Prayer In Real Time February 8, 2022

February 8, 2022

Greetings FFICM Prayer Partners!

Yesterday Jerel shared some thoughts from the road.  He and Rich had been talking about the book of John, thinking about how powerful God is in the working of His miracles.  Thinking about the time that it would have taken anyone to break the bread for the 5,000 but Jesus did quickly to the raising of Lazarus.  There is so much power in the words of Jesus.  How did Jesus speak without a microphone, next to the water that was clapping along the shore?  The fact that everyone could hear his words was a miracle itself.  There is so much power in the words of Jesus, we see miracles all around us that we can’t explain.  Take time today to think of how Jesus spoke into the logistics of the everyday, there are so many miracles that we didn’t even realize.  As we prepare for the season ahead or our spring training, we are inviting God to speak into it and to work miracles.  We are praying that God provides in ways that we can’t even imagine.  

New highlights from prayer updates: 

• Pray for the Moore family
• Pray for Rashida and her sister, Hinbatu, who were kidnapped from their home a few weeks ago.  Their father is still negotiating with their captors.  The girls say they are doing fine, continue to pray for their release and safety.
• Pray for the ongoing and upcoming trainings in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Kenya.  Pray for the materials that need to be translated and for all moving pieces to come together. 

Nigeria:

Nigeria Program Updates

• Praise for Peter, Ahmed and Pankyes as they are doing a new believer follow-up training this week in Bambur, Nigeria at the UMCN Seminary. They are expecting about 150 to attend.
• Pray for the training going on this week in Jos
• Praise for Prisca, Sam, Ishaku who did new believer follow-up training near Jos, Nigeria last week. They had about 100 attend the training. 
• Praise God for the safety in traveling last week.
• Pray for wisdom as they present a training this week with at the COCIN headquarters. 
• Praise for Phillip Bukata  who was able to share his testimony and the gospel track with Gindiri Theological Seminary.  FFICM has now been invited to go with the school and go out into the country to do trainings.  They are paying for the trainings, we just have to provide our transportation, so pray that God will provide so they can go and do these trainings.
• Continue to pray for HBB (Hausa Background Believers) Conference preparations.  Preparations continue to come together for the upcoming conference planned for mid-March.
  • Pray for preparations for the HBB conference where we expect over 2,000 attendees in March. 
  • Please pray for traveling mercies as this is a dangerous area to be driving through with frequent kidnappers and bandits. 
• Pray for the father of Rashida and her sister who is still negotiating with their capters.  The girls say they are doing fine, continue to pray for their release and safety.
• Pray for the 5 new converts from last week’s training.  Blessing David, Aisha Isa, Joy Adanle, Roseline Danladi, Margret Nani, Paulina Saleh, and Bro. Haruna

Prayer for the Nigeria Ministry Team

• Peter Wash, FFICM Nigeria National Director
  • Doctoral studies work — Peter is continuing to work on his Doctorate in Global Evangelism. Pray for wisdom as he divides his time between work at the office, going out and helping with training events, doing school assignments, as well as personal and family responsibilities. Pray for wisdom in allocating time to his studies in the midst of his busy ministry and leadership schedule. 
  •  
• Samuel Chungwom, Trainer 
  • Praise/pray: Samuel’s wife Jessica is expecting a baby this week on February 11th and has been experiencing some complications. Please pray that God will continue to uphold her and for a safe delivery. 
  • Pray for his parents who are experiencing some challenges.
• Yusuf: 
  • Please continue to pray for Yusuf, former FFICM staff member who has been questioning his faith. Yusuf was doing follow-up with new believers from a Muslim background and training others to do the same. Yusuf has been going through a difficult time of persecution and this has caused him to question his faith and relationship with Jesus. Pray that God would draw him back and whatever is pulling his heart away from God would be made powerless.
  • Rich met with Yusuf by phone on Friday this past week for several hours and prayed with him. Yusuf is struggling to trust people in the church as he has had negative experiences lately with many of them. Pray that trust can be rebuilt and that Yusuf would turn to God for strength and wisdom rather than try to run from God when trials and struggles come his way. 
• Mercy, Nigeria Office 
  • Praise: Birthday is February 3.  Pray for God to be with her in this coming year.  Praise God for 36 years.
• Rick Cordell, Adjunct Trainer from US
  • Rick is currently in Nigeria and plans to be there until early June helping with new believer follow-up training. He had some challenges with getting his approval to travel with all the COVID regulations, but we praise God, at the last minute he got all the paperwork and was able to travel as planned.
• Zainab 
  • Started a new discipleship class today, using the materials of New Believer Follow up and encouraging her class to go and put it to good use.
  • Trusting God for the young man, Haruna,  who has a criminal past that has been changed by God.  Pray for him as he is facing many challenges, pray that he will continue to follow God and not turn his back on what the Lord has done and is doing in his life. 
  • Pray for Paulina who is a single mom facing many challenges as well.  She is hungry and seeking help.

Muslim Outreach Ministry

• Pray: TV and Radio Ministry — We continue to broadcast the TV and radio episodes that have been recorded to share about what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and are specifically made for people coming to Christ from a Muslim background. Continue to pray for the impact of these recordings, and for the FFICM staff as they work to follow-up those who are coming to Christ. The FFICM-Nigeria team is meeting in-person with these converts to support them in their new faith. 

Safety amidst Dangerous Violence: 

• Pray: Safety while Traveling — Ongoing security issues make it difficult to travel and do ministry. You never know which road will be closed or where the bandits will be. There are very frequent attacks and insecurity in the land and kidnappings are reported daily. Please pray for safety for the trainers. 

