The Lottie
Moon Christmas Offering® enables IMB missionaries to live and work at the
forefront of lostness and extend our witness through their full-time ministry. Southern
Baptists send missionaries from their churches, through IMB, to go into the
world making disciples in the name of Jesus. In that partnership, Southern
Baptists provide the funding to send and support these missionaries and their
ministries. The more resources they provide, the more missionaries can be sent.
Week of Prayer 2014
Pregnant women become catalysts
Pregnant women become catalysts
Women in
various stages of pregnancy or post-pregnancy surround IMB missionary Nancy
Potter* and some Southeast Asian health workers. They chat excitedly about the
discipleship and training classes the day before, while waiting for their
weekly health class.
When Nancy
and her husband, William,* started these pregnancy health classes to combat the
high maternal mortality rate in this rural area, they never imagined it would
be the catalyst for starting house churches. The missionaries from Oklahoma
combined aspects of a discipleship and church-planting program called Training
for Trainers (T4T) with human needs projects. They taught local Christians not
only to teach about healthy pregnancies and caring for newborns but to share
Christ. The concept resulted in many new house churches in an area previously
unreached.
“I’m not
sure if it started with the women because when you are pregnant, it’s nine
months of uncertainty, or what,” Nancy says. “But if you look at how most of
the new house churches started, it’s through women. One came to faith and then
started praying for everyone else. Other women then joined her, and they prayed
for their husbands.”
After that,
husband after husband gave up drinking and gambling to follow Jesus. William
says the rapid growth is a direct result of these praying pregnant women.
Pray for an awakening in this ministry, which
the Potters feel is on the cusp of a great revival.
Pray for open hearts and more
disciples willing to share.
Scripture to Claim:
But ye shall receive power, after that the
Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in
Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of
the earth. Acts 1:8
