Lori, a Southern Baptist Missionary, sent some information and we wanted to forward this to you for prayer. Please pray for wisdom and mighty hand of God to be upon His people. Below is the information Lori gave to send out to those in prayer for God’s work in Africa.

Dear Friends,

Please join with me in praying for Mali. I am bringing two particularly urgent prayer requests. The first is regarding the unrest in Mali. You may have seen something in the news last week about insecurity in Mali. Things have been tense since the kidnapping of 5 Westerners November 24 and 25 in Hombori and Timbuktu.

In mid-January, a separatist group operating in “the North” of Mali attacked different towns in the desert, fighting against government forces. This all happened far from Bamako(the capital city) and the city where I live. This week, there has been growing unrest in Bamako, Sikasso and a few other cities, with people protesting how the situation is being handled and sometimes targeting the ethnic groups whom they deem responsible. Things were particularly tense last Thursday in Bamako and Friday in Sikasso We were told to stay at home. In case you are wondering I was already in the village at this time so I was not traveling in either city. I was safe.

Things have calmed considerably this week, but it is unclear how things will develop in the days to come. As far as we know, no one was killed in the protests in Bamako, Sikasso or in other cities.

The article[s] below give a good summary of what has happened:
Reuters article on Mali: http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE81201C20120203?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
BBC article on Mali: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16853692

Please note that these protests are also happening in the midst of:
• the ongoing insecurity in the North of the country
• Presidential elections planned for April 29 and May 13
• problems in the educational system
• a growing food crisis in many areas of the country

Individually these cause tension, collectively you can imagine the overwhelming atmosphere of unease throughout the country.

The second urgent request regards the food crisis in Mali. In my area we are doing better than most; however, since there is not much food throughout the country the prices have risen sharply making it difficult to even buy what is available. It will only become more and more difficult. Many people are leaving their towns and villages in search for food; selling all they have to make sure their wives and kids have food to eat.

I know of one man who walked with his family for days in search for food. He didn’t find much and what he did find he gave to his family. Then he himself died of starvation. There are many stories, I could tell you that would break your heart.

Our mission office is doing surveys right now in the areas hardest hit and looking for ways to bring in food. Please pray for these families and areas that are struggling to survive at this time. The situation is desperate all over Mali.

Thank you for joining me in prayer.
Lori

STORY DON GRAHAM

Tears streamed down Sam James’ face as he stared into the abyss outside his airplane window. Somewhere in the darkness below lay the country he risked his life ¬— and the lives of his wife, Rachel, and their four children — to save. But unlike so many American men and women who came to Vietnam, James wasn’t a soldier. He was a missionary.

It was April 1975 and Saigon would fall to North Vietnamese forces within a week. James had spent the past few months bargaining with God for more time, but there was no more room for negotiation. Two weeks earlier, his family had flown to a safer place; James would join them there.

“I had a tremendous urge to try to stop the plane and go back to the place that I loved so dearly. …” he says. “I remember lying in bed at night and saying, ‘Lord, if you just let me live until tomorrow morning, I’ll get out. … And then the sun would come up, the birds would sing and everything looked nice. And I’d say, ‘OK Lord, [give me] one more day.’”

Waves of doubt — and regret — flooded the North Carolina native’s heart as his plane circled Saigon and turned toward the South China Sea. How could he abandon the Vietnamese people after pouring nearly 14 years of his life into theirs? What would happen to the newborn churches he helped start? Or to the Vietnamese Christians who filled them, some of whom he had led to faith?

These converts weren’t notches on a belt to measure evangelical worth. To James, they were family. They had laughed together over dinner at each other’s homes while their children played outside. They had carried one another’s grief when the horrors of war came close and the sadness seemed too great to bear. James had taught them, baptized them, discipled them, counseled them, officiated marriages and led funerals for them, all the while sharing the most sacred and intimate aspect of his life — a relationship with Jesus Christ.

But God had a plan to safeguard the seeds that James and his fellow missionaries had planted through years of sweat and sacrifice. Their efforts freed thousands from a centuries-old cycle of spiritual slavery to ancestor worship and Buddhism, spawning dozens of new Vietnamese churches.

Only one of those churches — Grace Baptist in Saigon (today, Ho Chi Minh City) — would survive the dark years that followed Vietnam’s communist revolution and eventually give birth to a vibrant network of Baptist churches that are today making Christ’s name known throughout Vietnam.

All of this was possible, James says, because Southern Baptists were willing to answer God’s Great Commission call. Their prayers and giving supported more than 50 missionaries who served in Vietnam between 1959 and 1975 — including the Jameses. In 1970, Southern Baptists also provided the $50,000 needed to buy the land and building for Grace Baptist — where the church remains today.

