January 20, 2008

YembiYembi People

Dan and I are attending Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church here in San Diego, and this church has such a beautiful heart for international missions. The church financially supports about 30 missionary families that have come out directly from our church, so it is really the heartbeat of everything they do. The associate pastor is called the missions pastor, and his role is leading our church in missions of every sort. Once a month on Sunday nights is a "Missions Update", and since we started coming in September, 3 of those months there has been a missionary on furlough to tell us what's going on. Prayer requests for all our missionaries are shared, and after the missionary is done speaking (or from the beginning if no missionary is there), the church just prays. It is powerful to me, and really gets my global world view back on track. Life becomes so ego-centric, so easily!

Tonight after Missions Update, our church has started a 24-hr prayer chain for the YembiYembi people of Papua New Guinea. Some New Tribes missionaries will be presenting the gospel to these people for the first time through a series of teachings this week. I signed up for a 30-minute time slot to pray, and I have to be honest that at first I was wondering how I was going to pray that long. Once upon a time, I could easily pray that long, but I am out of practice. I feel like I need to confess that my prayers are short and the subject is often me. I'm very thankful that my church loves people here and around the world and is leading me to focus on others.

If you have a few minutes check out this stuff about the YembiYembi people, and pick one of the people in a picture to pray for:


1 comment:

Stephanie Kay said...

Sounds like a fantastic church!