“For thus says the Lord God: Behold I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel.” Ezekiel 34:11-14
For the first Friday of the month I want to report on ministries of the church. Every year I try and share a few updates from our General Assembly, but we can forget how much work is done around the world in our relatively small denomination. So, every first Friday I will share a different part of the ministry of our church.
This month I want to share the work of Foreign Missions. Due to the nature of security in some places that our missionaries might serve I am not able to give details regarding specific missionaries in this email. You will remember that in our online bulletin I leave off the prayer page due to the fact that we don’t want names of our missionaries on the internet and that we want to have some privacy for others we may pray for.
In our missions report at General Assembly the following scripture was the beginning of that report:
“A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. A Song. On the holy mount stands the city He founded; the LORD loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God, Selah. Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush –
‘This one was born there,’ they say. And of Zion it shall be said, ‘This one and that one were born in her’; for the Most High Himself will establish her. The LORD records as He registers the peoples, ‘This one was born there.’ --- Psalm 87:1-6
As I have shared in the last couple of weeks, we have had several families leave the field in the last six months for various reasons. Continue to pray for our missionaries and their families as they labor and the struggles and hardships that they face. Pray for Mark Bube our general secretary and Douglas Clawson our associate general secretary as they oversee our missions.
We have eight active mission fields: China, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Quebec, Uganda, and Uruguay. Pray that the Lord would send out laborers into his harvest field.
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like a sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Matthew 9:36-38