Ethiopia Update-May 2019

1. Pastors’ wives training and empowerment

We thank God for our women’s ministry. My wife Addiskidan and Tsehay G/hiwot who is the wife of our regional coordinator Pastor Tadesse Alemayehu have taken the responsibility of running this ministry. In the past four months only; they are able to train more than 200 women in various villages and towns.

One of the passions they have is to train and empower the wives of our leaders and missionaries. In addition to organizing women’s prayer meetings every month; they have also prepared experience sharing and mentoring sessions so that our women will be able to equip each other in every aspect of their lives. As the result of this ministry many women have got encouraged, empowered and equip in their faith in Christ, ministry and even in their relationships and marriages.

Women training participants

2. Purchasing Motorbikes for our Pastors

After longtime faithful prayer and trusting God; we have just started a new project of providing Bicycles and Motorbikes for our pastors and missionaries in this year. Pastor Tegene Asnake who is our leader in Wonjishowa and has become one of the beneficiaries of this project. Since he has some difficulty in his right leg; he suffered a lot to walk long distance. He also used a very risky local motorbike transportation system in the village that carries three people in one motorbike.

But, Rev. Okongo purchased a good motorbike for him in his previous visit to Ethiopia this year. He is so thankful to God and Rev. Okongo and so exited about it. Pastor Tegene said that prior to being given the motorbike; he was spending his personal money to travel around for the work the ministry. He added that his wife and his family always worried a lot and had a concern for his life when he went out to the ministry. Because He used the local motorbike transportation which is carrying three people on one motorbike at a time. So, he was exposed for potential accident. But now after receiving the motorbike; he said that I can now go to other communities besides my local church to minister and visit the work of God in our region easily. According to Pastor Tegene; through this gift of motorbike his ministry and family life has greatly changed positively. Praise God!

The photo on the left shows how the local transportation looks like; the photo on the right shows our pastor Tegene with his new motorbike.

3. “Discipleship & Sound doctrine “consultation forum in Adama /Nazareth/

Every year we organize a consultation forum with our leaders. This time around it was held in Adama/ Nazareth/ and the theme of our consultation was “Discipleship & Sound doctrine”. More than 200 pastors, leaders and ministers in our local churches participated in this consultation. Pastor Solomon Abebe G/medhin who is the principal of our Bible College and myself conducted this consultation forum. We had a very good & quality time in the consultation and we discussed on the issue of the challenge of making disciples and the contribution of having a sound doctrine for the making of disciples.

All our leaders convinced that having a sound doctrine plays a vital role in the process of making disciples in all our local churches. Specially today in Africa; Christianity seems like deviating from the original Biblical truth and tends to move to follow some personalities and false teachers and false prophets. So, the consultation helped our leaders to awake them and stick on the truth.

Consultation forum in Adama/Nazareth/

4. Prayer Requests

I am always grateful to God and to all our friends and partners who are praying for us and supporting us in all our needs. The followings issues are some of our prayer requests that we would like you to pray for:

• Pray for our women ministry and may God provides some budget for women coordinators so that they may be able to organize more training events for our women in this year and to travel to various villages and towns to visit and encourage our women.
• Continue praying for our bicycles and motorbikes project and may God enable us to reach out more pastors and missionaries through this project by providing them bicycles and motorbikes to make their ministry easier.
• Continue Pray for our Animal Project may God would touch many orphans so they have got a bright future through this small gift.
• Continue praying for our school feeding program may God would enable us to feed more orphans, needy and vulnerable children.

Samson Weldemariam/Pst/
Vice-president of U4A and Ethiopia Director