When Beatrice was a teenager she was struck by a strange illness that left her weak and unable to function. Living on a small farm on the border of Kenya and Tanzania, her parents didn’t know what to do: they took her to clinics and hospitals but no one could make a clear diagnosis. Drained of money that her father made from farming, there was little left for basic necessities let alone school fees, and Beatrice was often too sick to leave the house anyway. It wasn’t long before she dropped out of school entirely
Beatrice says: “My life was miserable – I kept thinking about my future and got more and more depressed”.
With an incomplete education, a background of poverty, and no formal training or job experience, Beatrice questioned what she had to offer. Her answer came some years later when she was introduced to African Enterprise’s Mathare Women’s Project. It was the chance of a lifetime.
After just two months on the program, her mind has been transformed.
“I am learning dressmaking, design, customer relations and marketing!” she says excitedly. “I hope to use these skills to start a small dressmaking business and earn a living to improve my life and that of my family”.
“Even more, through the Mathare Women’s Project, I have come to understand that despite my dropping out of school, God has gifted me with potential and talents and through the skills I am learning, I can improve not only my own life but also my children’s”.
“The Project has taught me that as Christians, we are called and expected by Christ to be his witnesses in the world” she says. “This has completely transformed my understanding about Christian ministry and I am now actively involved in evangelism and discipling other women in our church”.
AE has given her a new life and a deeper understanding of her faith.
“I am grateful to God for the AE Mathare Women’s Project, for the way it is transforming my life and giving me new meaning,” Beatrice says, “Thank you”.
This month’s election in Sierra Leone was the first time a country has used Blockchain technology in a national election.
In a world first, Swiss company, Agora provided the service to Sierra Leone’s highly populated Western District, which includes the nation’s capital, Freetown.
Blockchain has developed with the rise of Cryptocurrency. It is essentially a digital ledger that is a decentralised recording of data. Information is stored across many computers which makes it practically impossible to modify the data.
In other words, Agora has developed a voting system for Sierra Leone that dramatically reduces the chances of an election being rigged.
Agora’s COO Jaron Lukasiewicz told Coindesk that “A country like Sierra Leone can ultimately minimise a lot of the fall-out of a highly contentious election by using software like this.”
This is an exciting development for the small West African nation who have just had their second unsupervised election since the end of their civil war in 2002. We thank God the election process has also been very peaceful so far.
This could also be a positive development for the future of politics in Africa and has the potential to limit a party’s autocratic reign in power.
2018 will see Zimbabwe have a national election after the 37-year rule of Robert Mugabe came to an end last year.
Burundi are also about to go to a referendum to decide whether to increase presidential terms from five to seven years, with a maximum of two terms in office. This could mean that President Pierre Nkurunziza could run the country until 2034.
African Enterprise Australia reported earlier this month about the great political instability that rocked several African nations in the month of February.
We are hopeful that developments such as Blockchain could work as a tool to support peaceful democratic processes in many African nations.
Preparations are well underway for AE’s first mission of 2018, which will operate in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali.
The ‘Kigali, West Mission for Jesus 2018’ will run from the 10th to the 17th of June, and will focus on the Nyarugenge District, which is one of the three major areas in Kigali.
Our team in Rwanda are working to partner with 50 local churches in the targeted area and are aiming to reach over 56,000 people with the good news of Christ.
The team’s preparations include training around 520 people from local churches with basic evangelism skills, in order to see as many people as possible come to know Jesus. The team are hoping to see approximately 7,000 conversions to Christ through your prayers and support.
Nyarugenge is in the Western part of the city and is home to most of the city’s government and financial institutions.
While many of the country’s wealthiest business people live in this region, there is large income disparity between the rich and the poor. A large exodus from rural areas has resulted in the district having the highest population density in the country, which has also led to widespread unemployment among younger people.
Nyarugenge is also home to the Islamic Cultural Centre. Recently, young people have been converting to Islam in great numbers, which further presses the need for evangelism in the area.
The region also has the University of Rwanda and as well as a campus of Mount Kenya University. There is a high potential for outreach amongst the region’s large student population.
Large evangelistic meetings have already been planned for the Kigali city centre, large colleges such as the Kigali Health Institute, and even some of the local prisons.
The prostitution trade is also quite common in the area, but the team are working on strategies with local churches to effectively minister to people in this industry. The team are looking to provide training in areas such as tailoring and catering so people in the trade can eventually run their own businesses. Food supplies will also be provided to households in desperate need of support.
There’s still a great deal of work to be done before the mission launches in June, but we’re excited to see how the Gospel will transform the local community.
Please keep the AE team in Rwanda and the local churches in Nyarugenge in your prayers over the coming months.
Khamisi Kwela’s father was a strong Muslim believer who took his 8 children to the mosque and made sure they attended weekly Islamic classes.
“My dad was very strict when it came to religious matters,” Khamisi said. “There was only one religion allowed in our family.”
But when Khamisi was 10, his dad died and the family lost their way.
“We became completely financially incapacitated,” Khamisi said. “My older siblings and mum worked hard to ensure we had food, but we struggled to put a meal on the table. Poverty was part of us.”
It was a hard life. But it was also brought a little freedom to Khamisi’s mother and she started going to church.
“My mum had wanted to know Christ for a long time, but due to the restrictions of our dad, she would not have even dared,” Khamisi remembered.
