October
A Report from Pakistan
The Lord’s move in Pakistan began in 2012. The first local church was established in Lahore (the second largest city) in March 2013. The second was established in Islamabad (the capital city) in March 2014. The third was established in Karachi (the largest city) in November 2015, and the fourth was established in Rawalpindi (the fourth largest city) in November 2016.
The pandemic that began in 2020 disrupted the rhythm of our church life. From the outside, it may seem that we have been disturbed by the enemy. But in reality, we must thank the Lord for the special grace given to us in such a special environment. We sing praise to Him, for nothing can stop the move of the Lord on the earth. The damaging work of the enemy only proves that the grace of the Lord is sufficient in all kinds of circumstances! The following are some encouraging reports from the four local churches in the recent months.
The church in Lahore
There are 139 saints in the church life here, meeting in four districts. The average number in attendance on Lord’s Day is about 49. Weekly meetings include the Lord’s Day meeting, prayer meeting, small group gathering, fellowship among the responsible brothers, and sisters’ meeting. During the past months, through fellowship with the older brothers, we have seen that the primary way for the church to go on is through prayer. Prayer causes us to be joined to God’s will and to gain God’s strengthening. So the whole church, beginning with the responsible brothers, has been practicing to live a life of prayer. We begin every meeting with at least 30 minutes of prayer; we practice to have at least 20 minutes of personal prayer and 30 minutes of corporate prayer every day. When the responsible brothers took the lead to have this kind of exercise, the sisters followed suit. The saints sign in daily in the online prayer groups and are mutually encouraged.
In addition, in order to help the saints understand the truth and take the way of being constituted with the truth, we set up a plan for truth pursuit: a daily reading of the Life-studies as well as three chapters of the Old Testament and one chapter of the New Testament. After three months of practice, we finished reading all the Life-study messages of Matthew and some Life-study messages of Genesis. At present, ten saints are still following this reading schedule.
The church in Islamabad
The number of saints in the church life is 145, meeting in four districts. The average number in attendance on Lord’s Day is about 114. Weekly meetings include the brothers’ service meeting, prayer meeting, and small group meeting every week. The saints also go out to preach the gospel every week. Besides, we also have the sisters’ meeting, young people’s meeting, and children’s meetings in various districts during the week.
The saints have been closely following the Lord’s speaking in the seven annual feasts to enter into the fresh speaking of the Lord, receive His present burden, and learn to serve and coordinate in one accord. A group of saints function as priests in the church life. The serving brothers from all districts come together every Monday to pray in one accord for the various needs of the church and to seek the Lord’s up-to-date leading. After the meeting, the brothers would then labor and serve diligently, faithfully carrying out the burden from the fellowship.
With the resumption of physical meetings, we also resumed the preaching of the gospel through door-knocking. About 40 brothers and sisters participate in the weekly gospel move. Furthermore, recently the church has been blessed by the Lord in the matter of shepherding. Some brothers have been praying for the weak, backslidden, and dormant saints in the church life. Although these brothers are busy at work, they still give priority to the shepherding of the brothers and sisters. Through their visiting, shepherding and having love feasts with these ones after work, many backslidden ones were restored. In June and July, the average attendance on Lord’s Day was at about 100; in August, that number rose to 108, and in September, reached 120. Thank the Lord! The Lord has truly poured out His blessing on the church through the one accord of the brothers!
The church in Karachi
The number of saints in the church is 42, and the attendance on Lord’s Day is about 28. Every morning, the brothers have corporate morning revival. They practice PSRP in order to dig into the Holy Word for Morning Revival. Every Lord’s Day, the local brothers take the lead to practice prophesying. Once a month, the saints gather for a blending meeting to share on crucial points of the truth from books of the Bible. In this meeting, the saints are led to memorize and speak the truth in order to be constituted with the truth.
Due to the pandemic, we stopped our gospel outreach for a period of time. On September 22, five local saints teamed up for outdoor gospel preaching. At present, we are gradually recovering the preaching of the gospel. Since we never had our own meeting facility, all church meetings were very restricted. We recently purchased a place for meeting that can accommodate about 50 people. It was officially put to use in October. All gatherings have been held online since the outbreak of the pandemic, except for the Lord’s Day meetings. Now that we have our new meeting hall, we hope that all types of physical meetings will gradually be resumed that the saints’ enjoyment of the Lord may be enriched.
The church in Rawalpindi
The number of saints in the church life is 34. Despite the fact that many of the saints came from Christian backgrounds, they are unfamiliar with the Bible. Many lack a basic foundation of the truth even though they’ve been practicing daily morning revival, attending weekly meetings and prophesying on Lord’s Days since coming into the church life. A year ago we began to examine how we might lay a good foundation of the truth for the word of the Lord to dwell in us richly. We began by reading through the Book of Genesis in two weeks, going through five chapters a day. Before we started reading, we each wrote down a summary point for each of the fifty chapters of Genesis based on the outline of the Recovery Version and on our understanding of the word. After reading five chapters each day, we would take a few minutes to review what we read and the five summary points of the five chapters. We would then repeat these points again and again during the day and speak it to one another. Through constant repetition, the fifty points of Genesis were impressed into us. In this way, the Book of Genesis was opened up to us. The brothers and sisters all affirmed that the practice was very helpful. What we gained in two weeks surpassed what we had gained in the past ten years.
Applying the same method, we continued to read through the Bible chronologically except for the books of poetry, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the short epistles in the New Testament. We not only memorized the main points of the Bible, but also used these points as the framework to enter into the details of each book. We hope that through faithfully entering into the word, everyone will have obtained a solid foundation of the truth in three years. We also hope that in the coming years, the saints will be able to enter richly into the crystallization-study of the Bible and other publications. Ultimately, we pray that the saints will arrive at the peak of the divine revelation and be brought into the experiences and growth in life to become the overcomers.
Last year, the co-workers gave a fellowship on the burden of migration to cities which were without the Lord’s testimony. The local saints received such a burden and have been praying for this matter. Three couples are now preparing to move to another city. Please pray for them. We hope that the testimony of the Lord can be brought to all the cities in Pakistan through the migration of the saints.
Prayer Items: 1. Pray for the perfecting of the local saints. We are planning a one-week perfecting raining for the serving brothers in November. The content will be mainly from the International Training for Elders and Responsible Ones held this fall. We are also planning for a three-month perfecting training for the young people from January to March next year. May the Lord gain some useful vessels through the training! 2. Pray for the propagation through migration. May the Lord release some families from the four existing churches to migrate and grant them thoroughfare!
Turkey
Some saints went to a city on the coast of the Black Sea for three days and studied the book of Revelation with a sister in August. The sister told the saints that the missionaries she met were not willing to explain Revelation to her, so she felt that something was missing. During these three days, from morning to evening, they entered the texts with the outlines and the saints explained all the important items in the book of Revelation to her. The words of the Lord were opened to her in a very solid way. After this three-day fellowship, she fundamentally changed her goals in her Christian life and advanced in her experience and enjoyment of the Lord. Please pray that the Lord will continue to speak to her, enlighten her, and lead her more into spiritual revelation and reality. Please also pray for the readers who received the Rhema books and the ministry books. May the Lord use these books to open their hearts and eyes that they may understand His will and seek fellowship with the saints.
Most of the local saints have been vaccinated and therefore have begun to visit one another at home again. May the Lord use such traffic to strengthen the communication and building among the saints and open more doors to the gospel. Please also pray for more saints to come to Turkey for coordination and propagation.
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