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| JOIN US FOR MISSION SOS IN MADAGASCAR 2017 |
Teen Challenge is continuing to partner with an amazing international ministry doing outreach across Africa. International missionary evangelist, Johannes Amritzer, is doing Festivals in capital cities across the continent with his outreach arm, MISSION SOS. He will be bringing a team of pastors, musicians, street workers and missionaries to impact the city of Antanarivo, Madagascar June 18 to 27, 2017. I will be joining their team and we are planning to bring Teen Challenge students and folks like you from around the world.
Below are 2 links for video summaries prepared by Global Teen Challenge in collaboration with SOS for the 2 major Africa Festivals we participated in with MISSIONS SOS in Uganda, and Burundi in 2016. They will provide a snapshot of the impact on Teen Challenge of our collaboration with Mission SOS. Not only that, but over 20,000 made first-time commitments to Jesus Christ in Uganda and over 40,000 in Bujumbura. They have been integral in helping to establish and strengthen Teen Challenge ministries in both countries.
The dates for the Antanarivo, Madagascar are Wed. June 21 to Sunday night, June 25. Most mission teams will arrive Saturday the 17 June and many will remain to help with the breakdown through Tuesday the 27 June
Here is our report from the last outreach in BUrudny with links to Uganda.
Drop us an E-mail at bernstuff@aol.com for more details to join the team. |
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Bujumbura, Burundi:
So blessed to join MISSION SOS, Johannes Amrittzer and over 200 missionaries from 12 nations with Teen Challenge graduates and friends from East Africa for a powerful time of ministry. Despite the official travel advisory: "The U.S. State Department continues to warn U.S. citizens against all travel to Burundi-political violence persists in the aftermath of the country's contested election and attempted coup." Warnings of gunfire and grenade attacks by armed groups and reminders that armed criminals ambush vehicles on the roads leading to Kamenge (where we held the festival) did not dissuade the team from the mission.
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| As the UN continued to debate sending peacekeeping forces to Burundi, the Holy Spirit instructed our team to go forward, travel to Bujumbura and to deliver a message of peace and reconciliation. We brought the Word to this tiny central African nation. Though tormented by tribal conflict between the country's two main ethnic groups, with Hutu militias opposing the Tutsi-dominated Burundi army, we shared the GREAT NEWS that Jesus is the real peace giver, the real Peace KEEPER. |
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The truth is, we did not encounter any of the promised violence! In fact, we met wonderful people, hungry for God and ready for miracles. The US State Department travel advisory was to avoid any crowd. God drew over 160,000 people to the ETS Kamenge Grounds for ministry and 40,000 made first-time confessions of faith in Jesus Christ through the week of ministry.
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| While we avoid politics, President Nkurunziza showed an amazing commitment to the outreach as he invited the SOS leadership team to the Presidential Palace for prayer. He instructed RTNB, the national broadcasting station in Bujumbura, to televise all 4 hours of the festival live nationwide every night Wednesday to Sunday, to over 11 million people. The move of God at the altar every night when Johannes Armritzer preached was amazing. People did not just come to the altar, they ran to the altar. From Twa to Tootsie; Hutu to Hindu, Muslim to animist to atheist, they responded enthusiastically to the invitation to meet Jesus Christ as their Lord. |
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It was a powerful week of ministry as tens of thousands packed the ETS Kamenge Grounds. Arriving by foot, some walked many kilometers from conflict and poverty ridden areas in Musaga, Ngagara, Mutakura, and Nyakabiga ready for a miracle.
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ATTENDANCE: ~ 160,000
SALVATION: ~ ~ 40,000
Water Baptism:over 6,000
Hundreds of confirmed healings,
miracles and deliverance.
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At the altar they received Johannes Amritzer's "New Life" follow-up book to begin their walk with God. |
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| The names were then collected and over 40,000 names were delivered to the participating pastors at the Celebration after the Sunday Festival with Johannes' challenge, "Do not let this harvest die on the vine." |
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| Teen Challenge Africa |
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Led by Kenyan rapper/TC graduate Joseph Countryman and the TC Africa alumni director, (and new father,) Joseph Kajani from Kenya, our Teen Challenge Africa men continue to set a high standard of service, ministry, and outreach. God is raising up a new generation of evangelists to reach the harvest. From the main stage, to the street, deliverance tent, or translating and confirming healings, these men were aways ready to serve and be used by God. (return to top) |
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| E-Votion |
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Thus says the LORD, “Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me?
2“For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being,” declares the LORD Isaiah 66:1-2 |
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That is a compelling insight! We live in a culture where I see people trying to make God smaller. Is it so that we can feel bigger? Isaiah 66:1, Consider the possibilities when you realize our life is in the God who uses the earth as His footstool.
I get so consumed with doing things for God that I can lose sight of an important truth. It is about living from God. Living from, not for His promise. I have not been able to find a Scripture where God says,"Just try harder, do the best you can.”
We are born with a selfish, self-centered, self indulgent heart and from there it only gets worse. We move from "I, me my, self-indulgence" to the cult of self-improvement. Thinking I'm a self-made man, in the end, the center of all I do is self.
