Praise and Prayer ~ April 5, 2021

Dear FFICM Prayer Partners, 

Jesus is risen! He is risen indeed! We praise God for his goodness and provision, and we humbly bring our requests before Him. Below you will find a prayer guide to support you as you accompany us in prayer and worship this week. May God bless your time in the quiet place with hope and peace.  

Nigeria:

• Prayers for Ongoing Ministry: 
  • Radio and TV — Please continue to pray for the ongoing TV/Radio ministry in Nigeria. They plan to record the next 13 TV episodes on Friday and Saturday this week.
  • New Office update — The team has moved into their new office! Praise God! The meter for electricity has yet to be transitioned from the former office (this process can take weeks to rectify). Without the electricity, there are no lights in the office. Peter will be procuring a generator as a temporary solution. 
  • This week Sam and Ishaku are training 70-80 leaders from CAN (Christian Association of Africa). Pray that the training goes well and that the people trained will be able to apply what they learn right away.
  • Theological College of Northern Nigeria has requested a training for 100 seminary students. The Nigerian team will respond to the invitation next week. Praise God for an ever increasing interest in new believer follow-up training! 
• Prayers for Future Events: 
  • The 70 former drug addicts who gave their lives to Jesus, but need follow-up ministry. It’s a challenge to arrange meetings with them since many are homeless and hard to reach. The follow-up from their initial connection with the gospel has been over a month. Please pray that they would remember the promise of follow-up and return for ongoing support from FFICM.  
  • The MBB (Muslim Background Believers) conference preparations which will be held in April. Pray for wisdom on which speakers to invite. Praise God for the unity established among the diverse Christian organizations which are collaborating to bring about this important conference! The conference will be held in mid-April in Nigeria. We expect at least 1,000 to attend.
  • The “True Gospel Conference” that will be held in Jalingo, Nigeria in late April. Preparations are coming together, and we need God’s wisdom as we continue to get things ready. Pray for more people to sign up! We have capacity for at least 1000 and only 500 have signed up. The local ministry leaders will be working to increase attendance. One of our ministry partners from eastern Europe, Roman Baronowski, will be flying to join the conference! 
    • Rich is at risk for being kidnapped during his 9 hour drive to the conference. Pray for him as he drives. There is significant danger so please pray for God’s protection. 
• Prayer for our Ministry Partners: 
  • Baba, the primary organizer of the HBB conference, has been seriously sick, almost paralyzed. He has been admitted to the hospital. Please pray for his healing! He wants to attend the MBB conference. Pray that he is well enough to attend the MBB conference later this month. 
  • Prisca will be getting her COVID vaccine tomorrow! Praise God! She’s also celebrating her 18 year wedding anniversary this week. 
  • Pray for Zainab’s health. She has been sick and needs healing. She doesn’t have enough money to go to the health clinic. She has also been trying to help family members without taking care of her own health. She needs help finding out why she’s sick. 

Ethiopia:

