Classes resume in Ghana

SOUTHERN INSTITUTE OF BIBLICAL STUDIES

(BEAR VALLEY EXTENSION PROGRAM) 

REPORT FOR THE MONTH OFOCTOBER, 2016

GRATITUDE

We wish to express our heart felt gratitude to the Almighty God for the spiritual blessings He continue to shower upon all of us. On behalf of the director, the teaching staff and the students body, I express our appreciation and gratitude to the sponsors of all the extension schools of the Bear Valley Bible Institute of which Southern Institute Of Biblical Studies (SIBS) is part of it. We pray more blessing for them. So also do we pray for our coordinator, Brother Steve Ashcraft.  

LAND PROPERTY

I wish to put on record that final payment had been made for a piece of land the school intended to buy. SIBS can now boast of a land of her own. However, documentation is yet to be completed at the Land Commission.  Hopeful, students population would be increased when a school building is put up.

SCHOOL REOPENS

The regular students are back from the holidays. Classes began on 10th October with all the twelve students present. Six courses would be taught within this quarter. This is last quarter to end the first year for the regular students. Nevertheless, the week-end classes is on going without break. Their number had increased to fifteen (15) strong young men. 

BRAVO

Management would like to congratulate our teaching staff for the able manner and self-less effort they had been contributing of training and building our students up. 

CAMPAIGN 

Interestingly to note that our students continue to visit sister churches on every Sunday as part of their training. The Lord’s church at Buduburam (a refuge camp) had requested for the services of two of ourstudents namely: Brothers James Borniea and Alexander Opa Zulu. They would visiting the church on every Sunday.

FOLLOW-UP 

A follow-up program is being put in place so that our past students would be monitored. This program would help management to ascertain the progress of our graduates. 

Compiled by Emmanuel Amoo-Gyimah 

My visit to Cambodia

I bring you greetings from Cambodia, which is where I am sending this report from. I have been blessed to be able to teach a seminar on the topic of Leadership, as well as meet with the teachers of the school. I was also blessed with the opportunity to teach two addditonal bible classes.

I can't brag on the teachers enough! I have witnessed their growth in the past few years and I am encouraged by it and proud of them. I was also impressed by the students, who are in their 2nd year of study. Please continue to keep them in your prayers, as they grow in their faith, to be a light for Christ in a country that is 95% Buddhist.

Yours in Christ,

Keith Kasarjian

An entire denominational church converted in Togo!

Yes, you read that correctly! Willie Gley has sent us a very encouraging report from Togo and you will want to read it HERE. 

A great youth camp in Nepal!

Greetings to you all in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May grace of God, love and peace always be with you.

We are always busy in the Kingdom of God. We had preacher's lectureship last month of September. We could able to do youth camp this year. Due to political strike and the border blocked, we couldn't able to do youth camp last year. This is good timing for youth people to refresh themselves by God's word from book of Daniel and some games, Christian movies, and picnic.

All our classes went well with some discussions. Arun, Gajendra and some of our graduated youth students lead main classes. We had some games for fund. We had farewell program, more games, Bible study and baptism program at picnic spot.

Without including men and women, we had 131 youth people in our youth camp. We had participants from 21 congregations of Nepal and India. We believed that our youths are doing well in their local congregations. Seven new souls were added in the Lord in this camp.

There were lots of joy and fund in our camp. All youths were enjoyed a lot. There were tears in their eyes of youths when they leaved each other. Christian love and fellowship bound them together.

We are spending our time, labor, and money at the right places of God's kingdom. We strongly believe that these youth people will encourage and motivate other youths in their communities.

We would like express our gratitude to all our visible and invisible brothers and sisters at USA, who are always supporting and encouraging God's work at Nepal. On behalf of Nepal Center for Biblical Study we are so much thankful for your generous love, financial help and spiritual encouragement.

Thank you.

Brother in Christ

Gajendra Deshar

Kathmandu, Nepal.

The latest from New Zealand

The Director of BVBI-NZ, Lance Mosher, has posted his latest report HERE. I am sure that you will enjoy reading it. 

Students progress in Wotutu, Cameroon

Dearest  in Christ,

      Greetings from your brothers and sisters from this part of the world Cameroon. We do hope you are fine and God is using you to accomplish His work in many ways as you serve Him.

