What really makes a missionary of over 30 years feel like celebrating? Being in a worship service and hearing 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation East African Baptists singing "Lord, you are good… People from every nation and every tongue, from generation to generation, We worship you."Added joy? Knowing the spiritual history of these worshippers – knowing that most are well discipled, some by early Baptist missionaries to East Africa and others discipled by those discipled by the missionaries – the multiplication process in action! Another joy? Knowing that most of these worshippers are active co-workers serving as our Father’s Heart, Hands and Voice in our world – a few as pastors, many as ‘home missionaries’ in prisons, universities, unreached people groups, etc., and many whose business jobs take them to places such as Egypt, Sudan, India and even war-torn Somalia – places where professional missionaries are not always welcome!
TODAY’S PHOTO: The girl’s father, a leader of home mission trips, recently left the business world to become a Baptist Pastor. As a youth, he was discipled by IMB missionaries with a heart for making disciples who make disciples. The girl’s mother is a prayer warrior for unreached Peoples in East Africa and an active disciple maker, who worked for many years for a religious organization sharing God’s Word via the radio to unreached peoples. She is also the daughter of one of the first East African church planters, a Tanzanian who began the Chamgamwe Baptist Church in the city of Mombasa, Kenya. WHICH makes the girl in the photo a 3rd generation East African Baptist and one who is already being discipled by an East African believer using a book published with the help of the Lottie Moon Offering – one more way her family has been touched by Lottie.
ADDED NOTE: Some IMB missionaries in East Africa focus on the Unengaged People Groups (no known sharing of our Father’s Good News), others on the Unreached (those touched, though sometimes barely, by the witness of Believers), and a few focus on what is known as the LEGACY. These men and women teach at seminaries and others teach in established Baptist churches and Bible Schools – all with the goal of strengthening and encouraging East African Believers as they serve as a multiplying army of workers in our Father’s Harvest Field, making disciples who will make more disciples who will make more disciples who….
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