• Prayers for safety and health:
  • COVID recovery: 
    • Eskinder and his family are still recovering from COVID-19. Praise God that they are getting better. 
    • Belay, a friend and colleague of Eskinder who has helped with many of our FFICM training events in Ethiopia, now has COVID. He is hospitalized and is on oxygen. 
    • Keleme, a leader of the church denomination’s Missions Department, is sick with COVID. He was also hospitalized. 
  • Pray for peace and security in the nation of Ethiopia. There is a party election coming up on June 5, 2021. There are 107 parties in Ethiopia and the winning party will elect the Prime Minister. There have been rumors of wars with neighboring countries.
• Update from The Mega-Conference: 
  • Praise God for the completion of the mega-conference (a week ago) in Southern Ethiopia! The estimated attendance was around 10,000. The conference speakers focused on strengthening the church with a vision of the true gospel. We are striving to give the people a ‘firm foundation’ in Christ so that they do not fall away from their faith as has been happening.
  • Praise for safe travel back to the US from Ethiopia for Rich Gardner, Michael Jen, Mike Parker and Kate Thomas. They all tested negative for COVID upon their return to the US. 
• Strategic Development: 
  • Tesfye started full-time with Eskinder on April 1! Praise God! Eskinder and Tesfye have had to share office space with one other church staff member in one small room. Please pray that the church denomination headquarters (EKHC) would be able to provide a different space for the other person or a bigger space for the three of them. Tesfye is starting English school next week. Pray for this important learning opportunity. 
  • Please continue to pray for the vehicle search in Ethiopia. We have had  a difficult time finding a good used vehicle due to limited supply nationally. Pray for wisdom and direction for the team. 
• Programs and Materials Development: 
  • Eskandir and Tesfye and Fekadu (a leader recently trained by Rich and Eskinder) will be training 30-40 church leaders and evangelists! Praise God! Pray for the empowerment of the Holy Spirit and guidance as they teach using FFICM’s Follow-up Booklet. Those 30-40 church leaders will then return to their churches and offer the FFICM Follow-up training using 300 Follow-up Booklets. Praise God for the exponential growth in new believer follow-up made possible by the excellent training and the simple, reproducible lessons contained in the material.  
  • The 113 people who were trained in March have requested 1000 Follow-Up Booklets in the Oromo language! The trainees returned to their local churches and want to host FFICM training events. They need follow-up books for this purpose. 

USA:

• Prayer for our Ministry Partners: 
  • Please continue to pray for healing for our former staff members Dara and Mercy. Dara continues to have threatening anaphylactic responses to a wide array of allergens. Pray for Dara’s breathing which is constantly labored. Dara should receive a Xiolar shot on Thursday. Pray for wisdom for Dara’s family as they seek direction regarding financial provision. Mercy just received a diagnosis of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, an incurable disease which is incredibly debilitating. Pray for Mercy as she visits her doctors 3-4 times a week.    
  • Pray for the family of Stacey Lloyd, our Director of Multimedia. His brother is in hospice and the family is praying for wisdom and comfort as they manage the challenges of the transition at this time. 
  • Pray for mercy for David and Denise and their son, Ben (a.k.a. Andrew). Andrew continues to struggle with making poor choices which has been very hard for all of them. Pray for wisdom, guidance, hope and healing. 
• Pray for Materials Development: 
  • Praise God we received full funding for 200 solar powered Audio Bible Players! 100 were distributed at the HBB conference (March) and 100 will be given out at the MBB conference (April). The people who received them are extremely grateful! Continue to pray for the impact of these devices. 
  • We are exploring options for 3D printing Audio Bible Players, which cost as little as $15/each (instead of $50/each)! Pray for wisdom as we explore this new possibility as well.
  • Pray for wisdom as we prepare and revise versions of our new believer follow-up materials in several different languages.
• Pray for Strategic Development: 
  • Continue to pray for wisdom as we prepare to hire a Communications Coordinator and Development Director for FFICM here in the US. May God direct FFICM’s hiring team with hope and insight as we seek to grow our organization to keep up with the profound global impact of our partners in ministry. 
  • Pray for wisdom as we continue to prepare for the upcoming FFICM Spring Fundraiser on Saturday May 22 at 4pm (Pacific Time). www.fficm.org/spring2021 The theme is: Oaks of Righteousness. We will be sharing about the impact of the three conferences in Nigeria and the mega-conference in Ethiopia this Spring as well as all the trainings that have been happening as well as sharing about plans for this Summer and Fall. We will hear video testimony from our staff overseas as well as reports from our US staff. We are praying that God will provide at least $48,000 through the event, including at least 20 new monthly donors and that we will get at least 30 new prayer letter sign-ups.
  • Pray for the ongoing work of the Website Update Team that is continuing to work on fixing some issues with www.fficm.org and working to make it more useful and easy to navigate for our partners. We have several ongoing issues that are perplexing us that we are trying to fix.