Welcome to the First Baptist Church of Detroit
 
Thank you for your continued prayers for the ministry in Togo.  I am excited to hear of what God continues to do in Togo, below is part of an email from Tim Neufeld our Team leader in Mango:  

 
“We continue to look for opportunities to share Christ with the people of Mango, and are not alone.  Nogbedji spoke with me this week of his joy that Afusé, a teenage apprentice, had shared the gospel with an elderly Muslim man she had come to know.  This man came to Nogbedji later in the week weeping and saying that he is so happy to finally know the truth.  We find more and more people who don’t really know what they believe.  Islam is a very social religion, and it is difficult for people to break away from it without being excluded from the community.  I wonder if it isn’t similar to Jesus’ day when to be put out of the synagogue meant total exclusion from Jewish society.

      We would ask your prayer support for Kareem, one of our guesthouse guards who is suffering greatly from fear of fetish activity.  We don’t know if his situation is one of mental illness, or satanic attack, but he has been unable to work.  Nogbedji and I went to visit him on Friday, and we found him in his brother’s room, sitting almost in a trance on the bed.  His brother said that he had not been to his own house for a month, and when he finally spoke, it was almost in a whisper, and he talked of seeing fetishes when he looks at the rocks, and even when he looks up into the sky.  His brother has studied to be a Marabou (a Muslim fetish priest), but said he didn’t get very far in that knowledge.  So they have gone to see men who supposedly know more.  Our question of course is, is it that activity that has opened him to satanic attack?  They don’t see it as involvement in animism, but rather address their prayers to Allah, and think they are coming to God for His help.  They do things like writing words of the Quran on to a blackboard, then washing the words from the board and having the person drink the mixture.  In this way they think the person is taking God’s word into his body.  There are other superstitions as well.  Kareem’s brother spoke of an annual offering their clan makes to a crocodile that lives in the Oti River.  It probably involves sacrificing a chicken to the reptile, and while he insisted that it is a clan, and not an individual activity, we are asking ourselves if this has not in some way opened the door for Satan to attack Kareem.  People are bound in fetish darkness, even though Mohammed spoke against the idolatry and animism of his day.  It’s what is called “Folk Islam” and it seems to be very strong here in Mango. “

I made a quick trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan this week.  I was able to meet with Bibles International about our Kabiye New Testament project.   They are close to finishing the formatting.  Then it will be proofread by the translators in Togo.  We hope that it will be published and shipped to Togo by March of 2011.  So thank you for praying for this project.  I just talked to one of our pastors in Togo yesterday and they are excited about the news.   Pray for all these last steps that it will enable us to get the word of God to these people in Togo.


I would also like you to pray for travels as I leave St. Charles this morning and head south.   I praise God for the very encouraging time I have had with my church, New Covenant Bible Church and with many dear friends in this area.   I will be traveling through Thanksgiving when I will return back to Michigan to spend the holidays with my family.   I will be stopping to see friends and supporters as well as share with some churches the ministry in Mango.  

Thank you so much for your faithful prayers .  I am overflowing with thankfulness to God for each of you and His faithfulness to me!!

 Cindy
 


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First Baptist Church of Detroit an American Baptist Church