More young people from Africa coming and sharing the Gospel

We continue to minister here with your helpful gifts and prayers behind us, and we share it all with those coming from many different countries. One group is coming to our university here from Africa. Some of these young people are Protestant, some are Catholic, and some are Muslim, yet we are glad to help them with whatever needs they have and we love to share the Gospel with whoever doesn’t know about it.

Those who already believe in Jesus show so much love and goodness that they freely share the Gospel with even their Turkish friends. We were gladly able to baptize one Turkish family who were brought to Christ through these African believing students, which was such an encouragement to us.

Young people from a different country colored differently were so influential in drawing this Turkish family to Christ as they shared the Gospel with them. There must be something like 80-100 African young people helping us in our churches and they are rather poor but very intelligent. We are so thankful for your help in providing for these African young people.

We will show you photos of these believing African young people and others being baptized with them. God is answering your prayers with these wonderful events. Every Friday night the young people gather together to worship our Lord and invite Turkish friends to come to the “Youth Group”. And they’ve also invited some University Teachers to come to our Sunday services.

Elif’s teacher comes to faith

Our dear sister Eif studies at the Samsun University and she came to faith in Jesus about 3 years ago. God has blessed her so much that she bravely shares the Gospel at the University.

She shared with her Teacher that she is a believer in Christ but the teacher didn’t want to accept that news. Yet Elif felt this rejection and only began sharing the Gospel more and more boldly with others in her class. This Teacher decided to visit the church saying, “what she explains sounds reasonable to me”, but for a long time she just came to watch what Christians act like.

She did pick up a NT and took some notes from the sermons and one day said to us, “I believe“, but have to be very careful what I share in order to keep my job at the University, so she didn’t want to be baptized right away. However, just recently after the service she came up to me saying,

“God’s Word has touched my heart, and I’m no longer afraid, but eager to be baptized.” After being baptized, her mother heard about it and became very angry. She said to her, “Mother, I was angry like you, but open your eyes to see the truth” and invited her to attend church services even though she was an atheist.

Soon her mother also noticed how beautiful her daughter’s voice was as she sang the hymns so she encouraged her daughter to sing with the church’s choir yet still doesn’t put her faith in Jesus.

Pray that soon she does give her life to Christ. The teacher’s father decided to attend the church after his daughter shared the Gospel with him, so pray also that he give his life to Jesus soon. God is growing our church in a marvelous way.

Pray for foreign workers in Turkey who need residence permits

At the Erzinjan Church there was an Iranian brother who was helping in ministry, but was taken to a refugee camp due to the inability to get a resident permit. He’s been there for some time now and will probably be returned to his own country.

The Erzinjan Church needs someone to replace him in the ministry so we’re seeking to train another helper. Also, in the Sinop Church an American family has been very helpful in ministry there, but they also are not given another residence permit as their time is coming to an end.

They need our prayers. And pray with us for more workers to be prepared to take their places when they must leave their churches. The needs are great for anointed workers in this field of service.

Young Arif is introduced to Jesus Christ

Please pray for the young man named Arif. He goes to a school for highly intellectual children. We trust that in time he will be a very successful person. One night he was with a group walking in front of our church. Some kid got their attention pointing to the Bibles on the stand by our church.

He said, “I look at their Instagram page just for fun, why don’t you look at it?” He then showed them the Instagram page, then went to the door of the church picking up New Testaments giving them away to whoever wanted one. Arif took one for himself. That night he looked on Instagram to what was shared from the church, then he started reading his NT.

He told us that after beginning his reading of Matthew, he couldn’t stop reading until he finished the whole book. He took down some notes and then came to our church as early in the morning as 8:00 am. We actually don’t open until 9:00 in the mornings, but we listened to his questions written in his notes and 3 days later he came to faith in Jesus.

He shared with us that before finding Christ he was considering suicide because he felt so bad about life. There was no joy because he felt God was always angry with him and wanted to punish him because he was always falling into sinful ways, so he thought his only rescue from that was to die sooner than later so he could no longer sin.

When he read the NT, he noticed how much God loved him, he told us. He then continued studying the NT and then was baptized. For sure, God uses different types of people’s experiences to draw others to Himself. Arif’s friend was just passing time sharing some difficult stories happening in the church, but God used those stories to draw him to find salvation in our Lord.

Thank you all so much for your prayers that allow us to see the stand with NTs and books on it be so used by God to draw young people to Himself. We praise our Lord as well as thank you for prayers offered on our behalf.

Helping the refugees, playing the guitar and teaching English

With encouragement from your prayers and financial help we’ve begun sharing the Gospel in cities where there is no church and new believers are being followed up and encouraged.

May small churches begin in their homes for now and may those in the rented church places continue firm in their faith. I’m attaching some photos of these groups in the link below.

These dear brothers and sisters in Christ are so eager to read God’s Word together. We are also visiting refugee’s homes helping provide for their needs and offering to pray for them showing God’s love for them.

Also, in our churches we invite small groups to come together and enjoy special activities like women’s studies, men’s studies, New Testament studies, learning to play the guitar, and someone teaching English to a group.

Visiting people in prison

We also set aside some time to visit the prison near us. Those imprisoned have so much time to read the books we share with them and they ask many questions to help them understand better. Last month we received a very sensitive letter from a prisoner 320 km away from our city. As we travel to a number of cities to help local church services we didn’t think it would be possible to also go so far to a prison without difficulties.

The next morning, just after we prayed together, a message came to us via social media that someone from far away had been following our program and had come to faith. This was God’s sign to us that we should try and visit this prisoner, so we got ourselves ready and started the long trip.

We did pray the prayer of repentance with him online. When we arrived at the prison, we noticed it’s trustworthiness, as we could meet with the prisoner just after we were interviewed by the authorities.

They offered us tea and gave us the opportunity to share the Gospel with them and we promised to bring them a Bible on our next trip.

Then we could see the prisoner who had been in prison for 6 years and still had to be there for another 11 years. (We didn’t want to embarrass him in any way, so we didn’t ask him to tell us what he did to deserve this.)

Actually, this long of a stay had caused him to be so depressed and knowing how guilty he was caused him to think he had no chance for a good life. His only request was to be prayed for, saying that he wanted to be baptized when possible, and we assured him that we’d gladly do that for him, but then he looked at us and asked, “I am such a horrible man, can I be saved?” Before we could answer he said, “But I know there is hope for me because Jesus Christ was crucified between two horrible sinners, and when one of them asked Jesus if he could be saved believing in Him, Jesus said he’d be with him in Heaven that day, so for sure I can also be saved.”

His response was so encouraging to us that we simply responded by saying, “Yes, we notice that even without being baptized, you’ve been saved by faith in Jesus.” Tears began to flow out of his eyes and we were quiet for a while and just as I’m writing to you about him, another letter has come into my hands from him. He’s asking us when we can come to see him again. Please uphold us all in your prayers, as God is awakening so many here, and we need more help to cover it all.

Even while some are spending their time joking with one another, people are coming to faith in Christ. Refugees coming to our country are sharing the Gospel with Turks, while Turkish friends are helping the refugees and Africans. While prisoners are coming to faith those in authority over the prisons are hearing the Gospel.