GOSPEL CHARIOT SHARE MISSIONS WEEKEND AT THE SAIL CONFERENCE IN BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE - April 7-9, 2023
GOSPEL CHARIOT SHARE MISSIONS WEEKEND AT THE SAIL CONFERENCE IN BULAWAYO, ZIMBABWE - April 7-9, 2023
Amen , Brother Charles reported the following:
By God’s grace we all arrived on Thursday, April 06, with the exception of Walter, who arrived on Friday morning because of the Zambian brethren he traveled with. The Team comprised of
1. Lazarus Munetsi
2. Bright Himakampa III
3. Walter Chunga
4. John Thikongo
5. Charles Odoi
Auswich Mashabha and Tinashe of Zimbabwe were our Hosts.
In the evening of Thursday, we went to the designated venue for pre-Registration before the start of the conference the following day. We received Name Tags and Conference materials. Participants from all over the Southern Africa sub-Region were arriving in batches and our connecting started that very evening. The Team started meeting people they knew and even Charles who comes from far away West Africa, met people he knew and some were the key leaders of the sub-Region.
The conference started on Friday morning and there were 1,110 registered participants for the day. We arrived early at the venue - National University of Science and Technology, and erected our Pullouts near our Desk. Auswich had done all these arrangements and Laz also came prepared with Gospel Chariot and Share materials to showcase what we do. With our Red Tee Shirts from Ghana, we became the attraction of the conference and capitalized on that to distribute our Flyers. We distributed close to 1,000 Flyers on the first day.
At the close of day, we met over supper for debriefing. We realized the need to adopt a different strategy for the work the following day. On the second day - Saturday, we focused on doing 3 key things:
1. Drawing people to our Desk and take their contacts instead, engaging the Youth more
2. Interacting with Key leaders of the Sub-region and getting their contacts as well
3. Position ourselves strategically at various classes and offer contributions that draws attention to our Desk for more enquiry.
Goal 1 brought lots of people to our Desk to interact more and more. Auswich, his Wife, Walter and Tinashe were there to welcome and interacted beautifully with the people, while John and Bright went mostly to the Youth and directed them to our Desk.
Laz and Charles told the story of what God is doing with the 4 Fields Discipleship concerning Baptisms and Church planting. This also aroused much interest for more contact exchanges and appointments, as directed them to our Desk.
With meeting key leaders, Machona did a great work introducing us to most of them we didn’t know already. He also made a strong statement for the Gospel Chariot and Share Missions in his presentation per our prior arrangement. A lot of people were so happy to see Namibia represented by John and Charles coming all the way from Ghana. Key leaders like Brother Malepa of Botswana, Dr. Washington and Brother Newman Kanchefu of Zimbabwe knew him and had worked with him already. This made the Goal 2 easy to achieve. As it’s easy for him to make new friends, Charles connected with the chairman of the Advisory Board of the Conference - Brother Kabinda of Malawi and they are already chatting on WhatsApp. The second day had an attendance of 1,650 registered participants.
Our evening debriefing was full of excitement as we had achieved beyond our target. An interesting idea that emerged was Southern African Youth WhatsApp group for Training in the 4 Fields Discipleship via Zoom. The idea is to start it from the south and eventually make it global - joining the entire Africa, adding Europe and America and probably Asia in the future. Another idea is to upgrade the Youth VBS in Venda, where the 4 Fields Discipleship is trained in December, to the Southern African Region. All these need our prayers to come to fruition. We didn’t sign up for this, it just popped up in and probably, it’s God at work in His servants.
The Team so much jelled very well and everyone played a key role, brought ideas and joined in implementation to make this a success. They can possibly be maintained for future events like this.
The challenges were numerous as expected, and key among them was the Dollar being charged for every service including taxis that took us around. Thanks be to God He was always with us to overcome everyone of them along the way.
Thank God for all who are involved and the continuous expansion of the Kingdom through the collective effort of the 4 Fields Discipleship Multiplication across the globe .
Amen Brother Charles and the Team. What a great opportunity you had utilized to connect with various people from different parts of the Southern Africa Regions. This is really great and exciting seeing you Brethren connecting with Churches, key leaders and great plans you are about to initiate for the Youth Africa 4 Fields Zoom Training. Keep it up and great work there for Jesus ! Thank You Lord and thank you all involved .
