Joe and his family. Their baby girl was born around New Years 2022
Holy Smokes…
Several years ago, due to some most unfortunate circumstances, an outreach was started with a group of about 13 people. Among these were Jo and his wife Airen. Jo was quite rough around the edges. Admittedly, he spent a lot of his time gambling at the local village markets and most of their money was spent on drugs and alcohol. Airen, on the other hand, was a very religious woman. Though she knew about God and had heard about Christ, she didn’t know Christ nor what he had to do with her salvation.
When Airen would read her trade-language Bible at home, Joe would get angry with her and yell at her to stop reading it or would sometimes throw the Bible across the house. One day he recounted how he would even take pages out of his wife’s Bible and use them to roll tobacco into his own smokes. He would do this just to goad her for being religious.
Through the teaching of His Word, both Jo and Airen became believers. Over time, our wives discipled Airen into becoming a Sunday school teacher and Jo had the desire to become a Bible teacher and continue to share the message of Christ with others. Unfortunately, though, Jo got tangled up in some of the things of his past and his commitment to proclaiming the message of salvation fell to the wayside. For the last 2 ½ years, our friend has battled some pretty serious illnesses and in mid-January, was told that he had a month, at most, to live. When we visited him around New Years, Jo told Robyn and me that he hasn’t abandon God’s Word, but that he would gather his family in the evenings and read his Bible, in his own language, to them. He said that he had given his life as an offering to God and whether God chose to heal him or allow the sickness to take his life, that was okay with him. One-by-one over his last weeks on this earth, Jo called his friends and family members into his house to settle any unresolved issues between them; both requesting and giving forgiveness. His mom told me the other day, as I went and sat with the family for a bit, that he had a notebook whose pages were filled with Scripture verses he’d copy down as he spent time reading his Bible over the last couple years. From rolling the pages of the Scriptures into Holy smokes…to copying them in a notebook…to seeing the Author face-to-face.
In the last week of his life, Jo said he had a dream in which he was in a garden full of beautiful flowers. Someone called out to him and asked, “Are you teaching Kos 1 (the Creation-to-Christ Bible lessons) to your children? Go back and teach it to your children.” After the dream, Jo told Airen that she had to teach God’s Word to their children. He knew he didn’t have enough time left to do so himself, but he knew it needed to be done!
Friend, whatever it is that stands between you and your friend/family member, don’t wait until the end to make it right. Offer your lives to Christ as a sacrifice now (Romans 12:1) and work diligently now to freely share the love of Christ with others while you still have the breath to do so. Please pray for Airen as she teaches her young children the Word of God. Pray for her as she lives the hard life of a widow in a hard culture. Pray for the church to learn how to care for the widows.
You Prayed and God Provided…
We have reached the full amount of funds needed to purchase a vehicle for the ministry here! We have even had some who have personally taken it on to provide a bit extra to get it outfitted with a turbo to help it climb the mountains better. It has been an amazing faith-grower to see God work in this awesome way. We really feel that “Thank You” is inadequate to express our gratitude for your part in praying with us about this need and your sacrificial giving toward it. You all make up an awesome team and we’re thankful for your part in this work. Our vehicle has been ordered and now we wait. We were initially told that it should be here by late-March, now we’ve been told that vehicle shortages are causing a 7-8 month delay. God raised the funds in remarkable timing, so I can trust that he’ll provide the physical vehicle in his timing as well.
Thank you again for your selfless support, prayers, and encouragement to our family in this ministry.
Your Co-workers in Christ,
Levi, Robyn, Michael, Daniel, Matthew, and Krystiana Lenz