PRAISE REPORT FROM EAST AFRICA!
Praise Report from East Africa – April 22-May 7, 2011
Thank you for praying earnestly and giving generously for our discipleship training efforts in East Africa. Without question the good hand of the Lord was upon us from beginning to end.
In order to get to my first training conference, I had to travel for 3 days from the USA to Kigali, Rwanda, where I spent Saturday night, and then traveled (accompanied by my host, Pastor Malanda Boniface) all day Sunday (7 hours) by public bus to Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
We began the conference on Monday and continued through Thursday, teaching 6 hours per day and to around 150 pastors and key leaders. I feel that the time and truth invested in these men and women will prove very fruitful in the days and months to come. These men and women are truly God’s hidden heroes, unknown by the world and by the Church at large, yet known by Heaven and persecuted by Hell. They have suffered so much from war and poverty, yet are rich in faith, hope and love. What an honor to get to make a life and learning deposit into their hearts and minds.
Pastor Malanda, who was in charge of all the planning for the conference, wrote me an encouraging note:
Dear Pastor Wade Trimmer
I cannot wait thanking you for your blessed ministry among us last week. Thank you again for every good gift we have received from you. The Conference was not just another conference but a very special one giving us a new orientation for our ministry – KEEPING the MAIN THING the MAIN THING, in other word Making Disciples by fulfilling the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. You have heard of a few testimonies from the attendees. May the Lord bless you, Pastor Wade.
My particular appreciation is that I am connected with you for a divine purpose, spreading and unveiling the disciples making vision whenever and wherever I can. I have mostly appreciated your prayer over me that morning at the Guest House. I pray that, by the grace of God I will not disappoint you. Please count me among your disciples. I value your prayer and instruction. I also promise to stand with you in prayer, mentioning your name before the Throne of Grace on a regular basis.”
On Friday we took the same 7 hour bus ride back to Kigali, Rwanda and on Saturday, I flew to Mombasa, Kenya and then by car, at night (very dangerous) we made it safely to Kilifi, Kenya, arriving at 10 pm. On Sunday, I preached at the Jerusalem, Light of God church with great liberty and anointing.
We began the conference of Tuesday and continued through Friday until 1:00 pm. Pastor Peter Simwa did a superb job of organizing the meetings, as well as interpreting for all the teaching sessions (and doing an excellent job, I might add!).
Almost all of the attendees (around 200, with 50 or more pastors in attendance), testified that they and never heard any such teaching and wanted to know why no one had ever taught them about Jesus’ Strategy and Commission as I was doing. Over 75 percent of them said they had never been taught by a white man before. These choice men and women took copious notes of everything I taught. In spite of the oppressive heat and uncomfortable surroundings, they were like spiritual sponges, soaking up everything I was saying. May the Lord make them fruitful disciples who make disciples.
The Lord mercifully returned me safely home on May 7, exhausted, but greatly encouraged by the potential for world impact through nobodies from nowhere, who embrace and employ Jesus’ Strategy!
The following is a letter I received from the pastor in charge of all arrangements and interpretation of my teaching – Peter Simwa:
I first want to thank the Lord Jesus for connecting me to Pastor Wade Trimmer. I came to know him when he came to Eldoret, Kenya with Herb Hodges. They had been invited by Pastor Lucas Odero and I was their interpreter.
I have been going around teaching pastors and church leaders in Kenya about foundations and I realized that the church needs to be discipled so that in turn it can make disciples. I remembered about Pastor Wade and how they had taught us in Eldoret, I thought this is needed so much in Kenya. After writing to Pastor Wade he agreed to come over and do a DISCIPLE MAKING training seminar from May 1st-6th in MOMBASA, Kilfi, Kenya.
