Dear brethren in Christ,
Greetings to you in the precious name of Lord Jesus Christ our saviour. Hope this message finds you all good. We appreciate your prayers which is keeping us safe and sound.
As the number of Corona cases are raising like anything in our country, especially in the state of Andhra Pradesh, we request your fervent prayers on behalf of us. So many thousands are being infected, death rate is comparatively little but some young people are dying too. We right now under the fear of Corona.
Faculty Meeting:
Our Team work has made the Preaching school to run successfully and been able to complete a decade of training Men to be effective evangelists of the Gospel of Christ. With the same enthusiasm during this Corona situation we met at the Visakha Valley College Campus to discuss the future of the School. Except Bro. Vamsee everyone else attended the meeting. Since lack of public transportation Bro. Vamase was unable to attend the meeting. Our primary agenda was to see the possibility of restarting the school. As we begun the meeting with a prayer, several things were came into discussion. We rejoiced as we learned that all our graduates are being kept safe from Corona.
During our meeting we discussed about the present situation in India.
How badly this Corona affected us:
The preachers cannot visit the members of the Church for any reason, even if they are in a difficult situation.
Fellowship is missing so badly, totally have to stay away from all church activities, like Bible Class, Gospel meetings, Youth Class, Sunday school for children etc., were concerned about the future.
Income of the congregation, which is affecting the preachers survival and also those that are dependent on the local congregation.
Its become habit for some one to skip worshiping At the same time 90% of the church is anxiously waiting for the day to assemble like they used to Godliness has increased, church grew up in faith.
Proclamation of the Gospel has been totally down under restrictions (Physical Distance). No out reach programs except some visit the local families
Well, In addition to corona we are having continues rains from last two weeks. This is going to cause several to suffer from variety of Fevers, like Typhoid, Malayria, ChickenGunya, Viral fever etc.,
So, after the serious discussion about restarting of the classes, we have decided to begun teaching the students. The students who are available and willing to attend were present in the first day of the Class.
Here we have come up with a problem of brother Vamsee’s classes, since public transportation (Railway) is totally suspended Vamsee cannot attend the classes. During the meeting he was present across video calling. We have discussed about teaching classes through online media, Vamsee agreed to do that. So, we will be buying a laptop, mini speakers, Mic piece and WebCam to establish online video classes for the students. This indeed helps the students to communicate like they are in the regular class. We have made a trial run last week, it went well. In the future we would be able to use the available projector for the same purpose as well. We believe it is a very good option available for time being to keep up with the students, also to attract some new students as well. It might offer a great opportunity for some who would love to do online classes because of their situation. At the end of the meeting we had a prayer, pleading our loving God to have mercy on us.
Gratitude: Once again, we praise God for blessing us with wonderful congregations which are helping us to run this preaching school. While we are running the preaching school, we are also helping our graduates to establish congregations by conducting Gospel Campaigns, gospel meetings and Preachers Fellowship meetings. Also, during the times of natural disasters we have been able to help them in several ways, this time during Corona Pandemic we were able to help about 100 preachers families in this area of AP by providing Rice & essential goods for their survival. We are grateful to God for His mercy and also for blessing you all with kind hearts to do all this good works. We thank the brethren at Strickland and Lake Houston, also Jerry and Paula for their contribution as well. Attached are some pictures showing the preachers in hill area receiving the Corona Relief.
Local Congregation: Bro. Kavitha who is one of our faculty is preaching at the local congregation that meets at our visakha Valley Bible college facility. All of our students attend worship service here. Time to time bro. Samuel Raju, director of the college preachers here too. The local congregation has come forward to help some of the poor families in the church, where we were privileged to present those items to the brethren who are poor also some who are not members of the Church. Local congregation is growing spiritually and in number due to their remarkable fellowship.
Please convey our heartfelt greetings to the brethren you worship with, our best wishes to your family members as well. Kindly continue your prayers as we do for you daily, God bless you.
In Christ,
John Dean M