“When the end came and South Vietnam collapsed, this church was here,” James says. “And it became the identity of Baptists in Vietnam. … 48 years later, this church building stands as the home of the [Vietnamese Baptist] convention, as a training center for the [Vietnamese] Baptist Bible Institute, as the home of Grace Baptist Church and as a source of church planting in this country.”

But that victory came at a heavy price. The decade that followed South Vietnam’s collapse was a crucible for Vietnamese believers suddenly forced to survive in a society that demanded loyalty to the Communist Party. And Hanoi’s Marxist ideology made little room for faith.

“We were threatened, we were questioned, interrogated and some people in our churches were persecuted. Some were put into jail. Some were beaten,” says Huy Le, who today pastors Grace Baptist Church.

Huy was just 6 when the North Vietnamese army captured Saigon. He vividly remembers the moment when he knew the city was lost — besieged by the incessant drone of helicopters, bright red tracer rounds cutting “beams of fire” through the night sky and the rumble of North Vietnamese tanks outside his bedroom window.

Huy’s father, Chanh Le, embodies the genesis of Southern Baptists’ work in Vietnam. Chanh was the first Vietnamese led to Christ by the first Southern Baptist missionary to Vietnam, Herman Hayes. In 1970, Chanh became Grace Baptist’s first Vietnamese pastor, succeeding Sam James. Chanh turned down multiple opportunities to flee the country before its collapse, choosing instead to shepherd his congregation as they endured countless interrogations, harassment, forced-labor “reeducation” camps, food shortages and economic depression.

“[Our] faith in Christ was the reason for us to live,” says Huy, who began pastoring Grace Baptist in 2010 following his father’s retirement after 40 years of service. “Thanks to God’s grace, we could suffer and keep our faith.”

Today Grace Baptist is again facing revolution. But instead of political dissonance, this new wave of change is driven by economic aspiration. Vietnam’s government is opening the once- isolated nation with the aim of transforming it into Southeast Asia’s economic powerhouse. And as better education and more lucrative jobs lure young Vietnamese from rural rice paddies to urban offices and factories, the standard of living continues to rise. According to Vietnam’s General Statistics Office, the average monthly income more than tripled between 1999 and 2008 and the nation’s average urban population jumped by at least 25 percent.

Reaching this young, career-focused and typically more materialistic demographic with the Gospel presents new challenges for churches like Grace Baptist. Much like their Southern Baptist counterparts in the United States, Huy believes Vietnamese Baptists must be willing to change in order to remain relevant to future generations, repackaging timeless truth in more contemporary ways.

“Young people have more opportunities … and, at the same time, more temptations,” Huy says. “In the past, people had nothing … and they longed for some god up there to lay their hope on. Now, people have so many things to follow.”

But as more Vietnamese move from poverty to prosperity, some are already recognizing that money isn’t an end unto itself.

Lam Quach is a 35-year-old husband and father of two rambunctious boys who lives in a modern home not far from Grace Baptist Church. Despite a successful career as a manager at a Saigon chemical company, Quach knew something was missing in his life. He heard about Jesus through a friend, and with guidance from the wife of a Vietnamese Baptist pastor, Quach and his wife, Hanh, believed.

“I believed there was a great God who was over everything … but I didn’t know anything about Him,” Quach says. “It was only when I began to experience prayer and experiment with the Christian life that I really began to understand who God is and read the Bible.”

Perhaps the most tangible expression of the couple’s new faith was their decision to destroy an altar they’d used for ancestor worship, a common fixture in Vietnamese homes.

“It was just a little altar with two pictures. One is the god of the earth … and the other was the god who brings blessings,” Quach says. He invited Pastor Huy to their home to help remove the altar. Huy read from Psalm 115, illustrating the differences between false idols and the one, true God.

“I took a hammer and smashed it to pieces,” Quach says, explaining that he wanted to make sure the altar would never be used again, by anyone. “I felt like I’d been set free.”

Quach and Hanh now attend Grace Baptist where they were baptized in the fall of 2010.

Vietnam’s economic ambitions have also helped win unprecedented freedom for religious groups, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City where police shakedowns might draw the eye — and ire — of the city’s growing international business community. In 2008, the Vietnamese Baptist Convention was legally recognized by the Vietnamese government, a move that legitimized the church’s presence in the country while allowing greater freedom to share the Gospel. Though the government still tightly regulates religious activity, Grace Baptist’s church-planting network is spreading to villages formerly bound by bureaucratic red tape that seemed unbreakable only a few years ago.

Dien Nguyen pastors An Phuoc Baptist Church in Cai Lay, a town roughly 50 miles southwest of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta. Last year, Dien approached authorities in the Tien Giang province for permission to start new churches in four nearby villages. To Dien’s surprise, An Phuoc Baptist was instead authorized to work anywhere in the entire province — a chance to reach more than 1.6 million people with the Gospel — no strings attached.

