Anderson's Home to Leave Again . . .

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Friends and praying partners,

The Lord does the great and marvelous things often during life's most discouraging moments. The life storms of our past four year term were many -- civil war stife, death of beloved family, vehicle problems, changes of family responsibility and placement, computer & hard disk failures -- and sometimes led us to wonder if God was at work through us. Then, like Gehazi of old in 2 Kings 6:17, God let us see what he was providing in protection and in power. We resigned from missionary service with Free Will Baptist International Missions on August 13, 2013, but it's not for lack of God's working (our letter & FWBIM press release). It's to increase the glory due His name. Let us explain.

During the last four years, we carried an heavy administrative load assisting the Ivorian Free Will Baptist church transition from strong missionary leadership to assuming most responsibilities themselves.
Here are some remarkable steps they have taken :

• In 2010 our Ivorian brothers voted to provide for statistical collection and external audits of their accounting. With our help, the Bible Institute shifted from receiving annual gifts from their American brothers through the mission to where they provided this Spring an accounting for several budget years to be reimbursed. While they still have much to do to meet their goal of financial independence for Bible Institute operations, they have developed a road map and are implementing their plan. 
• The Education Committee adopted a strategy to increase Bible literacy. Sunday School training has been facilitated as our provision of an edited 8 year teaching cycle from the Randall House and regional trainers instruct others on leading classes for children and adults 
• The church took charge of rewriting their constitution and by-laws to reflect that they could no longer have American missionaries present on all committees and at all meetings to make decisions. Plans are to put these changes to a vote at their national meeting happening this week (see Kenneth Eagleton's reports). 
• Verlin completed over 40 visits to local churches for revival service type weekends. He so encouraged interaction between churches, strengthened statistical collection and tithing, shared simple ways to overcome malnutrition and malaria, and deepened understandings about Community Health Evangelism (CHE) ministries developing around them. Over 200 regional and local leaders were taught and remain in contact. 

While there was no way that the national church could be ready at this stage to adopt our primary ministry focus of CHE as their own, multiple threads of our ministry have tied together in the last eight months to form a strong cord to assist the entire Ivorian nation. Not all is written here, but what has happened is to the Lord's glory alone.

• The largest church in Western Côte d'Ivoire has organized women's micro-enterprise groups which follow Kingdom Business Bible studies. They have seen souls saved and living standards inproved. As excitement grows, church leaders contemplate using the program to touch the nation. 
• The largest and most influential Protestant church in the nation announced plans to use CHE as their primary means to develop all 170 of their parishes through evangelism, good works, and discipleship practices as provided by CHE. 
• The center-east of the nation has already established programs which have planted churches while at the same time increasing revenues by increasing production of the nation's greatest cash crop, cocoa. Medical and orphan treatment centers throughout the country seek to imitate their CHE program because of its remarkable success. Also, the director of their program is the president of the nation's Bible Hospital Group. In 2014, the triennial African congress of the association meets in Cote d'Ivoire to fortify the CHE teaching already happening. 

Did you know that much of the French materials these groups use came work you have supported through us? That most every soul saved in those women's micro-enterprise, or pre-natal nutrition groups using moringa powder, can be traced to life lessons made available by the resources you confided to us?

REJOICE !

And God who is bountiful in his blessings topped off all this good news of recent months by providing us an opportunity to teach national university department heads and their staffs how to use CHE.  These Christian university leaders want to prevent their government development and social medical interventions from failing as they normally do when money supporting the program stops. September 16 - 20 will most likely find an interdenominational group of Ivorian Christians from several sociological strata teaching leaders in the nation . . . and, except God call otherwise, Verlin will organize the meeting and assist in the teaching.

Given these numerous opportunities, the Ivorian FWB Church's increased maturity, our inability to continue the workload of the last four years, and a few differences in ministry direction and perspective that we have with FWBIM, we resigned this week. This will enable us to focus on the burgeoning CHE movement that you cooperated with the Lord to see come to life.

When we trained to teach CHE in 1997, there were only three known teams working to establish three programs in West Africa. Today there are over 170 groups using the strategy in over 1000 communities in West Africa alone. In the average program, 1 of 3 persons being visited in the home accepts Christ, becomes a disciple, and a church is started where none existed previously. It's great to be a part of it. Praise God with us for the great and marvelous things He is doing.

We'll let you know with whom we'll be serving there in the future over the next few months WHEN WE KNOW. In the meantime, FWBIM continues to provide salary and benefits for three months after our resignation until the end of November. Our denominational agency seriously needs our support for the efforts of all our missionaries around the world, many of whom also have other great stories to tell about the mercies of the Lord.

Let's together ascribe to the Lord His glory (Psalm 29)