Recently God blew me away and I wanted to share it with you.
Since June, my family has been hosting an immigrant from Africa in our home. Papa Willy is a church planter who was severely persecuted in his home country and escaped with his family. After making his way to America, he was in detention for a year until we got connected through my church to become his sponsors during his asylum process. His family is still in Africa. It has been a rare and incredible gift to get to know Papa Willy and become friends with him!
Shortly after he arrived and learned of my background, Papa Willy asked me to share several books about leadership, because he wanted to start a class using WhatsApp to teach Christian leadership principles to leaders from a struggling, discouraged church in Africa. One day in early July, I was out working in our garden and he was in the yard praying and preparing for his teaching time the next day. God spoke to Papa Willy and told him to ask me to teach. This seemed kind of strange to him – and to me! Nonetheless, he was obedient and he came to the garden and told me what had happened. I agreed to teach his class the next morning – the topic being the work of the Holy Spirit!
Over the next ten weeks, that initial session turned into a pilot program for CGI, “Foundations of Biblical Leadership”.
Papa Willy and I would meet for 90 minutes each Saturday morning with 20-25 church leaders from a small church in Cameroon. We shared with them about Biblical principles of servant leadership and about the primacy of the love of God for us as believers and leaders of the church. I would teach from the Scriptures and Papa Willy would translate my message into French and provide additional commentary.
Last Saturday, that small church in Cameroon baptized 13 teenaged new believers! I’m just blown away!
I wanted to share this with you because God has encouraged me so much through this experience. I’m so thankful for and encouraged by all your prayers and your support for our work at CGI. I hope you are encouraged as well!