     We are doing fine this way and we are glad to report to you what God is doing here through us as vessels in His hands. Students are extremely busy in school as they are rounding up with long courses in few weeks and thereafter the last course will be marriage and family. Brother David Ballard, the coordinator, will be in Cameroon to teach that to our current students alongside their wives . Keep this in your prayers for success.

      Last week all the students are doing fine in their studies but few still having trouble with health, except brother Martin who traveled to his village to help the wife because there was a serious accident in Cameroon where a train went off the rails and many people died. His son was in the train he sustained serious injuries and is in the hospital for medical attention. Keep that family in your prayers please.

   This weekend some students went to 5 different locations, while I took a group of students to a virgin land in Ombe village to preach and teach and to establish a new congregation. It was a call from a brother who just moved there with his wife and cannot afford to go to Mutengene for worship. We are always ready for calls like this , so we made it to that village and Christ was felt by many.

Your brother,

Elangwe

BVBI-Wotutu, Cameroon

Vocational training in Nigeria

Dearest in Christ,

Greetings from students and staff of Bear Valley Bible Institute of Nigeria & Southwest School of Evangelism, Ibadan, Oyo State. We closed all first semester classes and tests on Friday afternoon, October 14, 2016.

VOCATIONAL WEEKS:Twelve students are now with me for their vocational training in Electrician, Tailoring, Welding, Computing, Aluminum work, and Video Coverage & Editing. Ten are with Bro. Kayode Solomon Eniafe for Agric and NAPPMED while five are also in the campus for Agric (Fisheries ,etc)  and the remain aged students return to their congregations to help in evangelism.

ONIKOKORO /GBONGUDU CONGREGATION : Bro. Emmanuel Okpachui led in songs at yesterday open-air Bible lectureship and Bro. Lawrence Dada taught on "Save yourselves from this. crooked generation" while Bro. Iyiola Segun served as the interpreter. On Sunday, October 16, 2016, Bro.Emmanuel Okpachui taught the woman on Preacher's responsibilities to the church while Bro. Makinde Emmanuel taught the men class and Bro.  Godwin Ofem handled the children class . We are 56 in attendance with a total collection of N4,470.

AT ASEJIRE IN OSUN STATE: Bro.Kayode Solomon Eniafe reported the conversion of a soul at Asejire congregation as the result of our studentsoutreach of Saturday.

We thank you all for your love and cares. May The Lord continue to bless our work together in Jesus Christ name, amen.

I remain your fellow soldier of Master Jesus ,
Makinde Ebenezer Olufemi (Director of Studies)
BVBIN & SWSE,Ibadan,Oyo State.

The latest from the Normans

Mason and Haley Norman have been busy in Arusha, Tanzania, as well as preparing for their upcoming furlough. You can read their latest report HERE. 

Campaign success in Cameroon

Greetings from Cameroon,

     It is great to be on line this weekend with the report from the school and the Church. Our week was a great one with the students and the staff with whom we are doing our best to depopulate hell and to populate the kingdom of heaven which is a very noble job and pleasant to do.

     Five of our students went out for weekend evangelism and all of them have come back successfully. We give thanks to God for His doing. The almighty is great and added three precious souls this week including sis Mary the wife of Philip one of our student in Mbanga and we salute that decision of her part.We keep on praying for these souls.

God bless,

Ititi Benedict Nimending

BVBI-Mbanga, Cameroon

New servants in Chimala

We arrived in Chimala, Tanzania just over a week ago. This is our first time to be in Tanzania and we will be here for the next year working with the Chimala Mission and the Chimala Bible School in particular.

I hit the ground running as I have already spoken in Chapel four times.  Last Friday, October 14, I started teaching a short course on the book of Revelation to the second year English speaking students.  This class will meet for three Fridays and has 3 students. The students will be graduating on November 3 and going back to their respective communities.

We (my wife Carol and I ) are excited to have the opportunity to work with the church here in southern Tanzania. For anyone who wants to follow our work we have set us a blog at rogersafricanmission.wordpress.com. We are trying to keep it up to date, but with the intermittent internet at times we are slow in updating it.

