Feed My Sheep
Letter from the Editor
As we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas, we look back at 2019 and have a lot to be thankful for here at Source of Light Ministries International (SLM). It has been a good year. We have faced some challenges for sure, but we have been blessed to be on the front row watching God work through each one. Our faith continues to grow while watching Him work and being the recipient of blessing upon blessing.
This year we saw some beloved veterans of SLM pass away and some retire, but we also have seen God add to our numbers with new volunteers and missionaries, as well as a new branch in Colombia. We continue to be amazed at how God is at work and how He has blessed our ministries. We are thankful He allows us to be a part of His plan, and look with excitement at the doors He continues to open.
Recently I attended a conference for pastors and church members, one that I attend every year and thoroughly enjoy. Outside of the plenary sessions there are many breakout sessions, seminars, and informal get-togethers, and it is there that I get to know people personally.
As you can probably imagine, I am drawn to the foreigners at the conference and always try to engage them and see if we, as a ministry, can be of some help and encouragement to them in their ministries. I know I shouldn’t be, but every single time I am amazed when someone says they already know about us and use our materials in some form. This conference was no different and I was pleased to reconnect SLM to some countries that hadn’t had access to our materials for many years.
It is a scenario played out quite often I’ve discovered. Early missionaries bring the courses as a way to evangelize and disciple, but when they leave, they don’t make a connection between SLM and the national ministries. On this trip, I reconnected with missionaries in Fiji, India, Myanmar, and Brazil. But the Brazilian connection was particularly interesting.
At each session, four visiting Brazilian pastors sat in the back of the auditorium by the displays so one of their colleagues, an American missionary, could translate for the speakers, but far enough away so as not to disrupt others around. I would greet them after each session since they sat right beside my display, but with no ability to communicate in Portuguese, that was as far as we got.
Their translator (a veteran missionary in Brazil) and I seemed to end up in many of the same sessions, so we began to become a little more familiar with each other. Our name tags for the conference usually only have our names and so he didn’t realize I was with Source of Light until that last night. We talked for a good hour when it suddenly dawned on him, right in front of my display, that Source of Light was “Fonte de luz” in Portuguese! He smacked his forehead and suddenly the conversation changed, like suddenly we were long lost friends just reunited.
He began to share story after story of how the SLM courses impacted his ministry and how heavily they had been used. Then he whistled (yeah, that was a little strange in an auditorium) and the four Brazilian pastors all turned around to look at us. They got up and walked over and began talking to each other pointing at my display, my materials, and throwing in the only real recognizable words to me, Fonte de luz.
Then one by one, through translation, each of the four pastors shared their conversion and follow up discipleship stories with me and credited the Source of Light basic courses. They shared with me how the courses had been used in their lives, how they use them in their current ministries, and how they are discipling their own family members now using the same material.
I will tell you, these stories never get old, and they never seem to run out. I am constantly amazed at how God has used the ministry of SLM around the globe for so long and how it continues to have a significant impact in people’s lives.
This season at Source of Light includes several things, like updating courses, making them available Online, cheaper shipping solutions, etc. But a significant challenge we face is resupplying those who have lost contact with SLM and finding the resources financially to help them get courses, as well as having sufficient resources for our own missionaries. A lot of these ministries have very limited resources and while we don’t want them to be dependent on U.S. resources entirely for their ministries, we want to be in a position to defray the costs as much as possible.
Friends of Source of Light over the years have enabled us to see our ministry be fruitful and multiply. We have always operated on a principle of faith, and we continue to operate within that parameter. This year we set goals of raising an additional $100,000 for our Global Outreach Fund which would enable us to do more organizationally, and $100,000 for our Paper Partners Fund which would allow us to produce more courses for distribution globally. We ask you to join us in prayer and partnership, that we would finish 2019 with more financial resources to help our ministries “feed the sheep” that God has entrusted to us.
This volume of the Reaper is filled with stories of how God has used our missionaries and the SLM evangelistic and discipleship courses to reach people in some of the darkest, most desperate places in the world. We hope it will bring you some encouragement that your partnership through prayer and finances has not been in vain and that we continue together to show our love for Him… by feeding His sheep.
