Good News!

Recently, we were alerted by our sending agency that all of our support has come in! We were stunned--all three of us had expected to be raising support through much of the summer. Now that we've met our financial goal, some have told us that they didn't expect us to reach it--they had half-expected only one or two of us to be financially able to go. We know that this large sum of money bears testimony not to our fund-raising abilities (hardly!), but to God's grace, manifested in the Christ-exalting, nations-seeking generosity of His Church.

Any extra money that is given will be used as a contingency fund and for extra ministry expenses (to bless students and their families) during our time in Cameroon. We hope to continue to raise prayer-support for our trip. The supplying of our finances doesn't change our need for God's help.

Thank you all for your prayers and your support. We pray that we are found faithful stewards.

--tg, for team

(As a side note--to be specific, all of the funds for our trip have been gathered or pledged, but not all of the pledged money has come in.)

Pray for the students at CBTS

Last night, the three of us attended a meeting of Philemon and Linda Yong's supporters from Bethlehem Baptist Church. (The Yongs are missionaries at CBTS. Philemon is a professor there, and Linda, in addition to homeschooling two of their kids, helps with AIDS awareness and prevention classes at the seminary. You can read more about them and their ministry here.) Wilfred and Angelica Fon were at the meeting (Wilfred is the president of CBTS and is currently in Minnesota on a sabbatical), and they shared with us that the Cameroon Baptist Convention and CBTS are currently facing major financial difficulties. One of the results is that many current students and their families at CBTS do not have enough food to eat.

Several of us at Bethlehem Baptist are currently exploring possible ways to provide rice and milk for the remainder of the month of May and part of June. The spring term at CBTS ends in June. Would you please pray with us about this need? Pray for the students as they struggle to finish final projects and exams at the seminary in the midst of difficult living conditions.

Christianity in Africa

"Over the past century... the center of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Already today the largest Christian communities on the planet are to be found in Africa and Latin America. If we want to visualize a 'typical' contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela. As Kenyan scholar John Mbiti has observed, 'the centers of the church's universality [are] no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but in Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila. Whatever Europeans or North Americans may believe, Christianity is doing very well indeed in the global South--not just surviving, but expanding."*

*Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 2.

Financial update

As of today, God has supplied $29,668. Keep praying with us that he will bring in the remaining $49,332 that we need.

We're so grateful to all of you who are supporting us.