Richard Rogers

rrogers33@hotmail.com

Annual Leadership Conference is a success

    I am happy for the privilege God is providing me to share with you the happiest and most encouraging moment we had at Andrew Conally School Of Preaching.  God is blessing this school richly by giving us opportunity to teach and serve Him. Tanzania Leadership Conference (TLC) is an event, which is hosted by Andrew Connally School Of preaching to teach Christian community.  This is first conference done without our beloved brother Cy. I believe that prayers works as God promised. We have great hope and expectation to have our brother back, but all things will be done in the will of our almighty God.  (Faithful is the saying, If a man seeketh the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work).

 This year theme was “seeking the office”. Over one hundred and thirty participants from sixty different congregations around East Africa attended the conference. Many churches were only able to send one or two representatives because of distance but it was amazing conference.  On Sunday service (which we did together with Kisongo Church, the congregation close to school) two hundred and fifty people attended that worship. 

One of the topics highly debated among the brotherhood especially in East Africa is seeking for a position in the church especially electing elders in the church. The Andrew Connally School Of preaching acknowledged that the only way it can help and serve to the Christian community is arranging seminar which may help to solve the current leadership problem in the church. 

  Moreover this time we had amazing and an experience teachers on the subject, who helped participants to have great desire to be leaders in the church. This seminar also intended to help our students to be more active in the churches are coming from. Apart from that, students are well trained practically to serve Lord wherever they go through this conference.  This year also we were able to get people from Kigoma region, which is at the border of Democratic Of Congo, this place may be far than those who are coming from Uganda. This is to show how the gospel is penetrating to the interior.

   Thank you everyone who is working with school and the church in general. Also I would like to thank all teachers of TLC who taught in this conference, always you are in our prayer support on any thing.  To our supporters this cannot be done without you, always God is pleased with those who are thinking about Him first. We thank you also for your prayers and the encouragement we receive from you always.  

In His service,

Ahimidiwe Kimaro

 Director, Andrew Connally School of Preaching

A Bear Valley Bible Institute International extension school

Arusha, Tanzania

My visit to Tanzania

I have just returned from a visit to Tanzania. The visit had three purposes: visit with the staff and students in Chimala at the Chimala Bible Institute; visit with the staff and students at the Andrew Connally School of Preaching in Arusha; and to speak twice on the Tanzanian Leadership Conference. 

As is always the case, I was blessed for having been with the brethren in both locations. In Chimala there are currently 26 students and the next graduation is rapidly approaching. This year they have ramped up their evangelism efforts and the Kingdom has already grown as a result!

From Chimala I travelled north to Arusha; a place I first visited and taught in 2003. This school currently has 27 students and has been dear to me for many years. The highlight of the visit was to see so many former students! These men are serving God in mighty ways (3 are now Directors of Bear Valley extensions) and they make their old teacher proud!

God bless our brethren in Tanzania,

Keith

New Zealand and Fiji swap teachers

The two newest schools in the Bear Valley family have been able to arrange a teacher swap, which will greatly benefit both schools. Read about it HERE. 

Sister School Teacher Trade

Bear Valley Bible Institute in Fiji is just starting out, and I was blessed to be one of the first short course teachers. I taught on The New Testament Church in October. Their director, Rocco Pierce, and I will be in communication about how he and/or his son, Jason, will be able to return the favour.

Studies have continued well. Two more courses are behind us!

We have been planning our first campaign, which is to take place in January (our summer). If the Lord wills, we will work in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand, to conduct a gospel meeting and invite the community to join in Bible study.

Please continue to pray for the school–both the instructors and students. We appreciate everyone who supports Bear Valley worldwide. We love you all. God bless you.

Keep serving Him,
Lance Mosher, BVBINZ Director

The French-speaking students in Cameroon

Greetings from this part of the globe, 

Hope all is well with the servants of God and the chosen generation.

We are so great full to be among those who think souls because it it a vocation that most precious in the sight of God thus says the writer of the book of Romans 10:15. It is really a beautiful thought.

Our week was characterized with a lot of evangelism at down beach Limbe with the ALUMNI EVANGELISTIC MISSION TEAM combined with the students of WOTUTU and MBANGA respectively. 

The team spent four good days in knocking the doors of the population of Limbe composed of both French speaking and English speaking people.They were divided into the morning and afternoon periods in other to do effective work and reach all of our demarcated area of work. Also attached to this, the open air preaching at night which was really encouraging. 

The team is gradually becoming bilingual with coming of the french speaking brothers and we experienced their work in that mixed community made up of French and English speaking people. Our mission in down ended on Sunday after worship with a fellowship meal with the souls that added to the Church. A sister was restored and three precious souls were added into the body of Christ.