On Tuesday we started the training seminar using the theme “KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING.” We had 162 the first day. Pastor Wade did the introduction and the Bishops, Pastors and other leaders who had come were very much touched by this method of Disciple-making. Hardly any of them had ever been taught by a white man, so this was new experience. The group was very much attentive and wrote the notes as Pastor Wade taught and I did the interpretation. To them this was almost new as many of them have been hearing the message preached in a lecture manner and not taught like Wade was teaching. We had a very great and exciting time as Wade spoke about the Main Thing which is to make disciples of all Nations. I can also testify and confess that I was touched so much by how he taught and how he made sure that all understood what he was saying and teaching.
On the second day we had 180 attending the training seminar, and again we had a very fruitful moment with Pastor Wade who went on to show the students why it is important for us to make Disciples who are of Jesus’ standard. Once again the students were very attentive and took many notes of what they were being taught. Wade did a very wonderful job taking the students through the stages of Savior’s strategy and Satan’s substitute, letting us realize that the church was operating on Satan’s Substitute. The students were so much touched that at the end of the day we had to repent on behalf of the church.
On the third day we had almost 200 attending the training as most of those who came did pass the word to others that this was the training they should not miss. Again Wade did a great job in teaching other new methods especially when he gave the illustrations as he taught and used words like FATSO and others. This was the climax of the training and the students were now beginning to see the importance of why making disciples is the greatest commission ever given by Christ Jesus.
On the 4th day we had to finish at 1pm as Wade was to fly back home that night. The students wanted us to finish as late as they were excited about this new way of making disciples, especially when Wade spoke about the power of multiplication and how simple it works.
After Wade finished the teaching we handed out over 170 Certificates to the students for completing the course. We handed out the certificates, prayed together and did not wish each other goodbye as Wade said there are no goodbyes in the Christian’s vocabulary, on until — until we will meet again here or in heaven.
We drove back to Mombasa and Wade took the flight back to Nairobi and to the USA.
I want to thank Pastor Wade and his Ministry for coming to Kenya. Pastor Wade is a humorous person, very loving and kind. He is the person you will like to hang around with. He has a FATHER’s heart and making Disciples of all Nations is what is heart yearns for. He brings some funny jokes every time and you cannot be bored to be with him.
I want to thank him for providing and sponsoring the training and those who supported the seminar, we had meals and accommodations for all who attended. Glory be God. I have received many phone calls from the students thanking Pastor Wade and his ministry for the training and they are expecting him to come back again.
Whether he comes back or not he has deposited some very important meaning in our lives. Please support him to do more and reach more as he makes Disciples of all Nations.
I am praying that God gives me the grace and the wisdom to continue as the Disciple and Discipler to many. Wade has touched my life and together we can build world visionary, world impacting Disciples.
Thanks for the book, KEEPING THE MAIN THING THE MAIN THING.
Pastor Wade, thank you so much, miss you and see you soon. We will always pray for you, your family and your ministry as you travel around the world.
Your Disciple, Pastor Peter Simwa – Eldoret, Kenya.
Budget for Discipleship Training Conferences
Budget for Discipleship Training Conference in Bukavu City, Congo DR – April 25-29, 2011
Food 80 pers. x 4$ x 5 days 1,600.00
Drink 80 pers. X 1$ x 5 days 400.00
Accommodations ( visitors) 2 pers. x 30$ x 7 days 420.00
Food + Drink ( visitors ) 2 pers. x 10$ x 7 days 140.00
Transport:
Pastor Malanda: Bukavu – Kigali – Bukavu 20.00
Kigali – Bukavu – Kigali 20.00
Taxi Kigali – Airport – Kigali 20$ x 2 40.00
Vehicle: 60.00$ x 5 days 300.00
Petrol 5l x 1.5 $ x 2 75.00
Motor oil 4.00
Petrol for generator 5l x 1.5$ x 4 30.00
Stationary, invitations, note books + pens ) 150.00
Cookers 5$ x 5 days x 6 150.00
Unforseen 151.00$
Total $3,500.00
Budget for Discipleship Training Conference in Mombasa, Kenya – May2-6, 2011
The budget for this conference is almost identical to the one in Bukavu City, Congo
Total $3500 US dollars.
