Spotlights – Summer 2020
India
By Kimberly Rae Thigpen
October of 1969 was a significant month in history. The first successful message was sent electronically between computers, small beginnings of a global phenomenon that would redesign the daily lives of billions, now known as e-mail.
In India, October of ‘69 was also the month when ”S”, at a youth camp, accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. The God who drew him called him into the ministry two years later. The spark of commitment was fanned as he did four years of personal training with a mentor, then studied at Calcutta Bible College.
S became a chaplain in a children’s home for a time, then was led to reach the lost through Source of Light Ministries. For the next 32 years, the flame of ministry burned as he and his team worked to plant churches among the lost. “We invite all our seekers to attend seekers’ conferences,” says S, “and through that many people come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.”
It was a great work, blessed with Godly success. But God had more for S to do. God gave him a burden to fan the flame beyond their current outreach, to a focus on Muslims, specifically those of his own area of Odisha (formerly Orissa). As he says of his past eight years in this “new” outreach, “My desire is to plant churches among the neighbors in our state. In Odisha, no one is working among the Muslims. Therefore, I have a desire to equip many evangelists and pastors of Odisha with help about how to approach the Muslims.”
S’s ministry has included opening tailoring schools in multiple areas, and through them building relationships with students and their families, thus opening the way to share Christ.
For 40 years, S has served, and not alone. His wife assists him arranging conferences and camps, and with completing necessary financial reports. His daughters serve as well. S says his favorite part of ministry is the training program. Muslims have a vastly different worldview, culture, and system of belief than the Hindus of India, all of which require different methods of outreach in order to be effective.
Crossing cultural boundaries, particularly those created by religious tradition, is never easy. S needs prayer from God’s people. He asked prayer for three things:
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“Pray that the Lord will enable us to plant churches among the neighbors.”
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“We need some more workers for different districts. Please pray, we need at least two more workers. We want one man [to join us] who is interested to work among these people. Pray that the Lord will provide his support.”
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“We want other churches and workers to work among these neglected people.”
In 1969, one small message between computers led to such a massive geocultural shift, it transformed how people worldwide do business and maintain relationships today.
How much more significant, in God’s sight, was S’s choice to follow Him? His choice, nearly 50 years of obedience later, has been used to change an unknown number of souls not just for this life, but for all eternity. His spark has been fanned to every person he has personally reached for Christ, and through those he has trained to all they reach, and beyond to those the reached have reached. And on it goes.
This flame burns, opening the way for transformed relationships between people and God Himself. How wonderful that we, God’s people on the other side of the planet, have the opportunity to partner with such ministries.
*Name withheld for security reasons
Brazil – Samuel Milanez
By Kimberly Rae Thigpen
Samuel Milanez, Branch Director in Brazil since 2016, clearly has a gift from God for helping others. When we wrote to ask him the status of an old translation project, he responded that he did not know about the project and had never even seen the course before, but he was excited to translate it—could we send the English files for him to get started?
How Samuel came to SLM should be told in his own words: “In 2015 I was praying and looking for a place to work. I understood that God called me to be a pastor, but when I heard about SLM in Brazil (many years without a leader), I decided to embrace this challenge.”
Samuel now serves with SLM in the Baptist Seminary in Cariri. His wife serves in their home raising their daughter.
“I love to help people,” Samuel says, “and with SLM I help a lot of churches who don’t have any evangelistic material. I love to develop new tools for our Associate Schools, and I rejoice every time when new people use them. I love to talk about Source of Light in churches and conferences. But my favorite is to work with these new tools.”
His work is not without challenge. “Pray for Brazilian churches,” he requests. “They love our work, but don’t want to help us. This is sad; this is discouraging. Pray for a wake up in our churches so they will help us to go further.”
Clearly, Samuel has a strong vision for the future of SLM Brazil. As he says, “My heart still calls me for a pastoral leadership, but I learned to love this ministry so much, that I can’t see me not working with SLM. In these four years, I heard so many testimonies about how SLM changed lives, built strong faith, and helped people. So, I’m sorry I didn’t enter this ministry before.”
COVID-19 Impact on SLM
By Dr. Ronald Barnes
As this Reaper makes its way to press, the United States has not yet reached the peak of impact on the global pandemic which we all know as the Coronavirus, and I am convinced, neither has the world. As I interact with our various Branches it has become clear, the real death toll may never be told. Many developing countries don’t have the resources to respond adequately or have simply chosen to keep the general public in the dark.
On a daily basis, I have been in contact with our various Branches who have contact with the outside world and see how dangerous this is in developed countries and are keenly aware of how devastating this will be in their own country. There is a real fear among our national missionary staff, and though, as of this writing, there is no one of our missionary team who has contracted the virus, I am certain it will have affected some of our families as you receive this.
Daily stories are conveyed to me through all means of communication that those our missionaries are ministering to are suffering. They have a fear that many will survive the pandemic only to succumb to other sickness and starvation. Their governments are not set up to respond to these humanitarian needs and so it is these missionaries who are reaching deep into their own pockets to feed their flocks, literally.
Ironically, I challenged our missionaries earlier to do just that, shepherd their hurting flocks as we endure this hardship! But I was thinking more along the lines of ministering to them spiritually. Yet, they have felt the compulsion to do more, out of their own pockets.
In the United States office, we responded in phases, initially asking those higher at risk to not come into the office, then asking only essential employees to come in, and then staggering even those to make sure they weren’t at the office at the same time. We took early precautions before the government and local mandates and attempted to create the safest working environment through each phase.
Economically, as of this writing, we truly won’t know the impact this will have on the finances of our missionaries and home office operations, but I do know many of our regular donors have had to cancel indefinitely their recurring donations. So, this will likely have some impact on our ministries. But we will continue strong in faith, with the resources God provides, as He has these many decades now. We have the same confidence, that the Lord encouraged Israel with in
Isaiah 41:10 “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” KJV
Please do pray for SLM and for those of us who will be affected by this pandemic. But more importantly, join us in prayer that this pandemic would bring a wake of spiritual yearning for the Gospel and open the eyes of the spiritually blind. Pray that we will be faithful to respond in earnest. And should God so challenge you to join us financially, designate your gift Coronavirus Relief Fund.
