Spring is my favorite season. Winter’s grim grip reluctantly retreats before the arrival of gentle breezes, budding trees, the delicate hues of tulips and daffodils and the joyous singing of songbirds. On my morning walks, I can almost sense the joy of nature as life blossoms once again, and I am reminded of God’s promise to Noah that, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Gen. 8.22, NRSV). God’s promise has come true once again. He is faithful!
At AFM, we are also seeing a season of new growth. In 2012, by God’s grace we established a sister missionary-sending agency in South Africa (AFM-SAT). In a local partnership with Abundant Life, a youth-evangelism ministry in South Africa, AFM-SAT is steadily growing. The first AFM-SAT missionary served in Guinea, and now six AFM-SAT short-term missionaries are serving in the Philippines and Southeast Asia. The Brights, an AFM-SAT career missionary family, are already serving on the Allaja of Mesopotamia Project in the Middle East, and two more career missionary families attended Orientation Week in March this year, held in South Africa. In February 2017, we are praying that 10 more missionaries will launch, and a mission camp meeting will be held, which more than 1,000 are expected to attend. Slowly but surely, God is giving growth, and a new door to mission has opened.
God has also been blessing His people in Latin America in incredible ways. Nowhere is this more evident than in Brazil where the Adventist Church is experiencing the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. After negotiations with the South American Division (SAD) that began in 2012, an agreement was signed with the SAD in October 2014, and we have now submitted the necessary paperwork to incorporate a mission agency in Brazil. Assuming all goes well, we anticipate being registered and operational by this fall! AFM-Brazil will be based at the Seventh-day Adventist University of Sao Paolo and will be led by a Brazilian missionary pastor who is returning from a post in the Middle East. By God’s grace, we pray for more than 30 new missionaries per year to launch from Brazil in coming years.
In both South Africa and Brazil, our purpose is clear—to open new doors to mission service for all who sense God’s call. The new missionaries will launch with the prayers, encouragement and financial support of Adventists across Brazil and South Africa. Initial funding for both Brazil and South Africa was provided by specific prayers and visionary donations, and South Africa is already almost entirely financially self-sufficient.
As I reflect on this growth, the Holy Spirit draws me back to 1 Cor. 3. We all have a part to play in building God’s kingdom, each in our way and time. Some pray, others donate, and still others go. Some are called by God to plant, others to water, and others to harvest, but all such growth comes as a gracious gift from God. Please join with me in praying for the full anointing of the Holy Spirit upon the new missionaries launching from Brazil and South Africa, that their witness will be winsome and winning, and that multitudes will enter God’s kingdom through their service. Pray that the icy grip of sin will recede among unreached peoples, and that “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (Isa. 35.10, NRSV).
