AFRICAN ENTERPRISE ZIMBABWE REPORT

May 31, 2006

African Enterprise

1. LEADERSHIP TRAINING:

Orpheus Hove was invited by the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP) to
facilitate the training of their leadership. Most members of this church are several generation Malawians in Zimbabwe. He was asked to cover subjects such as the Church and Evangelism, Church Planting and Church growth, Leadership qualities, the
Leader and Family and financial accountability, etc. The workshop was attended by 60 lay leaders and their spouses. It was intended to challenge and equip these leaders for service in 2006. The group was a mixture of both old and young, male and female and the church is still very conservative in nature. It is still using their Chewa language in preaching and singing even after years of operating in Zimbabwe. Orpheus appealed to the church as he could communicate in their language adequately. This was a wonderful opportunity to equip and impact the church We are finding more and more openings in the mainline churches which in the past seemed to be closed to our ministry because of their perceived view of the Pentecostal churches. We feel that many of the Mainline churches in our nation need to be awakened in areas of Evangelism, Church Planting, Prayer and Witnessing. The leaders were challenged to take stock of their personal and family lives and their roles in the church. At the end of the workshop many made comments, e.g.

1. The pastor said, “We have started the year on a good footing, many leaders have been shaken to think and dream big”. I will need these training sessions at least three times a year.
2. One leader said, “ I am praying that as I lead others my own family may be an example of a Christian leaders’ family. That is where the devil attacks me most, in the family. Pray for me” he said.

Time was spent in counseling and praying with leaders who had different needs. The church is now busy planning to reach out to their community with the Gospel. The church’s greatest need in our nation is, “Good leadership” with a vision and concern for the people. Your prayers for us and the whole church will be appreciated.

2. KADOMA LEADERSHIP WORKSHOP:

We ran another leadership workshop in Kadoma at the invitation of the Ministers’ fraternal. It was attended by 23 pastors and Lay leaders from eleven different denominations. At our first visit they had indicated that more than 70 pastors would attend but many were said to have had other commitments on the particular day. The three of us (Orpheus, Simukayi and Gardner) facilitated at the workshop. They requested us to address issues such as Evangelism and Church growth, Church management and the Family, Approach to Counseling, the leader and economic hardships in Zimbabwe, etc. This was a two day workshop with a full program. This turned out to be a very blessed time despite the poor attendance. The group was a mixture of pastors from the mainline churches and Pentecostal charismatic churches.

At the end of the first day of our workshop many regretted that they had not made an effort to bring as many leaders as they could. Pastor Rafemoyo of the United Methodist
Church said, “After listening to your training I will now try to organize you running this training for pastors and leaders for the whole Harare UMC circuit. “ Pastor Acub Simba of the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe said, “Our church has lost the cutting edge on evangelism and we need to seriously reconsider it after this challenge”. The Fraternal chairperson Pastor Zuze said, “Please, come back to Kodama as soon as you can and I will make sure that every pastor and leader in this town will be present”. Forgive us for our short sightedness; we never envisaged that this would be one of the best workshops to equip us as church and community leaders!” One pastor said, “Thank you very much for the trouble you took and finances you spent to benefit us and our churches. The next time you come we will try to ease your budget in a small way; we go back richer than we came. May the Lord bless you and enrich your ministry,” he said.

We were very much encouraged by the results of the workshop. Just a day before the workshop we had no money, no confirmed accommodation and three of us had to put up in one room, two in one bed in order to meet the training budget. The Lord indeed rewarded our sacrifices and for this we were glad. Yes, we will consider going back to that town towards the end of the year. These workshops are one of our strengths as we are one of the few organizations that can call the church together. We are accepted by every denomination.

3. EASTER WEEK END MINISTRIES:

This was a busy time for us here as it included two days of our Independence Celebrations. Gardner was in Bulawayo speaking at a Church conference (The Pentecostal Church of Great Britain) and Orpheus was also speaking at the conference of the Reformed Church in Zimbabwe (RCZ) for the two last days of the holidays. We have wonderful openings for ministry in different churches in the country. We thank God for these open doors He is giving us for ministry; we get more invitations from different churches than we can handle which keeps us busy outside a formal mission. Our program for the Pentecost Week is already full; we will be very busy in churches.