The dry season in Cameroon is the period where a lot of preaching activities have been organized and the month of October is a transitional period where by we do have heavy rains and good climate.

There was a seminar with only sisters of all congregations in the french speaking part of Cameroon and the Mbanga congregation represented and they spent three days. They had as part of their activity distribution of tracks along the streets of Douala and inviting people to come attend worship with the local congregation.

Thank God every body return home safely. OUR MISSION IS EVANGELISM AND EVANGELISM IS OUR MISSION. Go preach the word to every creature every where anywhere.

In Him,

Ititi

Campaign report from Cameroon

Dearest in Christ,

       Greetings from this end. We do hope this report finds you in good health. We are doing our best and we have just returned from mission work in different locations; preaching and teaching the truth with all amount of boldness and zeal.

     As I write this report, all of us that went out are back. I was in two locations half a day each to meet up with some pressing issues. Thanks for your prayers for safety as we travel across difficult roads and fast running rivers.

  Over the weekend all the graduates of our school and the current students and students from the French school met in Down beach congregation where one of our graduates, Evang Ebage Micheal, is serving the Lord. It was great and we thank God as the lessons were good, not only to win souls into the family of God, but also to nurture the souls who are already in Christ.

       More plans for evangelism will be done in Bonjongo, a virgin land and Mile four where we have a young congregation. The evangelism in Wotutu will be mild , because we are already doing more daily through our early morning preaching and our Saturday evangelism house to house.

      God bless you. We thank you for all that you are doing for the work here.

      Please pray for the Brightland Christian comprehensive college as we are still face lots of challenges to meet up with the government requirements and to make the dirt floor have cements on them.

Elangwe and family

By His grace Director BVBIC-Wotutu

The first report from Fiji

Jason Pierce has filed the first report from the new school in Fiji and you will want to read it. Simply click HERE to see his report. 

The Normans report from Arusha

Mason and Haley Norman report, among other things, about the Leadership Conference in Arusha. Click HERE to read the report. 

A seminar and upcoming graduation in Ghana

Dear Brethren,

    We happy to send to you reports for the month of August and September, 2016. In the month of August, our students who were due to be graduated wrote their final examinations. They then joined in this year’s seminar for preachers and church leaders held from Monday, 12 – Thursday, 15th September, 2016.

GRADUATION

    Our next graduation is on the 29th of October 2016. Sixteen students who had gone through the two-year course would be recognized and awarded their certificates.

NEW ADMISSIONS

    Twenty-one new students have been offered admission to do the two-year course. Classes have already begun. Below are some pictures showing some of the current students.

COPIER MACHINE

    As stated in our recent reports, our copier machine has been inoperational for about three months now. Copying handouts for our new students has been a problem. We would want to appeal once again if you can assist us to purchase a new machine.

PS: Brother Max we are please working on the figures for the coming graduation. We will inform you immediately all is settled. Thank you.

We would again ask for your continuous prayers for the work here and for our new students for God to give us the needed strength to be able to go through the next two years of study.

We also would want to say “thank you” and may God richly bless you all for keeping your support coming all these years. May He richly bless you all.

CHARLES

16 students begin the new year in Ukraine

Dear brothers and sisters,

   In my monthly report for September I'd like to share the last news of the Bible Institute Bear Valley - Ukraine as well as our plans and our victories in the Lord's vineyard.

  The school year started on September 5th. This year we have 16 students in the program. The students from all parts of Ukraine came to study in Bela Tserkva. One of them whose name is Alexander was able to leave the occupied territories and join us to study in the program. We have big plans for this group of students. Some churches have sent their own representatives to study so that upon graduation they can return to their home congregations and serve as ministers. Being a part of church life in Ukraine, I am able to closely observe the progress in the ministry of our local congregations. Our churches used to wait for the arrival of the missionaries who would advise them with strategies and they wouldn't make any plans of their own. But now I am able to see the work of the congregations who run men's meetings and make plans for the congregational growth. They realize by now that they'll need additional ministers, preachers, Sunday school and ladies' class teachers. When they send off their Christians to be our students, they pray for the person and hope to receive a prepared servant in the end.

