Jay and Beverly Bellamy

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Prayer Letter/Ministry Update

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Pointe-Noire, Congo. We just returned from Senegal where we have been visiting Lauren, who has finished the first marking period of her senior year at Dakar Academy. It was so good to see her, catch up on details and plan for next year in the U.S.

We’re still getting used to the idea that this is our last year to have a child in high school. It’s the last year for a lot of things. BJ will also graduate this year—from Grove City College. He has a job waiting for him in Cleveland and will start there after getting married. We were very happy to hear of his engagement while we were at Dakar as well. During the summer we got to meet Christy and already feel like she is part of our family.

God has blessed us tremendously through our children and we are very thankful for each of them. We look forward to being closer to all of them next year during our home assignment. God has been faithful to lead BJ, Danny and Lauren and we continue to pray that He will show them His plan for their lives.

A good part of our next few months will be handing off ministries to those who will be continuing them while we are home. There are three, specifically, for which we would greatly appreciate your prayers.

IBAC
The official plan was to completely turn over our administrative ministries at the Christian Alliance Bible Institute by this past June. However, the process was interrupted by a number of circumstances, including some conflict in our church and our unexpected visit to the US following the death of Bev’s father. After returning from the US this summer and some tumultuous months of conflict among the church leadership, Jay is still the director of the Pointe-Noire Christian Study Center and Bev is still acting as registrar and financial manager.
We are working closely with Pastor Jean-Philippe, who will, we believe, become the official director in the next few months. Asking one man and our capable receptionist to do a job that has required all four of us for the past few years is a bit much. There are many responsibilities which took us a number of years to work out. It’s not easy to teach them in a short time.

Jean-Philippe has asked us to continue working as a team, even after the titles change. We believe this is wise and are praying that God will work out the details. Please pray for the Center and the church as they make crucial decisions over the next few months. Pray for Pastor Jean-Philippe, especially, as he has many other responsibilities in the church at his secular job and with his orphanage. Pray for peace and agreement among the leaders of the church about the leadership of the Christian Study Center.

We were thrilled to welcome twenty-four new students into our Pointe-Noire Bible Institute program. Jay enjoyed teaching the Bible Doctrine course to this new group in October. They responded well and had good discussions.

Another task this year for us is to develop course materials that can be reproduced or bought locally. In October, Jay taught a foundational doctrines class with a course manual that he developed. It was ideal because he was able to adapt it to our 9-session module format and occupy more of the time emphasizing doctrines that are very important for answering local cults and heresies that the church continuously battles. He has prepared a revised program for our second-year Hermeneutics (How to study the Bible) class for November. Beverly developed a manual for the Christian education course in past years, but will need to write a teacher’s manual with supplementary materials she has been using so that it can be taught by someone else next year. She will be teaching this course in December.

We, along with the other team members who teach in the Christian Study Center, will all be working on curriculum development this year for both IBAC (our on-site Bible school program) and Theological Education by Extension (our portable Bible School program). Pray that we have the wisdom and strength to leave good programs that can be continued both in Pointe-Noire and in other learning centers in Congo.

CHILDREN’S MINISTRIES
Beverly is also working on developing a teacher’s manual for the first level of the Sunday School teacher training program she implemented last year. She would like to work with four or five Christian education leaders in the local churches of Pointe-Noire, using this manual, to help them develop into teacher-trainers.

This will require getting together with these teachers for regular group as well as individual meetings. The goal is that by the end of this year, they will each have taught a group of teachers and be equipped to continue to recruit and train teachers in the local churches of Pointe-Noire. If the Lord allows us to return after our year of home assignment, we hope to see teacher-trainers who have already taught two groups and are ready to take them to the next level of development as teachers who are capable of winning the hearts of children and making disciples of them. Pray that God will call these teachers and teacher-trainers and will give them fruitful ministry.

Arriving back from our trip this summer, Beverly received a very encouraging report from one of these trainers, with whom she worked closely this past year. Patricia is the head teacher in the Sunday School that Bev worked with intensively last year. She took a suggestion from a meeting earlier in the year and organized a field trip to the Christian Radio Station for the whole Sunday School.

They ended up arranging buses for about 140 children who brought gifts to the radio announcers, toured the radio station and recorded stories, verses and songs they had learned. These were broadcasted to the whole of Pointe-Noire. Not only did the parents of many of these children, who are not from the church, appreciate hearing what their children had been learning, and not only did the children understand a deeper purpose in what they were learning, but the next week, the radio station received calls from Christians around Pointe-Noire asking when the next children’s program would be broadcast! This was a great encouragement to the radio station RSM (Radio Good News) as well.

