October 2007

Dear Friends,

Greetings in the name of our Lord! God has been faithful to us as we had a great September with some outstanding results coming from our two Ghana teams and our Philippine team . God mightily poured out His Spirit as our teams were obedient to the Great Commission. In spite of being in the rainy season, they persevered and God met them and brought the harvest. You gave, they went and we all prayed and trusted God for the results. Read on and take in the testimonies and thank God that He is a God of mercy and grace.

GHANA PROJECTS – July and August

We bless God for the hard work that continues to bring forth fruit in the fields. Faith without works is certainly dead but a faith that operates in the will of God to go to where the people are and preach the Gospel is always rewarded because it always take you into the heart of God.

In July and August, our teams conducted 50 meetings to crowds totaling 31,393 with 11,505 making first time decisions for Christ.

A man asked me the other day, “how do you know how many made decisions?” I responded, “how do you know who made decisions in your church” and he responded, “we count them.” It is the same with us, we count the ones who come forward and get their names and the participating churches do the follow up on them all. We do not work with any organization that will not do the follow up. We train them with materials like The Christian Life and Witness material that the Billy Graham team uses, so they are thoroughly equipped when we leave there. Here is one such testimony from a prominent man in the community that was saved, enjoy!

“During my youthful days, I was very active in the Sunday school and even led Bible studies. I enjoyed this until I entered the High School which was a mixed school and situated in another Region. The movement from my parents home and their influence affected me negatively. An older boy, who posed as my school father, was unfortunately involved in drugs and the occult and he finally inducted me into this. I continued in this practice even into the University and after. I drifted further and further away from the church and started hosting yoga and other disciplines in my home.

Particularly, my relations with my father grew from bad to worse until we were not on speaking terms and I stopped going home. My mother however continued visiting and praying for me. I fell in love with a lady who turned out to be a Christian. All advice and warnings from my friends and colleagues fell on deaf ears and the relationship grew stronger. The lady and her family insisted on my normalizing relations with my father and so I appealed to my uncle, my mother’s brother, to plead on my behalf.

We visited my father today to iron out our differences and heard that a film was being shown outdoors. For lack of something else doing, I decided to while away time while the rest of the family relaxed after meals. The message of the Jesus Film touched me so much that I could not leave as planned. I started weeping during the course of the film. I repented of my sins and prayed to receive Christ into my life when you asked us to do so. I however feel it is not enough and that is why I am here to announce it formally to you. Please help me because I am desperate and sincere.” Lord Kweku Q______, a civil servant.

The picture below is Eugene baptizing after a church dedication of a church that we planted. Join me in thanking God for these who are in the fields even now as you read this. Eugene is in the Esreso Timpon District of the Ashanti Region and Godfried is in the Central Region. Please keep them in your prayers.

2007 Year To Date Missionary Results

We have preached the Gospel in 470 venues,
to 251,676 people.
We have seen 110,600 come forward to receive
Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord.
We have also planted three (3) new churches.


Philippine Report - July

Dear Uncle Mack, Greetings! The mission to the Mangyans went so well. It went from July 27-30 and was wonderful and exciting. There were thirteen and nine were my students. We were excited to go there again and to see the poor people and to help them.

On 27th evening we reached Mindoro and it was raining heavily. So the mission planned on that day was moved to the 29th. That night we prayed for our mission in Mangyans and we lifted up the people and the mission. Early the next day we left to the Mangyans and in the morning itself there was again a heavy rain. Prior to entering their village we had to cross a river. They were waiting for us on the other shore and they told us that it might be hard when we come back as the rain was continuous and hard. But I prayed and told them that we are going to help them so God would take care of us. And we decided to go... When we crossed the river the river was knee deep though the current was heavy. And when we walked through the communities the leader of the community shouted and said, "Thank you for coming even in the rainy season as no other people have ever come in the times of rain to our community." It was a wonderful feeling because we let them know that we love them and that’s why we cross the river even in the midst of the rain. We brought rice and seed this time. When we went there my students performed some songs and dances. And the local pastor preached a salvation message for the people. And all the people there received Christ. There were 43 children and 16 adults. We separated the men about 12 of them and we talked to them. I shared our intentions to come to their community. I told them we wanted to show them the love of Jesus. We asked them their needs again and how we could be of some help. They asked for some more seed so that they could plant. Each seed bags costs about $80 and they asked for seven of them. But by God's grace we had four bags of seeds given by the local government for free this time. This was the first time they give out the corn seeds free as they are trying this seed for the first time in their province. So we gave them the seeds and they were very happy. After we shared the seed there were lots of smiles and gratitude on the faces of the Mangyan people. They were saying thank you, thank you (salamat po, salamat po). And the leader of the community cried.

While inside, my students were ministering to the women and the kids of the community. They were praying in English and Tagalog which the Mangyans didn’t understand. But while they were praying they began to cry. According to the pastors this was the first time they had seen Mangyans cry when they were prayed over. We think it was because they could feel the love of Christ. The team cried also and touched, hugged and prayed for God's blessing and salvation. We could see that them coming closer to God after every trip we make.

After this we gave them two sacks of rice because they don’t have much to eat in the rainy season as they could not get anything from outside. (You can see how thin they are in the picture on the next page). We blessed them with the little we had and we prayed for God to multiply it. We left the community as soon as possible as they were saying the river might be flooding because of the rain. On our way out they said, ‘salamat po’ for coming and we hope you will not become tired of coming to us. We assured them we will come back to the community again. As we were leaving the river was rising even more and was rough and we were really afraid. The water was about neck level and we were panicking. Most of us walked for 5 minutes in chest level water. When we entered the center of the river the water current was so high that two of our team members were taken by the current... but praise God that they were men and they could hold on to the nearby branches and came out safely. We crossed the river and just stood at the river bank and shouted thank you Lord many times to show our gratitude to the Lord who saved us. That was a great miracle and I never expected the river to be that rough. Praise God!

After resting, we traveled to a place called Sawmill where we shared God's love in a worship service to the fishermen colony where we ministered to about 73 people altogether (45 children and 28 adults). And most of them were non-Christians. These fishermen live near the sea and as it is rainy season they wouldn’t have much food so we gave them some rice also. We shared the Gospel and 33 people prayed the sinner’s prayer. Praise the Lord. And the local pastor said he will follow up on the new converts and bring them to the church. That evening we left Mindoro and went back to Manila and reached in the morning of 30th. Praise the Lord we did great things by the help of the Lord and He is to be praised and glorified.

We love you uncle and we thank you and your partners for empowering us to reach people and bless them. By providing water pipes, seeds, and fertilizers we are basically enhancing their social life and through which they see God's love and get closer to the Lord the one who saves and provides. We stress all the time that it is not from any man but from God, so that they could really feel the love of God and glorify Him alone. Thank you very much uncle.... Salamat Po... Herewith I have attached a picture of the adults who prayed to receive Christ. The lady on the far right was in tears...Arren Bennet, Manila, Philippines.

So here we are again! It’s the same old story. If we pray, believe God and speak the Gospel, people will get saved. Thanks for sharing your resources to make things happen across the world.

We are now reaching “Unreached People’s Groups” in three countries in the world … Ghana, India and the Philippines.

From September 21 – 28, I was in India again taking a team from a church in Texas to see if they would be interested in partnering with us to reach more people for Christ. Out of the 750 unreached peoples groups in the world, approximately 450 of them are in India. I will give you a report next month.

Following that I was in three churches in England sharing the Word of God and the ministry of GHI. Again, more next month, got to go.

Dottie joins me in sending our love... Mack