Pastor Wade’s airfare from Atlanta to Kigali, Rwanda, to Bukuvu City, Congo to Mombasa Kenya and back to Atlanta — $2626.25
In addition, my accommodations, transportation and lodging is another $1000.
The total cost of the two conferences = $ 10,625.
Praise Report from Burkina Faso Discipleship Training!
It is with joy that I am able to give an encouraging report from our recent training efforts in West Africa. On Friday, January 14, Brother Ed Parker and I traveled to Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, arriving late Saturday night on the 15th. On Sunday morning, I preached in a Baptist church with Holy Spirit anointing, great liberty, and a good public response to the invitation.
We began the discipleship training on Monday from 8:30am to 4:00pm, and continued this schedule daily through Friday at Noon. The teachings were translated into French and then into Moore, which is one of the tribal languages. My disciple, Ed Parker, did an excellent job in teaching four of the sessions. This gave me a much needed break and Ed great on the job training.
The total attendance was 125 from many different denominations, with a daily average of around 75 participants; all which were pastors or key leaders in the churches. The students were very attentive, took copious notes and were enlightened as to every Christian’s assignment. Pray that at least five of these believers run with the Jesus’ Strategy to make disciples of all people groups.
Brother Stephen Aganda and Pastor Emil did a superb job of organizing the conference and stewarding the limited funds for maximum investment in the lives of these dear brothers and sisters. Thank you, brothers, for allowing us to get to know you and serve with you during this special week of meetings.
It was most encouraging to see the light come on in many hearts and minds as they realized they are not second class citizens in the Family of God because of where they live and because of the color of their skin; that they are not just helpers of pastors and leaders in the ministry, but are all ministers with a global assignment. The typical African Christian feels limited, inadequate, inferior, and incapable of fulfilling the Great Commission because of where they live, how poor they are, and how little training they have access to. But once they begin to see how Jesus trained men with no monies, buildings, Bible colleges, mission organizations, or television programs, etc. to aid them, then hope begins to be stirred in their hearts. They see that there are no little people in the kingdom of God and people perish from lack of vision and not from lack of monies and formal training.
Ed and I returned home safely and healthy on Sunday night, January 23. Thank you for all your prayers and a special thanks to those of you who invested in Training for Reigning so we could translate monies into training messages and materials for such a needy part of the Body of Christ. May the Lord of the Harvest multiply your seed.
Prayer Request for Training Trip to Burkina Faso
We seek your prayers as Pastor Wade and Brother Ed Parker leave next Friday, Jan. 14th for Ouagadougou (pronounced wa ga do goo) Burkina Faso. (Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa that is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d’Ivoire to the southwest.) Pray for traveling mercies, health, safety, and divine appointments to be made. Pray for our wives in our absence to enjoy Father’s protective presence. Pray for fruitful preaching services on Sunday morning at one of the local churches. Then pray for the discipleship training conference that begins on Monday and continues through Friday. We are expecting around 100-150 pastors and key lay leaders in attendance. Ask Father for special anointing for us to speak and even more important from the students to be given ears to hear. Ask Father to give us at least five men and women who will be totally captured by the Master’s Mandate to make disciples of all people groups and will begin to implement the process immediately. We leave Burkina on Saturday night and arrive in Atlanta on Sunday, Jan. 23. Thanks for your faithful investments of prayer and finances that make these efforts possible.
New Audio Message Available
Joy Heaven’s Serious Business-Obedience Retains Joy is now available.
An Amazing Story!
The following is an e-mail that I received from one of the pastors in Lusaka, Zambia where we recently conducted a discipleship training seminar. Pastor Gabriel Ngoma had e-mailed me several times asking if I was getting his e-mails to me because it appeared that someone was tampering with thee-mails he was receiving from me. Someone had stolen his notebook which contained various phone numbers and e-mail addresses. With the information, they had hijacked his email account. The following is an e-mail he sent me Nov. 30: (I have taken the liberty to dress up the English a little bit for legibility purposes. W.T.)
