June 6, 2007
Previously, The Alliance has reported on “the light side” of all that God has accomplished in and through selfless volunteers who have touched the lives of the residents of Waveland, Mississippi. Mississippians have experienced firsthand the love of Jesus through the compassionate care of His followers, and an Alliance church has been planted there. But for thousands in Waveland, as well as other Gulf Coast cities ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, the nightmare continues.
“The light side is easy,” says George Williamson, pastor of the Southern District’s Christian Life Center in Waveland. “The dark side is not. The dark side started for me on February 23, 2007.”
That is when Williamson and his wife, Allie, began their ministry in Waveland, where thousands of people, many still living in trailers, are experiencing life-challenging problems. Williamson followed God’s call to the small Gulf Coast city, picking up where Alliance pastors Art Baruffi and Don Young left off, leading relief and rebuilding efforts and pastoring Christian Life Center. Nearly 60 people have come to the Lord as a result of their interaction with believers who were there during the time of need.
“But there is so much more that needs to be done,” says Williamson, who sees the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on a daily basis—and it’s not just the landscape. “The soil is polluted with sewage, oil, and mud. Open wounds quickly bring infection.
“Men can’t help their families. They question their ability to be men. ‘My job is gone,’ they say. ‘My house is gone. My kid’s school is gone.’”
Suicides are common, Williamson says. Media headlines tell the story of a prominent local man who shot his wife and then took his own life. The city is reeling. People are broken, and Williamson’s heart is broken for them.
“A local policeman told me, ‘I haven’t talked to a chaplain in 17 months.’ He asked me to pray. I ask myself, ‘Can this be America? Do we matter?’”
Williamson, choked with emotion, knows where his hope lies. “I wait undefeated,” he says, “because I know mercy triumphs. We still need help. We are trusting God for 100 volunteers a week. Jesus’ ministry is still to heal the brokenhearted, and they are everywhere on the Gulf Coast.”
For information on how you can help Alliance efforts in rebuilding the Gulf Coast, contact: Frank Smith, C&MA director for hurricane relief in the Southern District, 570-713-5930, or frankdsmith@southerncma.org.
June 1, 2007
Missionaries in foreign language study may think that their ministry has not begun because they are not yet on their assigned field. But Alliance missionary Renée Valach recently learned how God is using her time in Albertville, France.
Renée is in French language study in preparation for ministry at Bongolo Hospital in Gabon, West Africa. One day, a woman from Renée’s church approached her. “She told me it is a privilege to have missionaries here,” says Renée, who had thought that language study students didn’t contribute much to the congregation because of the difficulty in communication. Renée sometimes serves as a translator for three- to six-year-old Sunday school students who speak English only. “I didn’t think what I do is much of a contribution.”
The woman related how a missionary told her mother and her about Jesus when she was young. “It was a little seed that was planted,” Renée says. Years later, the woman asked Jesus to come into her life. “The woman was baptized last week. It reminded me that, even with my limited language skills, God can still use me to bless others. I may say something now which one day will sprout.”
May 17, 2007
“I can’t live without God!” The words were spoken by a woman from a Buddhist background who attends Harry and Jane Landaw’s cell group. Recently, she requested time off from work to attend the Bible study regularly. As C&MA missionaries to Japan, the Landaws regularly witness such testimonies of God’s power to change lives.
“I saw the cross on top of the church and want to understand what it means,” said a man in his thirties who walked into Jane’s Sunday school class one morning. He remained for the English Bible class that Harry taught in the afternoon and has come for weekly services since then.
Recently, the Landaws chatted with the family that runs the neighborhood gas station. When Harry filled up his car a few days later, the manager approached him. “Landaw san, Landaw san, thank you for greeting us the other day,” the man said. He confided that his wife has been going through a valley after the death of their son. “Won’t you help her?” he asked. The Landaws are grateful for such opportunities to share the love of Jesus.
“We continue to be amazed at the transforming power of the cross of Christ,” they said. “God [is pushing] back the darkness in Japan so His Light can shine in.”
May 8, 2007
Against all odds, The Alliance is confronting AIDS in a myriad of innovative ways, including a new approach by one C&MA church member in Florida. Not to be hindered by time constraints of a local walkathon, where pledges straggle in or never come, Paul Steinbrueck, CEO of OurChurch.com and elder at Cypress Meadows (Alliance) Community Church in Clearwater, has come up with a solution—Clickathon! “It’s like an online walkathon,” says Steinbrueck, who founded OurChurch.com in 1996 with a vision to make it possible for every Christian church to build and create an easy, affordable Christian Web site.
The AIDS Clickathon, which runs through May 10, is a fund-raising event to help support church members Joseph and Molly Bail, who will move to Kenya later this year to build Springs of Hope, an home for AIDS-orphaned children. The Bails will be working along side a Kenyan pastor to provide food, shelter, education, and love to scores of helpless children who have been left homeless after their parents succumbed to AIDS. It is estimated that nearly 12 million African children have been orphaned because of the disease.
“Anyone can help,” says Steinbrueck, “just by clicking.” When visitors click on the site, Clickathon sponsors donate to support the cause. The goal is $50,000, which will be used to build and staff the orphanage as well as to provide other AIDS-related relief. “OurChurch.Com, also will make a donation for each person who clicks,” Steinbrueck says.
To click, visit www.AIDSClickathon.com.
May 7, 2007
An Alliance woman from Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, was killed Sunday, May 6, when the plane she was traveling in exploded after take-off. Mrs. Alice N'Goran, who attended a C&MA national church, was married with four children. “Her husband is an elder,” said Alliance missionary Cindy Cook. “My heart is very heavy for them.” The cause of the explosion is under investigation
April 13, 2007
Kidnapped youth pastor ****, of the Evangelical Alliance Church in Baghdad, was released Friday, April 13, at approximately 3 p.m. Iraq time. Arie Verduyn, president of Alliance World Fellowship, spoke with **** briefly. “He sounded very tired,” says Verduyn, “but is immensely grateful.” During ****’s captivity, he was not allowed to change clothes nor drink much water, but he said, ‘I sensed that God was with me and talked to me all the time.’”
