Sunday, July 11, 2004

Mission Yearbook, August 1: Pray for PFF and the Afar

Friends, I invite you to use this 2004 PCUSA Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study minute for mission in your services on Sunday, August 1. Every year, Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship is invited to contribute a minute for mission for the Mission Yearbook. For the past several years it has been my privilege to write the submission. - Dave

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Sunday, August 1, 2004
Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship
PCUSA Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study


The Muslim official spoke bluntly to the Rev. Iteffa Gobena: "We know the good work your church does in the highlands. Why aren't you here, working with our Afar tribe, the forgotten people of Ethiopia?"

Gobena, president of our Presbyterian Church (USA) partner, the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, looked incredulously at the government official from the Afar tribe. He had no idea that the Afar, an unreached Muslim tribe in a remote desert region of Ethiopia, would be so open to help from a Christian group.

Five years before, God had spoken to Gobena, telling him, "You've got to go to the Afar with my gospel." Gobena began praying that God would send partners. Five years later he contacted the Frontier Mission Program requesting help. When Solana Beach (California) Presbyterian Church heard about the request, they visited the Afar and responded by making a "Commitment to Share Good News" with the Afar.

Their Commitment has expanded into an Afar Partnership, and a Frontier Mission Project is underway among the Afar (ECO #040060). The partnership includes 12 Presbyterian churches large and small, from New York to California, Texas to Michigan. The Afar people are discovering that American Christians care deeply for them.

"We think God wants a mighty movement of love flooding into the desert," says the Rev. Tom Theriault, mission pastor of Solana Beach Presbyterian Church and board member of Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship (PFF). A Validated Mission Support Group of the Presbyterian Church (USA), PFF mobilizes congregations into these global partnerships to establish indigenous churches among unreached people groups such as the Afar.

Hundreds of Presbyterian churches support frontier evangelism efforts around the world. Contributions to the Frontier Mission Program (ECO #863001) fund church planting ministries on every continent, including the USA. Please pray for frontier mission.

Prayer: Jesus, Lord of the Universe, you are redeeming people from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. Your new family welcomes people from every tribe, people and language – all who place their salvation in you. Please flood your gospel into all the unreached cultures of the earth, that faithful and fruitful indigenous churches would blossom to your glory. In your name we pray, Amen.


-- Rev. David Hackett
Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship
Associate Director for Denominational Relations

Links:
* http://www.solanapres.org/
* http://pcusa.org/evangelism/international/getin.htm
* http://pcusa.org/evangelism/international/frontier.htm

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