It’s time to recognize our 2025 Graduates!  If you are graduating this year (high school or college) please let the church office know. Send any pictures that you would like to share to Ms. Emily at youth@wintervillebaptist.org by May 18th. We want to help celebrate YOU! 

Everyone is welcome to join us on Sunday, June 1^st, at 3pm for a VBS Prayer Walk. We want to make this VBS the best one yet!  Help us saturate the Town of Winterville with the love of God.  

Aftershock Youth Group will host a VBS Outreach on June 8^th from 3-5pm.   We will go to Pinewood Village in Winterville and hand out fast food gift cards, small prizes (i.e. - $ Store items, candy, bubbles, trinkets, etc…) along with invitations to VBS and we need your help.  There will be a donation bin outside of the church office.  While you’re out and about, keep an eye out for things of this nature. Or when you’re out to eat, pick up a $5 gift card.  EVERYONE is invited and encouraged to join us on June 8^th.  This is a congregation wide event!

Teacher appreciation luncheon for WH Robinson is on June 11^th.  We need donations of door prizes. See Kay Kirkman with your donations.  Gift cards are greatly appreciated too!

As missionaries, we have the beautiful task of sharing about Jesus to those who otherwise may never hear the gospel. Thanks to your financial and prayerful support, we are able to share the gospel in multiple ways.

We receive funds to support our family and our basic needs through deputation. This covers things such as our home, utilities, travel, salary and benefits. Many of you know that we also have a special project fund. We use this fund to support evangelism efforts we are doing directly, or indirectly that our church supports and we wish to also be a part of this.

In the last year, we have been able to use our project funds to support many interesting programs. Due to security issues in our area we are not able to travel out of the city. But our national friends can still travel freely through much of the city without drawing attention to themselves. Our pastor friends host an annual evangelism conference each fall, before school begins and the fields are ready for harvest. Because of your financial support we have been able to help fund a portion of this need so these men and women can get together for several days to hear teachings from the Bible in their own heart language. You help make it possible for 200-500 people to get together in a field, and for new believers to receive Christ for the first time. Recently there has been a range of 10-50 new believers each year! To God be the glory!

In the last year, we had a man come to us to host a training to teach best management practices in animal herding. Again because of security issues we could not visit their home area. So, we invited them to join us in the capital for the training. We hosted 80 people for a 2-day training. Many who are Muslims heard about Jesus for the first time along with new knowledge about animal care. Your help through our special project funds covered the cost of their transportation, the speakers and translators needed, food, and medicine that we used in teaching the training. They appreciated the training, and many said it was valuable information to better provide for their families and their herds. We hope to be able to continue this animal training each fall to this group of pastoralists.

One of Roy’s favorite programs that we do each year is to host a Christmas party at our home for our neighbors. With your help we provide a meal for over 100 men, women, and children who come. They hear the story of Jesus’ birth in their heart language, receive a nice meal with some protein, and watch the Jesus film together. We invite them to join us each week for small group if they want to know more about Jesus. Thank you for helping introduce God’s love in multiple ways through our Christmas party.

We are also able to help support our Christian friends from time to time with medical needs, children’s tuition fees, basic food needs, and helping to overcome natural disasters such as flooding or fire. To God be the glory for all that he is doing!

We truly enjoy being able to show God’s love in tangible ways to those around us. Life here has become quite challenging, yet we pray that God will continue to use us to encourage those around us. We don’t want them to see us simply as a money tree, but as someone who cares for them and their needs. To examine the situation, we carefully talk about the needs that we see and hear, and we decide together how we can best help. Choosing who to help and how to help can be hard as we daily see so many needs around us. We lean into helping the causes of our local church (evangelism and discipleship), and lean into helping in the most basic human needs (food, shelter, health, education).

Keep praying for us, that God gives us wisdom as we share his truth and love.

Continue praying that the government will renew our residence permits! We are allowed to remain to work and serve here even though our permits expired last July. But if we leave this county, we won’t have permission to re-enter until we are granted visas renewals. It has been disappointing to not have the opportunity to attend a regional retreat with our CVM colleagues this month. Pray for our friends who are able to attend the retreat that they would be encouraged. Pray that we are encouraged in other ways!

As a family we are doing well. Abby is close to finishing third grade. She’ll have less classmates in her school in the upcoming year, but we are encouraged by the school adopting a good strategy to cover all classes next year with less teachers and less students. Josh continues to do well at home, learning reading and counting basics and practicing some French in his day-to-day play. We are writing this mid-March when spring break is beginning and we have a list of fun things that we can do as a family in our city!

We love all of you and are encouraged by each of you! Thank you so much for allowing us to be the hands and feet of Jesus here in West Africa!

Striving to be faithful,
 Roy, Denise, Abby and Josh 

Denise & Roy - theanimalbridge@yahoo.com

 

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