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Jesus has told us to go into all the world and to preach the Gospel and to make disciples. |
Here's what our missionaries have to say |
Mario and Rose Bruno- church planters in Italy Hello, Those who have been released by the glorious truth of the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ know that sin is slavery as the apostle Paul clearly describes in his letter to the Romans. Slavery to the lies of Satan translates into bondage of the body and soul. It started off as a routine morning at one of the Metro (subway) stations. A yawn escaped my mouth while I was silently praying for the morning’s evangelism. The flow of commuters was light. A man was standing nearby obviously waiting for someone. Ten minutes later, out of curiosity, he took a flyer, read it and came over to talk. He was a Benedictine monk (a Roman Catholic religious order which was founded by Benedict of Nursia in 529 A.D., whose first and principle monastery is on Monte Cassino, Italy). At first he wanted to know who I was and what I believed. Convinced I was a true believer in Jesus Christ he began to tell me his life story. He joined the Benedictine order because he wanted to serve God in some way. What he found instead was bondage and slavery. His whole life consisted in getting up at 5 a.m., 30 minutes of prayers—mostly to Mary, 30 minutes of mass by the abbot. Then at 6:30 to the end of the day cleaning the floors, washrooms, church building and do the gardening work. He was not allowed out of the monastery neither was he allowed to own anything except what the abbot decided he could have. Conversations were almost non-existent. When he got sick no one—not even the abbot would come to see how he was. He told me of all the pedophiles that are in every monastery. What the newspapers print, he said, is only the tip of the iceberg, only the smallest part of the magnitude of their problem. I was able to meet with him on 5 different occasions over the next 15 days and he came to church once. He told me of 2 discussions he had had with the abbot that severely affected him. In reading his Bible he came across the verse where Paul states that a bishop should be married and questioned why the Catholic bishops were not. The other was the second of the 10 commandments forbidding idols and images. He asked the abbot why the Catholic churches were full of them in obvious violation of God’s Word. On both occasions the abbot made it clear his was only to obey, to “pray and serve” without question. Then, just as suddenly as he was brought into my life, the Lord took him away. He was moved out of Rome and I have not had contact with him since. Slavery to Satan’s lies leads many to say: “There is no God.” It is no wonder the Bible calls them “fools.” A woman—a declared atheist has been taking the evangelistic flyer I give out for over 3 years. “Yes, it is contradictory,” she confessed, but she told me she rarely reads the gospel address on the back. Over this time she would stop and talk until a friendship developed. She and her partner—also an atheist—came to dinner and he wanted to talk about nothing else except God! No, he did not want to know about the Lord to relieve his conscience of the burden of guilt. He wanted his curiosity satisfied, or so he said. As the conversation progressed he admitted my arguments were right and sound. For example when he declared outright that God could not possible exist I picked up a glass and said: “This glass testifies to a great number of things about its creator but the most important is that its creator exists. This is true for every single thing in this room including you and me. It only follows that the sum of all that exists testifies to the Creator of the universe—namely God.” Whenever he agreed that what I showed from the Scriptures was true he merely passed on the next topic about God that interested him. We pray they will come again and this time with a real desire to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Thank you for your partnership with us in the cause of Christ. May His grace be upon you. Mario and Rose |
John and Sue Mozambique Ninswaliki 69 16 July 2010 Kijabe, Kenya Dear Praying Friends, We're on the road again… this time we're camped out in Kenya for a few days waiting for Emily and Andrew to finish school. Even as I type I can hear the students singing the Kenyan national anthem in the common, then a countdown and now cheering of the students as they scatter to their dorms to collect their bags and head home for vacation. Most will be gone this afternoon, only the graduates and the choir remain till Saturday. Emily is in the choir and so we'll depart together late Saturday night. The past months have been a blessing and a challenge for me. A blessing in that we've had several visitors, the last of which is still with us, our daughter Mary. She has just finished her third year of nursing and was able to come out and see us for the past five weeks, helping us clean up and pack out of our apartment. The challenge of these months has been for me as director to try to get as much done as possible during the first half of the year in preparation for my absence from Mozambique for the second half. We have run a hectic schedule that threatened to break me, but we're now on the road and on our way… During the month of May Susan went home to participate in Laura's graduation from Houghton College. During that time, Keith Davies of Toronto/Guelph came to accompany me in my many travels around Mozambique. During that time we also received a visit of an official journalist and photographer from Wycliffe International. A short video clip of some of their work can be seen on line at http://vimeo.com/12561249 which gives a quick view of our life and work in the Meetto and Koti Bible translation projects in Mozambique. I am told that other stories written will be available on www.thewordislife in both English and Portuguese. But now to our travels: We will be in the UK from July 18-22. On the 23rd we fly to Philadelphia and from then until the end of August we will be either in PA (1-570-746-3806) or Toronto (1-416-497-9669) or lost at the lake (no contact details available). On Aug 28 Emily and Andrew return to RVA and Susan and I will settle down (more or less) in Toronto, staying with Susan's father. I hope we will be able to see you this fall. It has been five years since we had any time at home and look forward to many reunions. We have a few trips already scheduled for the coming months but still have plenty of time to catch up. Please let us know if and when it would be possible to visit. Emily and Andrew will return in late November to spend Christmas with us and then we return to Mozambique January 23, 2011. Facebook: Do you use Facebook? I've never touched it, nor do our two children at RVA, mainly because it is too time consuming on a slow network. But I have noticed that more and more people are using it as their primary means of communication. Today I went into the RVA computer lab and noticed that every monitor was in use and all but one student were logged on to Facebook. Would you prefer that I communicate with you on Facebook? Let me know your thoughts. (By the way, if this paragraph makes no sense to you, don't panic, you are in the company of many good people.) As we finish out this exhausting term on the field it is appropriate to thank you for staying with us step by step and day by day. Much has been accomplished, scriptures translated, published and recorded, new readers reading, translators trained and lives changed, but it has been a long road. We're tired and are looking forward to being refreshed again with you. Pressing On, John I. |