We were delighted to receive this update from our partner in Burundi, Aloys Nduwindavyi, after he spent several days using materials provided by LMI to train church leaders in relation to Servant Leadership and Business-as-Mission.
Aloys explained, “By God’s grace, three leaders - Claude, Philippe and Diomede - completed five days of training. They were very much helped by the LMI materials.
Diomede, who has been a pastor for three years, described the training as one of the most important things to happen during his ministry. He is now going to use LMI’s ‘Foundations’ resource in his Sunday School and Bible Union group at Mishiha in Cankuzo Province, which borders Tanzania.
Pastor Philippe is now going to develop a leadership training hub at Cankuzo, to help other church leaders, and Mr Claude is going to take what he learned to help other leaders, becoming a ‘trainer of trainers’. Like Diomede, he has committed to training young people with the ‘Foundations’ resource, and all three want to use materials from LMI’s Bible Teaching Ministry to further develop their own ministries, and those of others around them, in the years ahead.
During the training, the team went for door to door evangelism in Kanyosha. A young boy, who was following Islam, received Jesus into his life and is now following discipleship training using LMI’s Dynamics of Discipleship resource, praise the Lord!”.
It is a wonderful encouragement to read about how the Lord is using materials from our Bible Teaching Ministry to bless and strengthen His Church.
The Business-as-Mission element is a relatively new aspect of our Overseas Ministry Programme, inspired in part by Aloys, who has a deep desire to see African Christians use what they have to support and sustain indigenous mission efforts.
Participants in the training receive instruction on micro-enterprise and business management, and several projects have been established, creating jobs and spreading hope. Over time, some of these business owners have joined with Aloys to develop a shared mission fund to support local ministry and cross-cultural mission.
To date, eleven people have received £200 seed-money from LMI to help launch their micro-enterprises. As you can imagine, we are very excited about this ongoing project!
We hope you are blessed to hear about what God is doing, and take great joy in the knowledge that your prayers and financial support are helping to make training sessions and projects such as these possible.
To learn more about LMI’s Overseas Ministry Programme, including how you can support our endeavours in Burundi and around the world, please visit lmi-org.net/our-work/overseas