: Eskinder has found a possible good vehicle that we can buy to be used by the ministry there. Rich will be looking at it with Eskinder and, Lord willing, they will buy it while Rich is there. Pray for wisdom to know if this is the best vehicle. Praise God for the funds that have been given for this vehicle and for all the generous people who contributed!
- Continue to pray that Eskinder would be able to get an internet connection at his house. He has been waiting many months for this.
USA:
- Rich’s Ethiopia trip (Friday February 5th – Monday February 22nd)
- Pray that the timing of Rich’s COVID test pre-travel to Ethiopia goes smoothly (unlike the stress of the delayed COVID test results from Rich’s last Ethiopia trip!)
- The first week Rich will be helping train 20 potential national trainers from different language groups at a center near Addis Ababa. The second week they will be training 60-80 pastors, evangelists and church leaders in evangelism and follow-up, including at least 5 of the people from the first week who will be mentored by Rich and Eskinder in training using our materials.
- Praise God for the successful Missions ConneXion conference this past weekend. We had a good number of participants at the workshops in our track, and there were a number of people who signed up for our prayer letters. There was also an organization that does a lot of work in Egypt and the Middle East who is interested in partnering with us. Pray for wisdom as we talk to them about the possibility of working with them in the future.
- Pray for David as he continues his classes for his Master’s Degree. He is now in the second week of his third class.
- Praise God for the new church that has committed to partnering with FFICM financially.
- Pray that God would provide someone to coordinate our Spring Fundraiser.
- Pray for health and healing for Dara and Mercy. They both continue to have ongoing medical issues. Pray for Dara’s breathing trouble to be resolved. Dara still needs a clear diagnosis in order to make strides towards recovery.
- Pray for David’s mother-in-law as she continues to wait for her back surgery. She has a virtual consultation with the doctors this week to go over her x-rays. Pray that the needed surgery will be able to be scheduled soon.
