EFC of Canon City • Interview Questions & Prayer Requests • Merle & Claudia Wiens
1. What does a typical day look like for you in Dar es Salaam?
Coffee; QT with the Lord; Breakfast: wheat-a-bix (African shredded wheat), granola, milk, mango, banana, papaya; Email supporters, colleagues and partners; Prepare for Sat Club: craft, songs, games, Bible story; On-line monthly reimbursements; phone meeting with Equip Team member; Call national partner leader in Rwanda or Kenya and follow up on training or project; Lunch: tomatoes, peppers, cukes, avocado, PB toast; Visit friend and share narrations; Conference call with Africa Division Team; Meet with staff member to go over Monthly Staff Feedback form; Walk 1 km to ATM to withdraw 400,000 shillings (about $270); Buy malaria meds at local pharmacy; Take phone calls that need attention; Plan next ministry trip; Exercise walking several rounds of our 12-story building; Dinner: ugali (thick corn mush), mchicha (local greens), peanut sauce chicken; Discus the day’s activities; Read a book; Pray together; Good-night!
2. What is your favorite thing about living in Africa?
a. Africans with big smiles and robust singing and dancing during worship.
b. Life-chaos-humor: Calling our internet provider 57 times (not exaggerated) to fix an unsolved problem; Power cuts resulting in traffic jams and a free-for-all at major intersections taking extra time to get to places; a Kenyan woman watching in amazement at her clothes in my automatic glass door, front load washing machine go round and round for 30 minutes; Bargaining for fruits and vegetables from street vendors.
3. What is your biggest challenge in the ministry at this point?
a. Helping Africans catch the vision for missions and outreach to the unreached.
b. Helping Africans and not hurting them by creating dependency on westerners and their ideas.
c. Sharing the Biblical worldview to animistic and polytheistic cultures.
4. If ReachGlobal gave you a million dollars for East Africa, what would you do with it?
Invest it wisely and carefully—find ways to invest that will promote our RG focus of developing, empowering and releasing national leaders and partners for effective, sustainable and reproducible multiplication of healthy churches. Specifically, the RG Africa leadership team has developed 3 & 10 year goals and the priority would be to use the funds to address these goals. For example, one of the bigger goals (financially speaking) includes the development of four multi-cultural short term training/internship centers for mission training on the continent.
5. What was your most recent ‘God moment’? i.e. victory, seeing God move, etc.
a. Merle: in Jan 2011, when leaders of the FGP discovered a possible place, partnering with an RG team, to begin sending their own short-term missionaries where they can provide a significant contribution reaching out to unreached peoples (this continues to be “in process”).
b. Claudia: Two days ago a Muslim friend called me asking to come visit her. This is remarkable in that I have always had to initiate contact.
6. How can Christians pray for Africa?
a. Pray that the African church will catch the vision of missions and reaching out to the unreached and add this to their strategy of reaching the world for Christ.
b. Pray that converts to Christ will genuinely show transformed lives.
c. Pray for a growing number of leaders/pastors to be raised up and developed, empowered, and released with a vision and passion to plant healthy and multiplying churches.
7. In a word, describe Dar es Salaam.
a. Diverse
b. Multi-cultural
c. Hot (temperatures)
8. In what ways have you ‘become’ Tanzanian?
a. Use Kiswahili greetings and ‘thank you’
b. Shake hands with everyone we meet
c. Enjoy the local food
9. What can the African church teach the American church?
a. Trust more in the Holy Spirit and his work
b. See the importance of a relationship orientation over a task orientation
c. Simplicity of believing and by faith following God’s Word
Prayer Requests
1. Pray for wisdom for Merle as he conducts Annual Reviews with our missionary staff.
2. Pray for the FGP as they engage in CHE (Community Health Evangelism) in holistic outreach and the 3-year pastoral-leadership training called “Training of Equippers”.
3. Pray for Merle and the newly formed RG Equip Team basing here in Dar—1 couple has been here for 1.5 years, 1 couple just arrived, and 1 couple is raising support to arrive in late summer 2011.
4. Pray that schools will be favorable towards the Student Ministries summer English camps and dates would coordinate with a church team joining us.
5. Pray for more staff and a venue for our Little Kid’s Club when the host family moves back to India in March.
6. Pray for godly wisdom, patience and love for Claudia as she meets with women who are searching for the Truth, live in fear, are lonely and face the normal family challenges of domineering husbands and rebellious children. Pray that God would draw these women to Himself and they would see their need for a gracious Savior.
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