Pray for Saul

Staci and I are hosting two students for the next couple of weeks through the Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program of Ball State University.  This year we have high school students from Kenya and Nigeria.  We did this last year and still keep in touch with the students that stayed with us.  It was a great experience for all of us.  It definitely helped make us aware of issues going on in their home countries and personalized stories when we heard or read them on the news.

Last year our friend Ruth stayed with us.  She lives in Nigeria and prior to her arrival we began studying more about this country.  Nigeria boasts Africa’s largest, fastest growing population and economy.  In the next 40 years, the population of Nigeria is projected to surpass that of the United States.  While Ruth was with us, 276 school girls were kidnapped in the Nigerian town of Chibok by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.  Boko Haram has killed more than 5000 civilians over the past 6 years in their quest to create an Islamic state in Northeast Nigeria.  Our hearts were broken and our eyes were opened.

This week we picked up our host students Wednesday evening.  On Thursday morning we woke up and flipped on the news and found that the Somali Islamic terrorist group Al Shabab had killed 147 Christian students at Garissa University in Kenya.  Al Shabab operates in a country with no order and had vowed a “long, gruesome war” with Kenya.  Our student from Kenya quickly picked up his phone and called home.

This is the world we’re living in, friends, if we choose to look past the topic du jour that we’re served up via the local news or our friends on Facebook.

Each time I hear of a story on the news involving radical Islamic groups in Syria, Kenya, Somalia, etc.  I receive more and more confirmation that the Bible Training Center we’ve developed in Northern Ethiopia is more important than ever.  We have to develop leaders and plant churches in a part of the world that is clearly searching for a cause, a purpose and an identity.  We have an obligation to make sure they are at least exposed to the truth.

This is Holy Week and I’m going to ask that you pray that the news of Jesus Christ be spread to all parts of the world.  Better yet, get involved in a mission project and help spread the word yourself.  Jesus Christ died for the sins of man that we may know His love and have eternal life with Him in heaven.  While we’re here, we have been commissioned to spread the news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth.    And while you’re praying, consider praying that one of these terrorist groups – ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Al Qaeda – has a young man among them that is the next Saul.

Acts 9

For more information on the Bible Training Center in Northern Ethiopia visit www.harvestinethiopia.com