Ethiopia Update – October 2020

1. Discipleship movement in Rural villages

God has given us a special break through in the area in church planting and discipleship movement. Thousands of people are coming to Christ and got baptized every year.

So, the need of making disciples are very huge in the region. As we have been doing evangelism and church planting aggressively in the past years; we have also been doing disciple making side by side as our Lord commanded us.

Degefa Edeo is one of our leaders and disciple makers in various rural villages in Dongore area. After he took the training in disciple making; he trained more than 50 other leaders in his villages under tree. It is very common in our area to do church planting and discipleship under the tree and it always reminds us Jesus’s time.

The impact of the training is incredible said Pastor Degefa; he also added that it helps us to have healthy biblical church who has reach on the level spiritual maturity, obedient to the Lord and fulfil the great commission.

We thank God for this great movement that he has begun in our region.

Desciplshhip movement under the Tree

2. Key leaders meeting for Discipleship Training and Consultation

Due to Covid-19 restrictions in the past months; we did not have a chance to meet with our leaders as we did before. But now, some of the restrictions are getting relaxed and we are able to gather together as we keep all the safety measures to protect ourselves. We have gathered 17 to train them on the topic of “How to make disciples in Jesus’s way and strategy even in this pandemic”.

Since, the area is known by a huge movement of evangelism and church planting and thousands of people are coming to Christ and getting baptize; and the issue of discipleship has become very critical and important.

We also encouraged them and prayed over them during our meeting and they were so encouraged and requested us to organize such kinds of gatherings even in the future so that they will be equipped and encouraged to do their ministry in a better way. Thank you so much all our partners for your prayers and support.

Training & Consultation Participants in Welenchity town

3. Consultation meeting with our leaders on the the effect of Covid-19 in Churches and what will our churches look like post lockdown.

We have had a good time of consultation with more than 15 key leaders about what things will look like post lockdown. In many ways, the Lord has helped us push the reset button during COVID-19. We need to make sure that we prepare the church for post lockdown so that they do not plan for going back to do things as they’ve always been done.

The followings were some of the discussion points that we have discussed and reflected on during our consultation time.

• What can we learn from the crisis that the church faced in Acts 8:1-3 and their response to it?
• What are some of the positive changes that we have seen the Church make during COVID-19 lockdown?
• What should we learn from these changes?
• What are your takeaways from our discussion today?

It was so impressive to hear how our key leaders responded to those points and shared their experiences and best practices with each other.
We thank God for the strength and wisdom that he has given us to go through this pandemic and be able to pass through it.

We are planning to hold many similar consultation meetings in the near future in various regions of the country so that we can give our leaders more insights to help them to be a better leader.

Key leaders Consultation meeting in Adama/Nazareth/

Conclusion

I would like to share our prayer request with you to pray about:

• Pray for our leaders, regional coordinators and local missionaries that may God would continue provide us the necessary resources to organize more meetings for them in the future so that they will be equipped to do the work of the ministry never like before.
• To continue praying for the most vulnerable communities that are being affected by the impact of the Pandemic and may God would enable us to continue helping more communities and people during this challenging time.

Samson W. /Pst/
Vice – president of U4A and Ethiopia Director