RSM
That brings us to the third ministry for which we especially ask your prayers. We have a continuing problem with electricity here in Pointe-Noire. Frequently, we only have electricity every other day and even then it is cut for hours at a time. As we’re writing this, we are operating off of an inverter system in our home that allows us to continue working, despite these cuts. Our Christian radio station, however, does not have this option.

A few years ago, we helped them to acquire a generator. The people of Pointe-Noire took up special offerings and paid for about half of that cost themselves. This has been a great help to the station. However, when there is no electricity for days at a time, and with the cost of fuel constantly rising, the station has had to go from operating 24 hours a day to about 6 hours on days when there is no electricity. The outages are not predictable, and people tuning to the station frequently find dead air. Besides having lost radio listeners, some of whom have begun to think that the radio station has gone off the air, the station has lost advertising. A large part of its operational income comes from advertisers such as churches and service organizations. Paired with the cost of running the generator-even for the extra six hours per day—the loss in income has resulted in serious financial difficulties for the radio station. For the past six months, the radio station has been falling below budget and has been forced to make up the deficit with money from its savings. It is at great risk to close and a great ministry, which still touches many each day, would be lost.

This last month, we asked an alternative energy company to come and give us an estimate of what it would take to set up an inverter system for the radio station. They came and evaluated the radio station’s needs to run the emitter, computers, fans and lights for 8 hours without the generator or electricity. With such a system, the station could go back to a 24-hour format, because during the times it is using the generator or city electricity, it would be charging the batteries running the inverter. The company has helped our missionaries in Brazzaville and colleagues in Pointe-Noire and is very sympathetic to these ministries. Another great advantage in using this company is that they will do the installation, train the radio workers to use it properly and service it as necessary. After making their evaluation, the company gave us an estimate which included the cost of materials and set-up. They are not charging for labor. We will have to raise $5,700 in order to set up this system. We know, from having set up systems in our homes, that this is not extraordinary. The inverter system is the same excellent system we use and shipping and customs expenses on the deep-cell batteries, inverter and set-up materials basically doubles the ordinary cost for such a system.

However, we believe that this is a necessary investment if the radio station is going to continue its ministry. Just this weekend, the radio station sponsored a meeting of the supporting churches of Pointe-Noire. At the request of the director, several people whose lives have been changed by the message they heard on the radio in the past year came to tell their stories. One such woman was Dana. She was a prostitute who was addicted to drugs and alcohol. Her family had long since rejected her and she was living immorally with other women. She heard that God loved her, for the first time, one day as she was listening to Radio RSM. Alone in her room, she wept and repented, begging to see God’s face. After she contacted the radio station she received counseling about how to start her new life with God. The counselor recommended one of the supporting churches in her neighborhood. In the months since her decision, she has become a part of the church and God has been changing her. She came to the radio meeting to glorify God because He had made her life new. She recently graduated from an accounting school and has a job. She is praying for a Christian husband so that together they can build a Christian home.

Space doesn’t permit us to share all of the stories, but the pastors and church leaders who attended the meeting were touched, once again, by what God has been doing around them through the radio ministry. They took up an offering of $300 to help the radio station with its budget shortfall. Would you pray with us that God will provide the $5,700 that will be necessary to provide an inverter system so that the radio ministry can continue? If you would like to give to help meet this need, you can give online or send your gift to The Christian & Missionary Alliance and designate your gift as Congo Field: Pointe-Noire Christian Radio. You may also give your gift to our Work fund and let us know that it is for the radio.

We thank God every day for the ways that you support us. These past few months have been challenging and we have been encouraged knowing that you were praying for us.

With deep gratitude,
Jay and Beverly Bellamy

Prayer Requests/Answers to Prayer

Pray for our physical health.

Pray for the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church of the Congo. Pray that the Lord will continue to protect them from attacks of the enemy and give them unity and a deep love for each other.

Pray for our children. BJ is a senior at Grove City College. Pray for God's guidance as he and his fiancee finish school and plan their new life together.

Danny is in his sophomore year at Toccoa Falls College. We are very grateful for the "family" he has found there with fellow students and members of local Alliance churches.

Lauren is a senior at Dakar Academy in Senegal. She is making plans for college and praying for guidance for the future. Pray that God will lead all three of our children and draw them into a deep relationship with Him.

Republic of the Congo

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