Cameroon:

• Gideon
  • Pray for upcoming trainings and for the translation of the materials.

Ethiopia:

Program Updates

• Prayer: Vehicle search – Keep praying! We continue to look for a vehicle for the team to use in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government is looking at stopping the import of used vehicles in the country, which would squeeze an already very tight market. We might be able to purchase a vehicle from another department at the EKHC church denomination, our main partner denomination there. Pray for wisdom and God’s provision. It has been over a year now that we have been looking for a suitable car to purchase there. We have had many vehicles that we almost purchased, but the purchase didn’t go through for one reason or another. If you want to donate to the fund for this vehicle purchase, you can do this at: https://fficm.org/ethiopiavehicle  We praise God for those who have contributed this past week to the vehicle fund.
• Praise for Eskinder’s safe trip to Durame, Ethiopia this past Friday. Pray for the ongoing preparations for the new believer follow-up training and the large conference in that area where over 10,000 are expected to attend as they call people back to the true gospel message as many have turned away recently to the message of the prosperity gospel and other false teachings. 
• Praise: The African leadership summit was this last week and went very well.  Many African country leaders including the Prime Minister came to Ethiopia to meet together.  Praise God for the wonderful time together and for peace during this time.

United States:

Ongoing:

• Pray that our team will be able to get visas for Nigeria and Cameroon. We are planning a ministry trip to Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia and Kenya in March/April 2022 and we have several people on our team who are needing visas to be able to participate in that trip.
• Pray for negative covid results as our team travels.  We will need a negative test each time we get on a plane on our Spring tour through Africa.
• Pray for Rich and Jerel as they are in the midst of their midwest and East coast tour to share with churches and individuals about FFICM and the many exciting things we have planned for 2022.  Pray for safety and smooth travels.  They will be fundraising and friendraising! They departed Portland on Wednesday February 2 and will return on Monday February 14.

Ministry Partners

• Carly Powne, US Based International Trainer — www.fficm.org/carly-powne
  • Continue to pray for Carly to be at 100% monthly support by the end of February 2022 — We pray that God will continue to bring a full team of prayer and financial partners for Carly so she can focus fully on her role as an International Trainer with FFICM. Praise God for those who have already signed up to be part of her prayer and financial support team. Praise God for the new monthly donor that just committed this past weekend! She is currently at 60% of her needed monthly support. Pray for the upcoming dinner/sharing event coming up in Texas on February 27th.
  • Pray for wisdom: As we look at what Carly will be able to take on in 2022, a lot of that is tied to how much time she will need to devote to ongoing fundraising. We currently have her scheduled to help with 2 training trips overseas of about four to eight weeks each. Once she gets up to full support we can look at increasing that to 4-6 trips per year. 
• David Moore, Director of Operations 
  • Continue to pray for wisdom in parenting. Pray for spiritual protection of his children and for good ability to communicate as a family. Pray especially for his son Andrew (aka: Benjamin) who has been having a hard time making wise choices. Andrew started at the alternative high school this week. He continues to find ways to access drugs and alcohol and threatens self harm. Pray for wisdom as David and Denise work to get him the help that he needs.
  • Pray for his continued progress on David’s MA in Nonprofit Management. David is in his last class, and then has two months to write the final action research paper.
  • Pray for his wife Denise who is pregnant and due in May 2022. She continues to feel a lot of discomfort during the pregnancy. In preparation for the baby’s arrival, they are working on adding a second bathroom to their house. Pray for wisdom, finances and all that is needed will come together in the coming months.
  • Pray for the bathroom addition project that David has been working on during the weekends in preparation for the arrival of the new baby. The chimney removal didn’t happen last weekend, but will hopefully happen this coming weekend!
• Rich Gardner, President 
  • Rich’s daughter, Dara Searcy-Gardner, continues to struggle with debilitating asthma. With the failure of the first medication, she’s needed to try a new medicine; however, the insurance is refusing to pay for it. Pray that the insurance company would change their response so Dara could receive the treatment she needs. She’s unable to work and barely able to function. She is asking us to pray that the medication would conquer the asthma. We pray for complete healing. 
• Jerel Skeith, Director of Strategic Relationships
  • Praise for healing! Jerel has recovered from Covid!
  • Praise: 2021 Impact Report and year-end giving summaries have been mailed out! Let us know if you don’t get yours in the mail.
• Rick Cordell, Adjunct International Trainer
  • Pray: Rick is currently in Nigeria. He will be there for 4 months.
  • Praise for donations and support coming through that are helping to pay for his last trip as well as future trips.

Strategic Development

• Praise/Pray: Church status — FFICM has applied for church status here in the US. The application is complete and has been submitted! Pray for wisdom for the IRS as they consider our application. Most large mission organizations have applied for and been granted church status in the US. This would allow us to be able to have all of our staff receive the ministerial housing allowance and would have other tax and financial benefits for us as an organization.  We are still waiting for a response from the IRS. Keep praying about this…
• Pray: International Director of Prayer — We are praying that God will provide a volunteer International Director of Prayer for FFICM. We would love to have someone to take charge and develop this crucial area of ministry even more. Pray that God would raise the right person up for the job. 
• Pray for Rich and Jerel as they prepare to travel around the midwest and east coast to share about FFICM February 2-14, 2022.

When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action.  And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.  Matthew 18:19-20 MSG

Thank you for praying with us!