We sacrifice more and more to get less and less, because we seek things that can never satisfy. Living for self, improving myself, thinking that I need to feel good about myself becomes an inexhaustible stream of demands. The apostle Paul brings it into focus in Romans 7:18,19.
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. 19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
Paul was not looking in his heart for the strength to be a new improved Paul. He admitted, "no good thing dwells in me." God is not interested in making a better version of me, but that I find my place of surrender to His will so that I can die to self and He can impart that “new creation in spite of me."
Even more troubling than society's cult of self improvement is the growing number of "feel good" preachers making the same promises with scraps of scriptures veneered over with feel good sentiment. One offers, Become a Better You. One preacher declares, “At the start of each day, remind yourself: “I am talented. I am creative. I am greatly favored by God. I am equipped. I am well able. I will see my dreams come to pass.”
I understand the power of a positive confession, but that confession has eye trouble. Not eye trouble e-y-e, but I trouble, "I-my-me!" It is God at work, not a self reliance. It is not in my human effort but in His eternal sacrifice that I can experience death and resurrection that leads to real change.
The most important issue here is not who "I am," but who He is. It’s not how hard I try, it’s how willing I am to die. We have replaced the “eternity centered” good news with a man-centered feel good gospel. In today’s "gospel", the focus is on personal accomplishment and “finding myself…" God's plan is to lose yourself, so that you can be found by Him.
God’s plan is not behind you it is in front of you. Stop looking backward at the things you cannot change and embrace His promise as you reach for all that remains. It is GOD who is at work in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure. Phil 2:13
Trying is about self (what I can do)...
Trusting is all about God.
(seeing what He has ALREADY done). Yes, consider the amazing possibilities when you realize our promise is in the God who uses the earth as His footstool.
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If you want to know more about MISSION SOS check out these video links |
Here are 2 links for video summaries prepared by Global Teen Challenge in collaboration with SOS for the 2 major Africa Festivals we participated in with MISSIONS SOS in Uganda, and Burundi in 2016.
UGANDA FESTIVAL-- https://vimeo.com/171232704
BUJUMBURA BURUNDI FESTIVAL -- https://vimeo.com/178617998
Here are additional video resources provided by the missions SOS team:
Who is Mission SOS?
SOS in One Minute
Kampala 2016 Victory Report
Kampala Testimonies
The dates for the Antanarivo, Madagascar are Wed. June 21 to Sunday night, June 25.
Most mission teams will arrive Saturday the 17 June and many will remain to help with the breakdown through Tuesday the 27 June. |
| BURUNDI TEEN CHALLENGE |
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| As a follow-up to Dr. Doug Wever's tremendous All Africa Leadership Training Summit in Kigali, Rwanda in April, Teen Challenge East Africa Representative, Willy Rumenera and Burundi Assemblies of God General Superintendent Jerome arranged a Teen Challenge Pastors' Awareness Meeting with 65 pastors from Bujumbura and surrounding areas. Stepping away from the SOS Mission for one day, we had a tremendous time of ministry, music, fellowship and sharing the vision to reach the most hopeless of their nation with the Good News of the Gospel. We are excited to see what God is going to do in the nation of Burundi. Many of the pastors then joined us on the festival field as 8,000 received Jesus Christ that night. |
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| I was truly blessed to have Joseph Kajani, TC Africa Alumni Director and Kenya TC graduates share powerful testimony of how they were set free at Teen Challenge, how God is impacting Kenya through Teen Challenge and the work that God can do there in Burundi. Following the meeting, we prayer-walked some of the drug areas and claimed a home for TC Burundi. |
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| Street Outreach |
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Five different teams, doing 2 to 3 street meetings every morning, carried the gospel right to where people in deepest need lived. Not only did the street outreach give us an opportunity to promote the festival and pass out fliers, but to pray for the sick and minister Jesus. On day one, there were over 500 first-time confessions of faith with 150 confirmed healings. The momentum from that opening day, 48 before the start of the festival, built all week and by Saturday over 4,000 had made first-time confessions of faith in Jesus during the street ministry as God moved miraculously in healings and deliverance.
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Street drama included a powerful demonstration of the gift of salvation and the power of the Resurrection. Using drama, dance, testimony, music and preaching, every meeting included an invitation to meet Christ personally. While Burundi is a very religious country, it was so important to communicate the reality of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and importance of following Him every day, not just as savior, but absolute Lord.
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| The hunger for God was evident on the faces of those who came. |
Boys like these, who were getting high, emptied their glue bottles and turned their lives to Jesus Christ. I shared with them, "You must turn loose of that bottle of glue and take hold of promise of Jesus." |
They immediately began to pray and read the follow-up materials. |
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It was such a blessing to work with an amazingly diverse team from 12 nations, 5 continents.
From across Europe and the world--Norway to El Salvador, from Sweden to Australia. African nations like Ethiopia, Cameroon, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi all shared. The times of worship and teaching were rich with the power & presence of God. (return to top) |
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