January 20, 2021
Dear Friends,
Though many things have been turned upside down with COVID-19, God has given me creative solutions which have allowed me to continue a fruitful ministry.
One of the creative solutions was to offer online leadership training courses. When the possibility of developing leaders on the mission fields looked bleak or impossible due to COVID-19, the Lord brought them to my office via Zoom. I have never trained so many leaders of various countries like I did last year. For the first time, I also had the opportunity to train a group of French-speaking leaders in Africa and France. Now I am spending hours each day studying French. My goal is to be able to preach/teach in French without translators in a year or two. Accomplishment of this goal depends on how well I can keep myself from distraction and stay focused on studying French this year.
Out of the blue, a devoted Christian who is a computer science professor contacted me last summer and offered to develop an online educational platform for DCMi for free. This will help us overcome the weakness of Zoom and make our endeavor to develop godly leaders on the mission fields far more effective. Certainly, our God is a providing God (Gen. 22:14). When this project is completed in March, we will test it by offering leadership development training to church leaders of Rwanda. After this test run and subsequent troubleshooting, we believe that the quality of our international outreach in the fall of 2021 will be greatly enhanced by the use of both online and on-site approaches.
Although traveling to Cambodia seems impossible due to the Pandemic, we can start developing the leaders of Cambodia in use of this online system once is it completed. Thus we can start preparing for the upcoming Gospel Festival in Cambodia in the midst of the Pandemic. FYI, the Sisophon Gospel Festival of Cambodia was initially planned for December 24th and 25th of 2020. Due to the current situation, however, it has been postponed until after virus restrictions are lifted. Thank you so much for your support and prayer.
I will get back to you with more exciting news in the spring. Until then, please stay in good health.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Roman’s 15:13)
Prayerfully Yours,
David