Exciting is when you can see the ministry all coming together in a way that only God could have orchestrated! Everything is starting to
click! We started zeroing in on the CEMIM Bible seminary about a 1 ½ years ago and really just pouring everything into the lives and communities of the seminary students.
A really cool, functioning cycle has developed:
- Students come to seminary.
- They become spiritual leaders.
- They learn trade skills.
- They practice and become community leaders.
- Their communities benefit.
- Missions teams further train students and assist in their villages.
- Other villages see, want, ask and decide to send students.
- Seminary participation and influence grows.
- More communities are involved and served.
A past dilemma has always been that communities ask for pastors, teams and missionaries, but there just aren’t enough to go around.
By responding to these requests with a firm “send someone from your village to seminary” approach, the petition is genuinely dealt with. (We have discovered that even if students aren’t Christians they soon will be!) Faithful students get helpful teams for their communities, so this encourages participation and rewards faithfulness. Our students are today’s community leaders. IT’S SO COOL – I just wish I could explain it as clearly as GOD is making it happen! God directed this new approach and He is richly blessing it.
By Don and Mary Wolfram, Field Coordinators in Ecuador