“This was a miracle,” Dien says. “We didn’t dare to even dream about it.”

But such miracles are still only a beginning. Despite the legacy of missionaries like Sam James, today evangelical Christians make up less than 2 percent of Vietnam’s 91 million people. Most have yet to hear the Gospel.

“I believe there is hope for Vietnam,” Huy says. “It’s just not easy. Some … have said that [our] people have hard hearts. That might be true, but there are seekers out there. … The question is whether churches are willing to take opportunities to win these people.”

Don Graham can be reached at don.graham3@gmail.com.

Awana at Park Lake

We will begin our Awana program Aug 31, it will run on Wednesdays from 6:00-7:30pm.  There is a community meal prior at 5:30 in our Fellowship Hall, as well as Jr High/Sr High and Adult Discussion Groups that meet from 6:15-7:30.  We would love to minister to your whole family at this dynamic mid-week gathering!

What is Awana?

Based in the Chicago area, Awana is the only organization with fully integrated evangelism and discipleship programs for ages 2 to 18 that actively involve parents, church leaders and mentors. Each week, more than 1.5 million children and youth, 250,000 volunteers and 170-plus field staff take part in Awana in over 22,000 churches in the U.S. and internationally. (Learn about the prayer, vision, mission and values of Awana.)

Awana works with churches from 100 different denominations. It began as a children’s program at the North Side Gospel Center in Chicago in 1941. Lance Latham, North Side’s senior pastor, collaborated with the church’s youth director, Art Rorheim, to develop weekly clubs that would appeal to churched and non-churched kids, lead them to trust Christ for salvation and grow them in enduring faith and service to God.

Other churches learned about the success of the program and inquired about its availability. In 1950, Latham and Rorheim founded Awana as a parachurch organization. By 1960, 900 churches had started Awana programs. By 1972 Awana had begun its first international club. Today children and youth in more than 100 countries participate in Awana programs, and millions of adults are alumni.

The founders of Awana derived the Awana name from the first letters of “Approved workmen are not ashamed” as taken from 2 Timothy 2:15 of the Bible.

If you’ve been attending our morning services and would like to begin learning more about the Bible and core teachings of the church I would like to invite you to check out other teaching times that are designed to deepen your understanding of our faith.  Sunday School begins at 9:30 on Sunday mornings, and is broken up in age appropriate classes from birth to age 99!  Sunday Night we have an adult Bible Study at the church from 6:00-7:00 that is currently covering the book of Genesis verse by verse, at this same time our Youth Group meets to have a worship time and then they break up in small groups to study relevant topics concerning their generation.  Finally, our most dynamic time of the week is our Wednesday Night meeting.  AWANA meets for our younger children, while the Youth Group meets for grades 6-12, and the adults meet in the Fellowship Hall and have an open discussion centered on a variety of topics covering current events and controversial topics.

Our goal here at Park Lake is to grow a healthy, vibrant church for the next generation.  You play a vital role in that, and your spiritual growth is important for all of us!  Take advantage of these opportunities as God continues to bless our church and move us forward!

Pastor Amos

  Now is the time. With the challenge we have before us to grow we need all members, new and old, to step up and become leaders in our Sunday School, children’s ministries, and nursery. By the time summer gets here we need to be averaging 200 in attendance in worship. And, by the time school starts in the fall we need to have added 25 to that number. That translates to at least two (2) new Sunday School classes and a consistent volunteer rotation in our nursery of three (3) people every Sunday morning. That is a lot of leaders. We…I need you, even if you are a new member. We are in that kind of growth. I and Karen Walsleben will be active in searching out leaders, but don’t wait for us to get to you; come to us.

  If things are good here at Park Lake then let others know. We need them too. God is in the middle of changing lives— their lives can be changed too.

 Pastor Clint

1) To learn about the Bible from top-notch teachers.

 2) To learn about living out their faith as Christians through serving others.

And in case you haven’t heard, in an effort to pay for our summer excursion WE RAISED A

TON OF MONEY AT OUR VALENTINE’S DAY BANQUET!!! So, from the bottom of our hearts, Brooke, the youth, the parents of the youth, and myself all want to thank you for your support. I am extremely pleased to inform you that every youth we have registered for mission camp this summer is just shy of being half-way paid off. Isn’t that great?!

One last thing, we still need your support. That said, we are planning our next fundraiser as a way, hopefully, to get the whole church involved and having fun together. We’ve still got a lot of planning to do, but it is going to be AWESOME. And not only that, but there may be trophies involved as well…

Wouldn’t you like to win one? More to come,

 Michael