Shortly before ****’s release, his kidnappers gave him a big bag with identification cards, told him the cards belonged to people they had killed, and was ordered to look for his own. “They told him, ‘We don’t know why, but we will not kill you,” reports Verduyn. “But we do know why. We have received many messages from around the world of people praying for the release of our brother!”
As Verduyn spoke with the pastor who pastors the Alliance church in Baghdad, he heard shouts of joy in the background. The pastor was at ****’s house with his family and church members, who were singing and praising God. “Yes, our Redeemer lives!”
April 3, 2007
When a group of Christian businessmen began meeting in an Italian restaurant in Säo Paulo, Brazil, Chef Miriam Dias was listening. One day she approached the group, which was led by Alliance missionary Len Warden, and asked what they were doing. Warden explained that they were discussing biblical principles of integrity in the workplace. Dias became intrigued. “The whole idea of being honest in this business is radical,” she said. As a successful restaurateur, Dias has appeared on national television and has hosted wealthy celebrities in her restaurant. Yet she felt an emptiness that no amount of achievement could fill. “I knew there had to be more,” she said.
Dias asked to participate in the integrity meetings, and Warden’s wife, Diane, offered to mentor Dias in a discipleship class. As a result, “I started to be transformed,” said Dias. She is now a baptized member of the Zona Norte (Alliance) church plant and is sharing her faith with those she encounters in the upper reaches of Brazilian society. When customers ask the reason for the joy and peace she radiates, Dias points them to Christ. “I believe God has given me these opportunities so I can tell people about the light of Jesus in my heart,” she said.
March 26, 2007
Nearly 40 children accepted Jesus as Savior during Spiritual Emphasis Week (SEW) at Alliance Academy International in Quito, Ecuador. One boy who came to Christ said he felt so different inside that he wanted to jump, and he proceeded to hop down the hall. A second grader said, “When I pray, I think of Jesus as a little kid running to the phone, yelling, ‘I’ll get it!’” One child began his prayer for salvation by saying, “Dear God, I like you a lot.” Although he had never prayed aloud before, “what came out of his mouth was amazing and deep,” said Alliance missionary Ellen Evans, who teaches at the school. Another young child, who had received Christ during the last SEW, confided that he prays at home in secret because he’s afraid his parents will spank him if they find out that he became a Christian.
Students who participated in SEW also learned to appreciate intercessory prayer. When Evans asked her first grade class to pray for a local hospital during the week, “the children offered the sweetest prayers for sick people as well as doctors and nurses.” Later, she discovered that an important meeting was taking place at the hospital while her students were praying. In chapel one morning, kindergarteners prayed for their teacher, who was undergoing hospital tests for a variety of frightening symptoms. At lunchtime several adults went to the hospital to pray with her, and she reported that her symptoms were gone and she would be going home. Her husband is a pastor who had been teaching his church about intercessory prayer.
During the week, students had created posters of various countries and people groups, which were hung around the chapel. A floor-sized map of the world was laid across the room, and the children were invited to stand near a particular poster or country on the map and pray for the needs represented there. “Many children were brokenhearted as they prayed for war-torn countries, children with AIDS, and the poor,” said Evans. Later the students approached the microphone to pray for their native countries in their own languages. “My tears flowed freely as I listened to them pray in Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Spanish, English, and more!” Evans said.
February 22, 2007
Despite a constitution that guarantees freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the Japan Supreme Court is set to rule against public school teachers, some of them Christians, who were disciplined or removed from their posts because they refused to sing the national anthem, which praises the emperor as a deity.
Two lower courts already have ruled regarding the more than 200 teachers, and the Supreme Court has said it will hand down a ruling on February 27 without even hearing the case.
We wrote in our prayer letter last month that our son, Josiah, who attends first grade in Japan, has been feeling pressure to sing the anthem, since the Ministry of Education has begun forcing the singing of the anthem by school students. Thankfully, thus far Josiah’s teacher has not insisted that he sing it.
Persecution in Japan is not as severe as in many countries of the world, but it seems to be quickly heading in a bad direction. Please pray for Christians who must choose between their job and their Savior and for the children of believers who are being forced to participate in this and other Shinto-related activities in school.
As always, thank you for your prayers.
—David and Evangeline Kindervater, Alliance missionaries to Japan
February 12, 2007
Two years after the devastation of the December 2004 tsunami, the people of Indonesia have again been struck by tragedy. The recent flash floods and landslides have killed 110 people across the north of Sumatra. In the beginning stages of flooding, more than 300,000 people fled their homes. Now some are returning to clean up and start rebuilding their lives.
Rebuilding lives is what CAMA (Compassion and Mercy Associates), the relief arm of The Alliance, is all about. “This tragedy is another opportunity of ministry in this area,” said a C&MA missionary from the region. Relief efforts have been under way. Most of the displaced have been living in tents and waiting for help, unable to return to their homes because the mud is more than three feet deep. In interior villages, the only thing people had eaten for 15 days was ramen noodles.
Recently, CAMA visited a village along the coast, bringing equipment to clean and purify wells. Cooking utensils, vegetables, cooking oil, and oil lanterns were provided to needy families. “We were well received and could even share God’s love and pray with people,” said a C&MA worker.
Pray for the newly formed foundation “Hands of Concern” with which the C&MA and CAMA of Indonesia will continue to partner in Indonesian relief and development ministries.
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