Less than a month ago, you guys were praying for our incredible courageous evangelists (thanks so much for that!) as they went about Burundi serving communities, building houses, washing wounds, preaching, healing, casting out demons, and more. Here’s the topline summary from Onesphore, founder of Harvest for Christ:
“From 3rd to 17th August, we sent out 761 evangelists in 42 teams around the country.
- 39,753 people were reached with the gospel, of whom 18,218 gave their lives to Christ. Numbers are down a little on previous years because we didn’t preach exclusively, but also did service projects (SG – down?!!! Still amazing, eh?!)
- 60 Muslims and 28 witchdoctors were amongst the converts
- 171 people were healed from regular sicknesses
- 15 paralytics walked
- 15 blind people recovered their sight
- 8 deaf/mute people heard/spoke again
- 20 demon-possessed people were delivered
- 55 separated couples were reconciled and brought together
- 8 divided families were reunited
Service projects included
- building 19 houses and rebuilding 16 others for orphans, widows and vulnerable families.
- One bridge was rebuilt in Karusi, which is literally a life-saver for those isolated people there.
- The team washed children suffering from jiggers and leprosy.
- They took up hoes and cultivated for widows and orphans.
(Zacharie, healed and in his right mind)
I sent some stories before, so here are just two more :
Zacharie is a young man whom witchdoctors said had been poisoned by his Dad. So for the last twenty years the two had been enemies, and Zacharie had tried many times to kill his father. By May 2013, Zacharie had become mad, and was living in caves. He carried a sword and terrorised people. When our evangelists arrived, he tried to beat them, but they refused to be cowed, instead praying for him. After an hour of such prayers, he was miraculously healed. Immediately he was filled with love for his father, and went off to find him. The village heard about it, came to see what had happened, and fifty of them gave their lives to Christ. His Mum, who had divorced his Dad, came and was reconciled with her ex-husband.
At Nyange, in an area steeped in witchcraft, the team felt it best not to preach for the first week but to simply serve the community in any way possible. They came to a big witchdoctor called Bworo, and offered to work in his field and cultivate for him. He was blown away after a few hours, and allowed them to share why they were doing it. On the spot he and his family repented. He publicly burnt all his charms, whereupon 30 other people gave their lives to Christ too. When our team left on the 17th, many came to see them off in tears.”
What else is there to say, but PRAISE THE LORD!!!
Thanks for all your support. To make it happen again next year, please do donate at www.greatlakesoutreach.org/donate Believe it or not, we didn’t do as much as we could this year because of coming in under budget. There could hardly be a better Kingdom investment on the planet.