Ethiopia Updates – July 2023

1. Church Planting and Disciple – Making Movement continues even in this month.

What an excitement, what a celebration and what a joy to see again another group of 740 believers got baptized in a Lake called Kurifitu, in the town called Bishoftu/Debrezeit/. This is another sign of God’s presence among us and nothing and no one can hinder His Sovereign Power working in our midst regardless of the challenges that Ethiopia is going through.

Pastor Abera Kumbi who is our assistant regional coordinator said that the year is very unique for us and we are facing so many challenges as we are persistently working in the kingdom of God, however we have seen His hands working with us and His movement continues and we praise His Name.

Local Pastors and Church Planters preparing for the baptism event in prayer

Unite 4 Africa team together with our Churches and other like-minded ministries organized and hosted this event by providing them 24 buses to transport them from their respective villages and provided them lunch and donated Bibles which is translated in their own languages.

Giving out Bibles

I take this opportunity to thank all our partners who are obeying Christ’s great commission and standing alongside with us in various ways. Your contributions, prayers, supports and encouragements have brought a significant impact to this success and result. I assure you that we will keep praying for you, for your family and for your business so that God would bless all the works of your hands as you continue serving Him faithfully.

2. Life Changing Stories

Balcha Jima is one of the residents in the village called Qararoo. His father is a Muslim Sheik and Imam in the mosque. Since he is the son of the Chief of the community, he had that authority of persecuting the Believers. He was the cause of much persecution to many of our church community believers at different times.

But our leaders endured through all those challenges and persecutions. One day, as they were praying and fasting under the tree in the church compound; a bunch of people came to them carrying this man. He was very sick and could not move. The people who carried him said to our leaders, “As you can see this man got very sick and is seriously sick even near death. We took him to so many places looking for solutions for his health condition but nothing has worked. This morning his father sent us to you to ask you to pray for him and to ask you for forgiveness.” Our leaders were amazed by this and prayed for him. He instantly got healed and went back to his home. As a result, he and 18 other people accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. Not only that, our leaders told the people to tell the father that we all have forgiven him and his entire family for all that he had done to persecute us.

Balcha Jima got baptized during our baptism event this month together with 22 new believers. It was a celebration when we were baptizing him together with all his friends who once came to destroy the church and persecute believers. Balcha Jima also gave his testimony after the baptism – saying that life is good with Jesus and he asked us to pray for his father for salvation. Glory to be God!

Balcha Jima

3. My Visit to Tanzania.

God has been giving me a great time with my host Pastor Peter John Mlay visiting our partner ministry in Tanzania called GBM- Tanzania. We have been partnering in the past several years with this ministry on the area of Leadership development, water project and organic farming.

We have shown good progress in training our farmers with this new method of organic farming and how to make an organic fertilizer. In parallel with organic farming; drilling water well for our communities is also very key.

We have started a good partnership with Korean Mission in Africa of drilling water wells. What a joy to see our communities, schools and farmers rejoicing for getting water right on their villages. I thank God for this water project and we are planning to expand this project in many communities in Africa in God’s willing in the near future.

Drilling Water Well in School compound

4. Conclusion and Prayer Request

The following are praises and prayer request items to pray about with us:

• Praise God for the baptism of thousands of new believers and for their salvation.
• Praise God for our grass root front line church planters who are serving God and their communities faithfully through difficulties, hardships and persecutions.
• Pray for our Disciple – Making movements and programs that God would grant us strength to make disciples and develop more local leaders for the work.
• Continue to pray for our leaders and grass root church planters for their protection and the protection of their families as they serve in the places where there are conflicts.
• Continue to pray for our projects particularly our water project; that God would give us wisdom and direction in this partnership of drilling water well for our communities.

Samson Weldemariam /Pst/
Africa & Ethiopia director of U4A