Dear Trimmer,
I want to thank you for the messages you have been sending to me. It has done a miracle to me. I want to share with you my testimony about the messages. I have found the man who opened my e-mails. This man when he saw my information about what I wrote to you thanking you for the support you are giving me to finish building my house, took an opportunity to convince me that there will be Government scholarships (which was not true) in order to get me to send commitment fees to his account. He just printed this information on my e-mails which are already in the inbox of my account. Using my account, he opened my e-mails and again and again read your messages which you wrote to me about The Offense of the Cross and what happened on the Cross of Jesus. He read it properly along with the other messages you wrote about the love of God.
As a result God convicted him and he started thinking that what he did to open my e-mails was wrong and the messages which he wrote me in order to deceive me in an attempt to get monies. He decided to call me on the phone and we set up a meeting in town. When we met he confessed that it was wrong to take my note book with my phone numbers and e-mail account. He told me that it is the messages he read from your weekly e-mail messages which has made him to repent and he told me that he has been doing such type action for a long time (trying to steal from others in a like manner). Then he asked me what can he do to be saved. I told him to repent and to receive Jesus. He repented!
So I thank you for the lessons that has made somebody to repent and he gave me the note book and he asked me to forgive him. I thank you for your prayers and lessons and for the Great job GOD is doing for me.
Pastor Gabriel Ngoma
New Audio Messages Available!
![[musical note graphic]](http://tridm.org/images/musicnote.png)
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Three new audio messages are now available! You can view them by clicking Media on the menu and then Audio, or by visiting this link:
You can either download the MP3 (each are around 20MB in size), and play them later, or redistribute them to anyone. Or click on the .OGG file, and it should stream from your browser so that you can listen online. There are many more audio messages. They take a long time to edit, but we hope to make them available one-by-one as time permits. I would like to offer a special thanks to “Beav” Morgan for giving us the rights to use his song, “You’ve Been So Good”, in our ministry and Greg Gibbs and the band for helping make it a reality! May the LORD bless you all! - Shane |
Praise Report from Lusaka, Zambia
Herb Hodges and I just returned from a very encouraging, and we trust, ultimately, to be a very fruitful week, of training pastors and key leaders in the city of Lusaka, Zambia in South Africa. The trip involved traveling over 18,000 miles there and back and teaching Monday through Thursday from 8:30am to 5:00pm. To say the trip was exhausting is an understatement. However, the large deposits of truth and life we were able to make into the hearts of minds of these dear saints of God made it refreshing, encouraging, and potentially world impacting, based on the power of the seed of the Word of God in the Sons of God!
These dear people of God are poor materially, but rich in faith. They have little formal training and few resources and study helps to aid their gospel assignments, but they brought hungry hearts and a teachable spirit to the conference. We had around 125-175 in attendance of which 40 or so were pastors. Around 80 of these men and women sleep on the hard concrete floor of the church building in very primitive conditions. They all took copious notes of the teachings and many gave testimonies about having never heard the strategy of Jesus for world impact. Pray that some of them will begin to immediately implement the Master’s Mandate and initiate a reproductive multiplication of disciples to the ends of the earth until the end of time.
Pastors Maxen Phiri and Gabriel Ngoma did an excellent job in coordinating all the arrangements for the conference. Pray for these two men that they will be captured and consumed by the Master and His Mandate. We want to say thanks also to Pastor Richard Banda and the Glory Baptist church for hosting the conference in their facilities. Likewise, we are grateful for the accommodations provided by Precious Moments Lodge and owner Dr. Mpazi Sinjela, along with his staff (especially Chef Hilary and Florence, and Memory). They treated us like VIP’s.
Herb and I want to thank you dear brothers and sisters all over the world for praying for two old soldiers of the cross. Thank you, Herb, for honoring me by allowing me to minister with you at this juncture in our lives and ministries. Thanks most of all goes to Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own precious blood and counted us faithful, putting us in the gospel ministry – our Lord Jesus Christ – to Him be glory unto the ages of the ages!!!