Soon Khamisi’s mother and older brothers all started going to church and soon became Christians. But Khamisi and one of his younger brothers, didn’t
“We wanted to maintain the religion of our father,” he said, “so we continued to attend our mosque.”
Khamisi knew about Christianity from his friends at school and from the Christian Religious Education classes there. But still he lived in darkness for five years after his father’s death.
This all changed one Sunday, when he went to pick something up from one of his brothers at his church. When he arrived the church service was still going.
“I sat in the last row, waiting for the service to end. As the worship was going on, I felt as if something was burning within me,” he said. “I was glued to my seat and listened attentively to the Word of God as if that is what I had come to do.”
When the pastor asked if anyone wanted to come forward and become a Christian, Khamisi couldn’t resist.
“Whatever was burning within me became stronger,” he said. “I was pulled to the altar by the power of Holy Spirit and for the first time in my life, I felt the need for Jesus.”
The pastor prayed for him and his family were overjoyed.
Khamisi joined the discipleship class and was mentored by the senior pastor to help him grow in his new faith.
“Today I call him my spiritual dad,” Khamisi said. “When he leant about my story, he took over paying my school fees. I went to a school in Malindi town, which even in my dreams I never thought I would do! I had never seen such demonstration of love.”
Khamisi read his Bible with an undying fervor and did all he could to learn about prayer and ministry in the church. In his last year of high school, he became leader of the Christian Union, sharing his testimony with as many people as he could.
But in 2017, tragedy struck his family again.
“The death of our mum last year was the lowest moment of my life after salvation,” Khamisi said. “Her sickness took her when we needed her most.”
He and his siblings have struggled with this loss but are leaning on the love of their church community.
The light of Christ still shines brightly within him despite these difficulties. He joined the AE Kenya Foxfires this year after seeing last year’s team minister at his school during the Malindi Mission.
“I look forward reaching out to young people with the Word of God in 2018. Through our interactions, I want them to know and experience the love of God as I have.”
We invite you to urgently pray for governments’ right across Africa after the month of February saw great political unrest in many nations.
Several Presidents resigned, Ethiopia called a State of Emergency, and large-scale protests against the government occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma, resigned on the 14th following a string of corruption scandals that have followed the 75-year-old for much of his eight-year presidency. Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in on the 15th and has so far made optimistic promises to cut unemployment and revive the economy.
Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, also resigned and the country has gone into their second State of Emergency in two years. Desalegn’s resignation came after large protests held in the Oromia region shut down all traffic. Demonstrators demanded political reform and for the government to release an opposition leader from prison. All political protests have been banned for six months.
There are fears of political unrest in Zimbabwe following the passing of iconic Opposition Leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on the 14th. Zimbabwe is expected to have a national election in four to five months, which will be the first national election in two decades that won’t feature Robert Mugabe or Tsvangirai on the ballot. There’s hope for great change in Zimbabwe.
On the 25th, security forces in Kinshasa surrounded churches and blocked roads to prevent Christians protesting against President Joseph Kabila. One protester was killed and two were injured in the event as live ammunition and tear gas were fired into the crowd outside of a major church in the capital. The protests come as Kabila has refused to stepdown as President following the end of his second term in office in December 2016.
AE will be carrying out evangelistic missions in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia later this year. AE’s stratified approach to evangelism not only focuses on salvations, but endevours to meet with political leaders to encourage social change.
Please continue to pray with us for the political sector in Africa. Please pray that the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will transform nations.
We’re excited to announce that our first ever mission trip to Togo will be happening in 2019 in the capital city of Lome.
Our Togo team, led by Emmanuel Kwizera, will be holding their first preparation meetings this month to dream and plan how AE can transform Togo for Christ. The team are hoping to run three large-scale evangelistic missions between 2019 and 2021.
Togo is one of the few West African nations AE has had the opportunity to launch into and represents a strategic launch point into the Muslim north.
AE has seen a great receptivity to the Gospel in the neighbouring country of Ghana. The mission to Accra in 2017 saw over 67,000 people reached with the Gospel, and another 4,082 people make a decision for Jesus. AE have also run the Pastors Training Course in the Ivory Coast.
AE’s presence in the North and West of the continent is vital, as we aim to bring hope in a region that is gripped by a strong Islamic presence.
In Togo, roughly 13.7% of the population is Muslim, 27.8% are Roman Catholic, while a staggering 33% of the population follow various forms of ancestral beliefs including Voodoo.
Togo has a population of 7.6 million people. 40.6 % of the population are under the age of 15!
The small West African nation, which also borders Benin and Burkina Faso, has experienced a great deal of political turmoil since its independence in 1960. The nation has been ruled by the same family for the last 50 years.
Gnassingbe Eyadema was President for 38 years and became Africa’s longest ruling dictator at the time, before he passed away from a heart attack in 2005. His son, Faure Gnassingbe, was quickly installed by the military and has ruled the country ever since.
Several large-scale protests occurred against Faure’s presidency as recently as October last year, before security forces had to shut down the capital city of Lome to prevent further anti-government demonstrations.
It’s estimated that upwards of 13 protesters were killed during the events.
Please be praying for our Togo team across the month of March. Pray Emmanuel, Bernard and the AE evangelistic teams will be led by the Holy Spirit to effectively evangelise in Togo.
Please also pray that the Good News of Christ will bring peace to Togo and transform the nation.