4. OPERATION FOXFIRE:

Foxfire teams are spreading the fire of the Gospel in the fields and great things are happening through their ministry. This year we have a team of six young evangelists who are paired to make three teams. “THE LORD IS GOOD”. In Kwe Kwe the pastor of the Evangelical church was full of excitement when he saw 23 people being baptized after the ministry of the Foxfire evangelists. The same story can be repeated in many denominations. The pastor could only say, “THE LORD IS GOOD” Many people came to know the Lord as their personal Saviour through the Foxfire ministries. In Kwe Kwe, the team was referred to as “ Angels” sent to redeem people from the power of the devil. One convert (Mrs.Deshe) after being prayed for for physical healing said, “I saw two Angels (referring to the Foxfires) coming into my room where I lay helplessly. After they prayed for me a miracle took place, I was completely healed” These Foxfire teams are doing wonders in very difficult circumstances at times, but God honors their ministry
Thousands of people found life in Jesus as they came to see the ‘ Jesus Film’ in Gweru where the other Foxfire team is. Most of their time is spent on Follow up work, house to house. It is a time when they sit down with every respondent explaining the way of salvation and discipleship training. They encourage these new Christians to read their Bibles, join a Bible believing church, to share their testimonies and how to pray.

One Foxfire evangelist said, “The Lord uses different platforms to give us opportunities to speak about Jesus, e.g. funerals, sickness, etc. Our strongest obstacles these days are HIV/AIDS, demons and witchcraft”. A fortune teller accepted Christ. The team met a man who professed to be a Fortune Teller and they witnessed to him and he accepted Christ as his Saviour. He was prayed for and was delivered from evil spirits and he is now a free man in Christ. He is even considering serving the Lord. His life was completely transformed by the power of Jesus. He has now joined the church that was hosting the Foxfire team. The pastor ( Malitino) said, “I am glad to see how the Lord uses these young evangelists, they are so committed to the Lord and to His service. I never thought that they would be able to penetrate this area with the gospel because it is full of witchcraft practice. Their boldness amazed me”. Great thing are happening through the
Ministry of these Foxfires. Please, do continue to pray for them that the Lord will protect
them. Thank you again for your prayers and financial support for the AE Foxfire program. If every detail of their ministry stories were to be told the Book of Acts would be rewritten. “ Glory be to His name”.

5. FUTURE MINISTRY PLANS:

1. Gweru (Pan African)Mission 2007 or 2008? We are putting our feelers into the city of Gweru for a big regional or Pan African mission 2007 or 2008. AE had a mission in this city in 1985. That mission did not go very well because there were disturbances with the political tensions in the country between ZAPU and ZANU. It was the time of dissidents, etc. There were explosions all over the city. David Peters was pulled from a preaching podium by a group of ZANU-PF. supporters and they took over our P/A system to address a political meeting in one of the halls in that city.(Mutapa) We feel that now the time is ripe for a repeat mission in that same city. It is the third largest city in Zimbabwe with a population of over 2,000,000 people. Orpheus hopes to visit the city leadership in the second week of June 2006 to sell the vision. We plan to start with a leadership workshop this year if our vision for a mission is bought and accepted by the city leadership.
2. "WE HAVE A DREAM" ZIMBABWE CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP ASSEMBLY (ZMCLA) A dream was passed on to us by Dr. Michael Cassidy last year. The dream is to bring together all Christian leaders in Zimbabwe to face the challenges of the church and nation and to try and come up with some solutions to these challenges together. As of now we have no idea how this will take shape. The team and board met last year to try and figure out what such a dream would involve and we were scared by the idea. We realized that this will be a mammoth task which we cannot handle on our own in terms of both personnel and resources. We thought that it would be good to first of all meet with a small group of Top Leadership from different like-minded churches and organizations to share the vision after which a committee will be formed to share the vision with the whole church. This is how far we have gone with the dream, but we do not have funds even to call together this small group. We need wisdom for the way forward. One of the problems with a dream like this is that we find Christian organizations and churches each running with its own vision and this make it difficult to see the bigger picture of the church and nation. We are however convinced that our church and nation needs something like this at this particular hour. Pray for us that we may discover the Lord’s mind on this dream. We believe that it is a great dream and pray that we can manage to get it off the ground.. “We will test the waters”!

6. PRAYER ITEMS:

1. Team building in Zimbabwe.
2. Planned Leadership Workshops for 2006
3. Missions - Orpheus’ visit to Gweru to meet the church leadership.
4. Foxfire ministry, protection from accidents, sickness and colds, etc.
5. The Dream (ZMCLA) Zimbabwe Christian Leadership Assembly’s success.
6. Local church ministry, Training and Conferences, etc.
7. Team and board members, families etc.
8. Praise the Lord for a year of good harvest for most farmers which eases the hardship of life in the country.

"MAY THE GOOD LORD RICHLY BLESS YOU ALL!"