Sierra Leone, West Africa and Dr. Mike Peper

Ever so often you get a letter that absolutely thrills your soul to see how God is working around the world. This letter is one of them. It was received from Dr. Mike Peper just a few days ago.

Dear Dr. Rawlings and Herb,

I just wanted to give you a quick update as to what is happening here in Sierra Leone. Bill Dougherty accompanied me to Sierra Leone and was here for about six weeks, helping us get our first two churches established. In our first house church we just had our ninth service, and the eighth service in our second house church. This last Sunday our combined attendance was 149. In the past nine weeks we have had 189 people saved, and in our first baptism service, 21 adults were baptized.

I am in the process of putting together a team of nationals to help me in the starting of these house churches. We'll have directors of outreach, discipleship, music, children's ministries, and youth. I am calling them our leadership team. I've written job descriptions for each of these members and am in the process of training them for their respective positions. The leadership team will, in September, help to plant another house church. From October on, we will plant two house churches a month.

Within about a year's time, we'll be able to expand our leadership team to accomodate the foundation of another house church for every week. Two weeks ago I taught the church members about tithing, and we started taking our first offerings. In the first church that we started, the offerings have been such that they could take on a national pastor immediately. In the second church the offerings are a little less, but are still enough to support a pastor. I have been teaching them about missions work from the beginning, so that our first mission offering we take will be used to help support the leadership team. From the very beginning they have caught they vision of the house church concept and they are very excited about the potential.

The quality of the people that God has given us is far beyond my expectation. These are very sharp people. Our goal by next April is to be averaging a combined total of 1,000 in the house churches. I really believe that within three years, we will have over 100 house churches averaging 10,000. At the present time, Abdul and I have been doing the preaching at allservices, but our next step is to place pastors at each church.

Bill F. Aven, reporter