And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. Acts 6:7
Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We hope this email finds you all good and being thankful to our mighty God for His kindness and mercy through which we are dwelling in this world with a hope of eternity to be spent with Him in heaven forever.
Dear brethren, we are thankful to God for blessing us to expand our ministry through the preachers who are being sent out. We not only witness the number of people being added to the church, but we also hear that our students go to remote places to establish congregations. We, with humble hearts, praise our mighty God for blessing all of us.
Faculty Meeting
e held another meeting with the staff where we encouraged each other to keep on and keeping on. We are so thankful to our faculty members who remained in the team for their continued efforts as team members. We did have some change in our faculty members, unfortunately my brother Vijaya Kumar is not able to be in our crew because of his family problems. Brother P. Balaram is in the process of pursing a secular job due to which he is no longer working with us. This gave us an opportunity to add Bro. S.R. Kavitha as one of the faculty members. For the last couple of years he has been serving as the minister at the congregation that meets at the School facility. He has been a minister for the last 30 yrs and he did have experience as a Bible School teacher at a preacher training school in Vijayanagaram District, unfortunately this school was closed years ago. We are hoping to see his seniority add up to our team effort in training the men more effectively.
Gospel Meetings
Brother Satyanandam, one of our graduates from the first batch, is an enthusiastic evangelist. He is working with a couple of congregations. Besides many financial difficulties, he is ministering to the Lord without losing his faith. We admire his enthusiasm towards proclaiming the word of God. Besides his personal financial problem, he has been encouraging the congregation to hold gospel meetings to proclaim the word of God. In the second week of May, I was invited as one of the speakers for this wonderful gospel meeting. The congregation hosted about 450 people for those three days of meetings. We, along with faculty and students, attended these meetings to proclaim the word as well as to encourage the congregation. We witnessed two souls being added to the Church at the end of the meetings. These meetings have given a great opportunity to spread the Good News in that area. The local congregation was very much encouraged by this success. Of course there is a debt of money, which the Church has to pay, as that money was spent during the meetings. We admire this congregation for being courageous to carry out the gospel in spite of the financial circumstances.
Brother Ramu, one of our recent graduates, is extending his efforts in bringing more souls to Christ. As a preacher, he began the ministry at his home first. As a result, his older son and his wife were baptized for the remission of their sins. Brother Rama Raju, one of our faculty, was instrumental in this effort. We were blessed to witness this couple being baptized at our school premises. We do hear from some of our students about the adding of souls to their congregations regularly.
Library an Asset
Wow….what a blessing….!! I always love visiting you brethren, at least once for every two years. It not only gives me an opportunity to present the results of our efforts, but it also gives opportunity to make the work known to several others who never heard about such work. One of the benefits is acquiring books for the Library. Since this is an asset, adding of more books always increases its value too. We firmly believe all the books we are adding to our Library are very valuable. This time we were able to add the BVBID Annual Lectureship books to our Library. We must thank brother Bob Turner who was instrumental in getting these books into my hands. We are also thankful to brother Jerry Bates (World Evangelism) for transporting them to India. Another set of valuable books were FHU Annual Lectureship, and Christian Counseling. We are so thankful to all those who are behind this addition of books to our Library.
Preachers’ Fellowship Meeting
These meetings have been very helpful in gathering the preachers at a certain place to encourage the preacher in that village. A Preachers’ meeting was recently held where one of our graduates, brother Jaya Raju has begun preaching. Like this, each month we hold a meeting at one of the villages where our graduates are working. This gives us an opportunity, not just to encourage the local preacher, but also the preachers in that area. During these meetings we provide the local preacher with some Bibles, Hymn Books and other gospel literature.
Fresh Batch of Students
We are grateful to our God for being able to send 3 batches of students successfully into the full-time ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ. Right now, in consideration of the 4 batch, 14 students currently applied and were selected. We currently have 12 students enrolled and attending the school. Next month, Brother Bruce Ligon will be teaching two short courses for these students. We are excited about this. We recently received the suggested BVBID curriculum; we have made some changes that is moving these subjects according to our time convenience. We did receive the material to be studied and distributed to the students. We are very lucky to get such wonderful material. With this new development we are happy to be equal with rest of the Bear Valley International Schools across the world. What a blessing.
Gratitude
As always, we must thank the brethren at Lake Houston for their charity and the elders at Strickland for their oversight. Through their cooperation we are able to do this blessed work. We do thank the Bear Valley Bible Institute for allowing us to use their course material, as our students are truly blessed with this. We keep way head of several preacher training schools in India. We thank the elders of Bear Valley for their continued dedicated efforts to encourage preacher training across the world. We pray the Lord’s richest blessings upon you all. Thank you for your prayers and thoughts. Please greet all the brethren for us. Thank you very much. Kindly share this report with your church family. God bless.
Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God, our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen. Jude 24-25
In Christ & His services
Samuel Raju & John Dean Muppidi