Sowing Seeds in the Desert

In recent months God has opened many doors for an IMB missionary team to minister among a people group that has traditionally been extremely resistant to the Gospel. This year the Lord sent the first Southern Baptist volunteer team to work among this people group. The king and queen of the area welcomed this volunteer team warmly, giving them gifts of African cloth and arranging for them to tour the central mosque. As the team toured the mosque, the imam (leader of the mosque) introduced himself to the missionary and indicated a real desire to be friends. Give thanks to God for this new relationship, and pray for the missionary as he returns in the future to share the "Camel Method" with this imam. (The Camel Method is a means of helping Muslims to consider more seriously the claims of Jesus concerning Himself.) Pray that just as Jewish rabbis were converted in the Book of Acts, this Muslim imam and others will come to faith in Messiah Jesus.

Unable to get government permission to prayerwalk in all the villages they had hoped, the missionaries took the volunteer team on an eight-hour trip to a desert oasis. There, surrounded by huge dunes, they climbed to the top where they could look out and pray for the desert peoples and ask for opportunities to share the audio players they had bought with their Vacation Bible School missions offering. These audio players were permanently programmed with Scriptures and evangelistic lessons in seven Saharan languages. As they started their journey home, God led them around a dune and right into the middle of a camel caravan of 150 camels being driven by 30 drivers! The drivers happily received an audio player and were excited to hear the story being told in so many languages that they knew. Pray that God will guide the travels of this audio player and, through the work of His Holy Spirit, enable thousands to hear of and respond in genuine faith to Jesus Christ.

As an additional blessing, God provided excellent translators for the volunteers as they prayerwalked. Two of these interpreters returned to their local church so excited about prayerwalking that their church wanted to know more. The missionary was invited by their pastor to teach and lead them on their first prayerwalk through their church's neighborhood. Pray that God will inspire other Christians and their churches, both in Africa and around the world, to pray for, minister to, and evangelize the lost peoples of the world.