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We went to the persecuted
pastors in Orissa many of whom are still under great fear. Thirty
two families lost all their savings for the marriage of children, to
buy a cow or build a house, all burned to ashes in their homes.
Pastors lost their bicycles, their eyes were still full of tears.
Most had been abused and tortured, one pastor's head was shaved and
he was forced to drink cow dung water. We encouraged and prayed for
each one. But just now I got another phone call saying that one of
our missionaries and his wife were beaten brutally in the village
while they were having their prayer service. Please uphold them in
your prayers. The persecution news really wears me out and I was
almost physically sick for three days.
DCI Partner in India
§ On your behalf we have sent funds
for bikes and Bibles. Les.
It is the things that you cannot do anything about
and the things
that you cannot do anything with
that do something with you.
Richard Rohr
Last Sunday we 47 unbelievers came to
Barlonyo Church for the Poor. We led them all to Christ and now that
church has gone from being new 3 months ago to having 107 real
members. Eight men came from Aduku asking us if they could have a
Church for the Poor as well. We shall launch it next Sunday giving
us the total of 10 Churches for the Poor.
George
Purkweri, DCI partner in Lira - Uganda
purgeorge2000 @ yahoo.com
Dare to let God be God by taking your
hands off
and allowing the Holy Spirit to freely do what He does
best.
Lonnie
Frisbee, 1979
What we call Ministry on the Streets
is very effective. The church we belong to is looking after
hundreds of street people and refugees right now. There is a food
run every night and a street fast food stall for the homeless, but
as valuable as that is, the most important thing is to talk to the
poor people on the streets and accept them, listen to them, and
preach to them not by sermons but by our lives and our love in going
to them. This is very healing for them. The church collects clothes
and furniture, cleaning and repairing it and then making it
available to the poor. Obviously you have to ask questions and be
careful that the people are genuine and not just looking for
something to sell, and then use the money to buy beer.
Les and Pilar
Last Saturday was our first time to go out on the street talking
to the poor and homeless and taking them gifts of food as you said,
and guess what happened - some gave their lives to the Lord and even
asked for baptism so we are going to baptise them this Saturday and
they will be with us in church. Amazing. We will continue next week.
Back home in Kenya, people destroyed my family house and things. My
father phoned. Please do keep my family in Kenya in your prayers.
Moses,
Lilongwe - Malawi
musaatte @ yahoo.com
§ You will find more on this subject
in the Last Word at the end of the page.
When you help someone out, don't think about how it looks. Just do
it, quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, working
behind the scenes, helps you out.
Matthew 6.3
The Message
The photos on the party for the poor
pages made me cry and come to God who has promised in Psalm 72.12,
that "HE will deliver the needy when he cries, the poor also, and
him who has no helper." But then Galatians 2.10 says: "They desired
only that WE should remember the poor, the very thing which I was
eager to do. These two verses if combined only have one meaning,
that HE uses US to deliver the needy and the poor. A very poor widow
came to me half an hour ago, crying because two of her children are
sick, one has typhus, and the other TB. She came to me for the
typhus problem several days ago, and I was so sad because I only had
$6 for the medicine but it was enough to make her daughter better.
This time thank God that I could give $14, enough for 2 weeks
treatment. We pray a lot for God to give us a better HE and WE way
of helping others.
Yoppi, Banten
- Indonesia
yoppi_margianto @ yahoo.com
Be Jesus to this world, that is,
preaching the Kingdom and then demonstrating it by caring for the
poor and oppressed, healing the sick, driving out demons, seeking
the lost, and integrating, teaching and training new believers to do
the same.
Alexander
Venter, Doing Church book p.91
Can you help
us please?
1. We are looking for contacts in
Lithuania, especially in Kaunas . .
2. Are you in Kenya ? Are
you in Zimbabwe ? How are you doing at the moment, people would like
to know . .
3. We are looking for an Arabic speaker/writer to check, edit and
complete our pages in Arabic.
4. We need to be given or to buy a sturdy used car or 4WD to send to Liberia as a gift. We
also need one of our supporters to visit Liberia for us and we can
help towards the air fare.
5. We invite quotations from members of the network and from readers
for a complete redesign of this multi-lingual website in a way that will last
for many years and be easy to update from different editors around
the world.
Please contact
Les Norman, the editor
How to help
us?
How to join us?
Click here for a special
page
Would
you like to see some of our photos?
Click here
for Schools of Mission around the world
Click here
for Banking for the Poor projects
Click here
for projects to help orphans and the poor
Click here
to see some of the people in the DCI family
Les
and Pilar
After being with us from almost the
first days 23 years ago Fred and Jean Mercer retired as trustees
last month with honour and thanks. We and everyone in DCI owes them
a debt that can never be paid in this life. Adrian Masters has
joined us as the first of of a new professional board of governors,
as a working director and as company secretary from April 1st. Our
daughter Lizzie, 19, has also joined us in project development.
Les and Pilar
After just over one year with your
tireless inspiration, patience and materials sent to us in this war
ravaged nation we now have five training centres, 42 graduates, 24
micro-businesses, a strong prayer team, 275 new believers, 4 new
churches and a care for the poor program under way. Many used to
consider our church the least in the community but we are now called
the Soul-Winning Church by some while others call us the Church For
the Poor. Yet others called us the Christmas Party Church, others
call us the Training People church but whatever the name, we are
pleased that the Lord is being glorified. Yesterday we did a Party
for the Poor for 150 blind adults and refugees. It was such a great
day for the poor, eight accepted Christ and those who were believers
expressed great appreciation. Some of these blind people sleep on
plywood with no mattress or on bare springs without any cover. I
shed tears as I saw such deplorable bedding. The next Party is for
265 disabled women, children, men and most vulnerable persons.
