ACTIVITY OPERATION REPORT FOR FEBRUARY, 2022
Full Time and the Extended Programs
INTRODUCTION
We bring you brotherly greetings from the Kenema Bear Valley Bible Institute, Sierra Leone. We are grateful to God for another opportunity to share our report with you, our esteemed and dearly beloved brethren. We are hopeful that you are doing well and may this report find you flourishing in the Lord. As we continue to be engaged in working for the Master, the month of February was a favorable one to us, for the Lord enabled us to carry out the following activities: Conversion of souls, restoration of some erring brethren, the continuation of academics, and the acquisition of some needful items. Please read further for the details.
WEEKEND EVANGELISM AND CONVERSION OF SOULS
The Lord crowned our combined efforts (staff and students actively taking part in the evangelism exercise) in the past month of February 2022 so that we had 10 conversions and 12 restorations, both in and out of Kenema. The director and the Dean of Students journeyed to three Alumni and restored five brethren and converted five souls. We solicit your prayers as you have always done for those brethren.
CONTINUATION OF ACADEMICS
We are glad to inform you that our two programs (Full time and Extended) are going well. As we informed you in our last January report, we have 36 students altogether: 20 in the full-time program and 16 in the extended program. The students are glad to be part of the Bear Valley experience. We praise God for His love for us all and for extending His goodness to us here in Sierra Leone.
ACQUISITION OF STUDENT ITEMS
Some months ago, when we had the dire desire to commence our extended program, we shared our desire with Bear Valley through our God-loving coordinator, Brother Steve Ashcraft. There was a need for two canopies, chairs, tables, a whiteboard and stand, and Bibles (including full-time students). We want to happily inform you, our donors and supporters, that we have acquired all of them and they are so helpful. The students are happy and are learning and taking their classes happily.
APPRECIATION
We are grateful to God for His providence as men and women continue to be trained to rightly divide the word of truth and to bring many to Christ. We secondly appreciate you, our supporters, our coordinator, Steven Ashcraft, our African Director of International Studies, beloved brother Keith, our assistant regional coordinator, beloved Robert Dahn, and our brethren who are praying for us at all times. May God reward you favorably for all your kindness toward us.
OUR CHALLENGES
A. Islamic Influence: As it is a known fact that Sierra Leone as a country is about 80% Islamic. It is a great challenge to evangelize in such a country. Islam has spread to almost every remote village in Sierra Leone and some of those Muslims are so fanatical religiously. Therefore brethren, please continue to pray for us as we do our best to preach this Gospel in this Islam-dominated country.
B. Transportation: We are facing a very serious challenge with transportation especially when we want to go for campaigns. Sometimes to get a bus that conveys all our students to our destinations can be very difficult as some drivers here prefer to go where the road is fine and smoother. Sometimes, we arrive at our places of campaigns late at night because we do not get the bus on time. Again, some drivers run beyond the limit and when you caution them, they will tell you in our vernacular language that, “Padi, ar want go drop wuna quick make ar go look for other passengers,” which literally means, “My friend, I want to drive you quickly to your destination so that I can go in search of other passengers,” and as many accidents happen on our roads here, this is very risky. But if we had our own bus, we could tell our driver to drive with caution; we could go to any destination we want especially where there is a need for many to hear the Gospel and be saved. The transportation cost is as well so high and mostly we have been managing the resources to embark on the campaigns.
C. Library: The lack of a library has been a great challenge to our students also as 99% of our students do not have access to browsing phones where they could go online to search for materials. Sometimes instructors find it difficult to give some assignments to the students because there is no library where they could be referred to so they could go and read. Since one of the objectives of our Kenema Bear Valley Bible Institute is to offer to our students scholarly materials in order to break the barrier of ignorance and to equip them to also teach others, there is a need for us to get a well-equipped library.
CONCLUSION
Brethren, we remain appreciative to you. Thank you for loving the Lord. Thank you for your kindness. The lives you are changing in Sierra Leone here through your prayers, financial support, guidance, and direction, are all duly acknowledged, and may the Lord bless you richly.