   In September the first year students had the following courses: How did we get the Bible? (taught by Dennis Sopelnik), Homiletics I (by Stanislav Kuropyatnikov), The Plan of Salvation (Jim Sherman). The second year students had Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther (Denton Landon), Minor Prophets II (Andrew Zhuravlev), The Period between the Testaments (Dennis Sopelnik). We are very thankful to God and all the brethren who help us in our work. Thus, Jim Sherman tries and comes to Ukraine twice a year to teach in our Institute. He's started this ministry from the first year of our program when the Instituted was first opened. Next year we will reach 20th year of our cooperation. His work in Ukraine is an encouraging example for us.

    In the middle of September two of our students Yuri Romanov and Alexey Mitskutis took part in an evangelical campaign in Kharkov. Almost the whole week they've been giving out booklets, visiting schools, hospitals and other public places. As the result of this effort some new visitors attended a seminar on "Non-denominational Christianity". Currently a similar evangelical effort is taking place in the city of Chernivtsi and Alexey went there with his family.

   I am very happy to share with you that one of our graduates Sergei Pavlenkov is doing internship with Poltava Church of Christ at present. This congregation had a difficult past and a few months ago they lost their last preacher. They decided to contact us and ask for help. We recommended our 2016 graduate Sergei and his wife Lyudmila. They moved there and placed membership with that congregation where Sergei is hoping to preach the Word of God. His ministry is in need of financial aid and if you have any suggestions or ideas please contact me.

 Also at the time being the establishment of a new congregation in the city of Kremenchug is under discussion.  Our graduate and my right hand Alexey Mitskutis would like to take an active part in this work.  His family is ready to move to that city and start the work there.  Right now they are making all the necessary preparations and are working on creating a team for this ministry. So as you can see the Lord still gives us grace despite of all the difficulties. With His blessings we are trying to move forward and spread the Gospel all over Ukraine.

Everything is well with Bela Tserkva Church of Christ. Our students are the wonderful addition to the local congregation and it looks like we will have to buy another set of chairs to be able to accommodate everybody. A few Sundays ago after the services we all had an outdoor picnic with our spiritual family. 

The Sunday school is growing as well. Every Sunday we have 10+ children. And we hope the numbers will increase. It's such a joy to see that children come specifically to study the Bible (not English and not to be entertained).

All students and instructors send you their greetings and thanks for your help and support. We still need your prayers for our country that is still at war.

Your brother,

Dennis Sopelnik, the Director of the Bible Institute.

To see the pictures that accompany this report, please click HERE 

KSOP begins a new batch with a full class!

Dear brethren, 

Greetings to you from the Kenya School of Preaching, Kisumu. 

The long awaited gamma class is has arrived and all 20 students are in school and settling to new environment, food, and life. 

The classes began well on October 3rd, Elias is teaching Genesis and Synoptic gospel. Bernard Kagaga will teach the New Testament Church while I am teaching the book of Acts, Homiletics 1 and English 1.

We have made changes in the school to create room for the library which is growing steadily. The changes have seen the dean and the secretary pushed to smaller space, but all is in the interest of giving quality training first priority. 

During the four years, 37 men have been sent into the Lord's field. Every class has been in the fore front of helping us effect good changes that keep making the school better. 

We trust this class will be better than the previous ones in class and evangelism. 

We also pray that this group will be involved in one gospel campaign at least once a year and help evangelize the local congregations every quarter to learn and gain experience. 

John Kimani who graduated this year August is already showing why the preaching is worth the sacrifices being made by generous brethren. Two weeks ago he planted a new church in Nyahururu town with 6 souls obeying the gospel. 

Paul Karisa sent me a text message thanking the school for the training which has enabled him to have bible studies with Muslims in Mombasa. 

Jeremiah Bor and two other former students Sammy and Kiplangat who also graduated in August helped to restore three churches to true worship. They are still pursuing other liberal churches in the hilly region of Rift Valley. 

Joseph Omondi, who graduated in the first class led a gospel campaign and reported five baptisms in the congregation where he is the preacher. 

Such exciting reports helps to add me gas to keep on keeping on. 

Lastly I thank the leadership of Tanzania Leadership Conference for the honor to speak at the conference on two assigned topics. 

It was great being with Keith Karsajian and having a chat with the very man who helped establish KSOP. 

It's an honor and great working with you. Keep my family in your prayers 

Brotherly Love, 

Charles Ogutu