John Duco, DCI partner in Monrovia -
Liberia
pastorduco2002 @ yahoo.co.uk
§ We will see what we can do about
these beds. Les.
Thanks to the clear lessons our prayer group has got a new church
with 300 members and in March we will go together to start another
School of Mission in the 3rd state. Some Haitians in the Dominican
Republic have asked me to give them a good knowledge of the word of
God and they are ready to give me a house to open the School in
Santo Domingo. Please pray for us to be able to start Schools of
Mission in all ten Haiti provinces.
Johnny
Auguste, Haiti
jauguste_8 @ hotmail.com
But you, dear friends,
carefully build yourselves up in this most holy faith by praying in
the Holy Spirit, staying right at the centre of God's love, keeping
your arms open and outstretched, ready for the mercy of our Master,
Jesus Christ.
Jude 21
Thirty-two of us went to
five places, many people heard about the Lord and several received
the Lord Jesus Christ. Only in one place the local authority did not
allow us.
From Myanmar,
name removed for security
The lesson from both the
children of Israel being let go from Egypt, and from Peter in John
21 is that the number one thing to take care of is being with the
Lord. That’s where every-thing works out for life and living,
whether it’s through a job or not. It was ‘with Him’ in the
wilderness that the manna came – ‘with Him’ on the fishing boat that
the miraculous catch came – and ‘with Him’ on the shore, although he
had no job, that the mysterious bread and fish for all came. I hope
I can grow more into being the lover that He longs for, to be
satisfying to Him and satisfied by Him, in this way lead the way in
life for others.
From a man
"Anon" we know who lives what he writes
Perhaps we need to ask
ourselves if we are becoming driven by life's demands, instead of
drawn by God into the things we take on.
Mary Pytches
We held a Vacation Bible
School and 70 kids turned up. Our new church is growing, mostly with
kids but now their parents are also coming along. The church loves
the DCI material and if we grow to be 100 in a year then it will be
100 people prepared for ministry.
Silvana, DCI
partner in Pousso Alegre - Brazil
mis-silvana @ hotmail.com
If you are in missions in
Pakistan, we have a vision to help you. Write to us.
Gonzalo y Yenny Ulloa, 30, Santiago - Chile
gonzayen @ gmail.com
I'm looking for information about Malaysia and contacts there. Can
you help?
Stepanie
González Gutiérrez, 19, Temuco - Chile
aquilaenlever @ hotmail.com
The Huaycan area needs a lot of spiritual help, missionaries are
very welcome.
Jocabed
Gonzales, 22, Lima - Peru
jocabed_3 @ hotmail.com
Our mission is where the mighty Amazon starts and we need volunteers
to come and help us with evangelism, Christian education, Sunday
Schools, agriculture, chicken and fish farming, river navigation,
building and car repairs.
Ps. William
Sifuentes, 50, Nauta, Loreto - Perú
waslpiura @ yahoo.com
Zambia has hard heavy rains since early December 2007 even the
drought area is badly affected with bridges washed away and crops
submerged. Please pray for us that we may continue to spread the
word of God and find material help.
J.K.Malasha,
57, Lusaka - Zambia
blessingccc @ yahoo.com
After the war I had to travel 400 miles to Abidjan to send you my
e-mails, that was not too easy, but now I can go to Man only 55
miles away.
Mah Malachie,
DCI partner in the Ivory Coast
The Last Word for Today . . . .
You said to me that your pastor
believes that we should not fatten up people who are going to
perish, but how do any of us know who these people are? Thirty years
ago I was one of them until suddenly the Lord revealed himself to
me, gave me faith to believe and then called me to serve Him for a
lifetime. And here I am to this very day waiting for His next word!
I would not want to contradict your pastor in any way because we
don't know what was behind that comment but let me encourage you to
do all that is in your heart with the help of God and His
confirmations every step of the way. You said that you want to help
those who have nothing and those who no-one goes looking for but you
think that at your age it is already too late. It is never too late
because the mercies of God are new every morning, and great is His
faithfulness. To be honest I don't doubt that we must show the love
of God and His provision to the poor who are also believers, and
there are millions of them who have no other help in this life or
the next other than Jesus and to Him they pray. I have heard them
and I have never recovered from the experience. It is we who have
something that are called to be His hands, his feet and His wallet.
However I would say that you should never say no or walk away from a
poor man just because of a denominational theology. Only say No if
the Holy Spirit is saying No in your heart or if you lose the peace
of God or if you feel that God is stopping you because He knows
something you don't. In my humble opinion I think that we who are
followers of Jesus should be creating something of the atmosphere of
the Kingdom of heaven here on Earth, speaking about the King of
Love, Jesus, and naturally doing what Jesus did, every day without
thinking twice about it.
Yes, there are some verses which give the idea that we should first
bless the poor believers amongst us, and across the whole Bible
there are very other many verses which speak about the poor in
general, those who know the Lord and those who do not. And if they
do not believe it may well be because they have never heard of the
love of God and it may be that no believer has ever taken that love
to them where they are. To answer your specific question, yes - in
DCI we bless the poor who believe - and we regularly go into both
the streets of our city and the streets of the developing world to
bless the poor who do not believe - yet. We bless then with time,
eye contact, smiles, talk, prayer if they would like some, with
words of hope as well as with food, soup, drinks. blankets,
chocolate and Christmas presents. Sometimes we leave them almost
speechless because they are not used to this, and in many cases it
is that day that they take one step closer to Jesus.
Les Norman
In times of great change learners inherit the earth
whilst the learned find themselves beautifully equipped
for a world
that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer
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