Hi Everyone!
We hope you are doing well! Our apologies for not sending out a newsletter earlier this year. It’s amazing how quickly time can fly!
Ethiopia- Matt traveled to Ethiopia in January to teach a course on youth ministry at the Addis Ababa Bible College. An interesting fact about Ethiopia is that it is the second largest country in Africa according to population (99 million) and 75% of their population is under the age of 25. Youth ministry is a major need for the church there. One of Matt’s students was Ermias, who is in charge of all youth ministry within the Full Gospel church. These churches have about 5 million members and many of them are youth-aged. Ermias said the youth ministry class was extremely helpful, and he’s excited to implement some changes with his youth. It was a very productive trip, and we’re praying to one day have a missionary in Addis Ababa to help facilitate youth ministry in this heavily populated country.
Kuza- We announced our Kuza smart phone devotional app in December. It is growing in popularity and is exciting to see! We officially launched it December 14th right before While we officially launched it mid-December, we did not start advertising it until the last two weeks. So far we have had 200 downloads. Matt also had a meeting with a very large and well-known Christian TV and radio youth ministry named Kubamba Krew here in Nairobi. They have around 500,000 very close followers who are youth. They loved our Kuza app and want to partner with us in raising awareness of the app. We will have a big meeting with them in the coming days to hammer out the details. We’d love to see youth all over East Africa grow strong in their personal relationship with Christ through this app.
Adoption Updates- Our adoption home study in December went well. We are waiting for our home study to be approved and are finishing up our profile book, which is what the birth parents look at it to decide who they want the adoptive parents to be.
Conferences- We had 12 wonderful conferences in the months of January and February, and through them trained several hundred church leaders.
Thank you for your continued prayer and support! We are very grateful for you!
Matt and Kelly
Prayer Request:
1. Pray that God will call a missionary to work with Global Youth Ministry in Ethiopia.
2. Pray for our app and potential partnership with Kubamba Krew.
3. Praise God for the 12 conferences we were able to teach in January & February.
4. Pray for our writing team as we work on a devotional called “Addictions and Abuses” and one on the book of Ephesians.
5. Pray for our team during the month of March, as we get together to pray and encourage each other.