Harvesters International Ministries is committed to being a part of the Great Commission. It's with that mission that evangelism and church planting are at the center of everything we do. Our national partners are made up of men and women dedicating their lives to evangelism with the hope that they may reach their own people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Grace Outreach Mission is no exception. Here a small group of believers is reaching their community for Jesus.

Working in conjunction with Face 2 Faith Ministries, Harvesters was able to arrange evangelism training for area pastors. The week-long training is designed to equip local pastors with the evangelism tools necessary to engage their community with the Gospel. This training of one-on-one evangelism is proving incredibly effective and bearing much fruit. It's been reported that many have been saved that had come to learn to evangelize others.

Pastor Philip Ochieng and Grace Outreach Mission hosted one such training on April 20-24 in Uriri, Kenya. All reports indicate that the training was a great success and is currently bearing much fruit. Please read Pastor Philip's summary of the training...

"On April 20 through 24, we at Grace Outreach (Mission) in Uriri, Kenya, had the privilege to host a pastor's conference on Faith Evangelism Training, which was attended by over 40 pastors and church leaders from various local churches in the community.

The training was very informative and helpful to the participants of the training. From the registration process we could sense that there were doubts on whether anything new could be learnt on a common topic as how to evangelize. I personally had to convince some to come for the training mainly because Ed from Harvesters highly recommended it and again because I had a chance to meet with the training director Don Honeywell when I was in the US in March. I got convinced through his talk that it was a worthwhile training. As a matter of facts a good number of the participants did say they wanted to try it out on the first two days. To our surprise, on the very first day all the participants were convinced that they have been doing evangelism the wrong way.

The training was so helpful to the extent that not a single participant missed a session throughout the training days.

There were some very old men who have been leading congregation in their churches but could testify that they have been doing it all wrong. These were men from an Anglican church. We had men and women from all denominations around including Seventh Day Adventist.

All praised the training as beneficial and promised to go and teach the same in their respective churches. From my interactions with some of the participants, they have been using the training resources to evangelize their churches. This is because they came to understand that a good number of their believers are not actually born again. They feel that the first calling is to straighten their congregation first. With a stronger spiritual base they can go far.

Something that is unique to our environment and it came out even when we could go out for visitation during the training sessions, is the fact that almost 90% of the people here are related to a church. They may not be attending church at all but should something happen to them or they have a need that calls for spiritual attention, they have a church somewhere. Now such people as we realize are not willing to forsake their traditional or family churches to join new ones. A good number felt encouraged to be more committed to their mother churches and in turn we too never enforced it upon them to join our church.

We have been able to make a number of follow-ups on many homes and we see them embracing the truth and thereby growing. We do believe that with time they will want to be feed more and may turn to the source instead of getting it as piecemeal.

We have had many encouraging reports of people's faith being strengthened more church participation and to this we thank our Lord for the work remains His. We shall continue to practice what we learnt through the training and trust the Lord to do the increase as He is the Lord of the Harvest.

We want Don and His team to know that the seeds that were planted are growing and will surely bear much fruit. As the Lord opens more doors may they be more willing to go and do to others the good thing they have done among us."

For Don and his team, this was one of the most unique training sessions they had done. Early on they were concerned by the attendance of the Seventh Day Adventist Bishop and four SDA pastors. There had been a request by the Bishop to do the evangelism solo since he was concerned what his constituents might think, but Don and his group held to their established training style and all complied with the format. The summary of their week-long training is as follows:

"The graduation was a blast; all the Pentecostal, Episcopal, Seven Day Advent, and Anglican Pastors were so grateful and are ready to use Faith in their home churches. I've seen one other time when all the denominations came together and focused on what we have in common rather then what separates us. We started with 41 students, graduated 41 and had 56 professions of Faith along the way."

Harvesters International Ministries is committed to do our part to accomplish the Great Commission. Our national partners are working daily to see to it that Jesus Christ is proclaimed among their own people. Harvesters and Face 2 Faith Ministries are working to ensure they have the encouragement, support, and tools necessary to effectively reach their communities with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you would like more information on Harvesters or Face 2 Faith Ministries and how you can support evangelism training please feel free to contact us and we will be glad to help you.