Prayer Request for Lusaka, Zambia, South Africa Discipleship Training Conference
We request your prayers for Wade Trimmer and Herb Hodges as they leave from Atlanta, Friday, October 1, for Lusaka, Zambia, and returning October 10.
Pray for the Lord to give us safety and favor in traveling mercies and good seats on the airplane due to extra long legs, two old guys, and the length of the flights.
Pray that God’s gracious hand may order our steps and prearrange the divine appointments with the 150 pastors and key leaders attending the conference.
Pray that the power of the Spirit might attend our efforts with His enlightening and life-capturing power so that devotion-givers, disciple-makers and dominion-takers emerge out of the meetings that will impact the ends of the earth with the gospel of God!
Pray for the physical stamina needed for the week long teaching assignments. The discipleship training is a rigorous day that begins early and ends late, Monday through Friday.
Pray that out of the 150 pastors and leaders attending the conference, the Lord would be pleased to give us at least five men who will be captured by the Master’s Mandate for building disciples for total world impact in such a manner as to begin running with it immediately!
A special thanks to all of you for your continued prayers and gifts that make this ministry possible!
Pastor Wade
Praise Report from the Nicaragua Disciple-making Conference!
Thank you for praying for the week of training at the RHEMA Institute that Brother Ron Herrod sponsors in various parts of the world. This one, held in Jinotepe, Nicaragua, was one of the most rewarding, refreshing, and encouraging, and I believe potentially fruitful, weeks of training that I have ever done.
What made the difference? One, your prayers; two the Holy Spirit’s anointing; three, the fact that Brother Herb Hodges had taught this same group of students back in May of this year. Because of his foundational teachings, I was able to dove-tail with these basic truths and give further instructions of the method of Jesus’ Standard and Strategy for building disciples for Total World Impact.
During his week there, Brother Herb plowed the hard soil and sowed the good seed of the basic truths of Jesus’ standard and strategy for fulfilling the Great Commission. The interpreter, Bro. Maynor Curtis had told the students that I was a 28 year disciple of Bro. Herbs’, thus I had immediate respect. Then Herb had taught, confronted and corrected these men and women to be a more disciplined, attentive and faithful student of God’s Word, so they sat under the Word being taught and not over it in judgment. As a result these pastors and key lay leaders were the most attentive, spiritually hungry, extensive note-taking group that I have ever taught.
Another vital factor was the leadership and interpreting work done by the Nicaraguan, Brother Maynor Curtis. Although Bro. Maynor is not a pastor, he is a hot-hearted lover of the Lord, and has a gifted mind, a teachable spirit, and demonstrated great communication skills in his interrupting of my Southern accented English.
The teaching began at 8:30 am and continued to 4:00 pm Monday through Friday with over 200 persons in attendance daily. The people traveled a long distance daily by public transportation to get to the meeting house. The auditorium was very hot and humid and the chairs uncomfortable, but all I saw for almost seven hours each day was the tops of the people’s heads as they took page after page of notes, and asked very intelligent, pertinent questions during Q&A times. One pastor came to me at the end of the fourth day and hugged me and said in his broken English, “Your teaching on disciple-making has saved my life!”
Thank all of you for praying and giving to make this trip possible and productive. Thank you, Brother Ron Herrod, for inviting me to go. Thank you Brother Herb Hodges for discipling me with a view to total world impact. My translator said as the week drew to an end that on at least a half dozen different occasions, as he was translating my teaching, he forgot and thought that he had Bro Heb Hodges standing beside him.
A special thanks goes to my wife for her continual prayers and encouragement for this phase of our ministry. Never once in over 30 years of ministry has she ever done anything but help, encourage and support me, whole heartedly!
Most of all, thanks be unto our merciful Lord and Savior who has counted me faithful, putting me into the gospel ministry! What a Savior! What a gospel! What an assignment! Praise the Lord!
