September 2020 NEWSLETTER
A Word from Rabbi Alex
Shalom,
The world has been on lockdown, partial lockdown, or restricted movement due to the deadly COVID 19 but sadly we have also paused important spiritual facets of our lives which were never meant to be on pause or standstills like worship, missions, prayer, and fellowship.
Our lack of action in some of these very important spiritual areas of our lives may give the enemy a foothold and reverse a lot of progress that had been made. We should never pause worship, prayer, love, and yes missions.
To give some perspective;
About 42% of the world’s population, which is about 3.1 Billion people are considered unreached and have no indigenous community of Bible believers.
Of the world’s 7.5 billion people only 2.4 billion people consider themselves as believers and followers of Yeshua.
This leaves us with 5.1 billion people who are not saved
Most of our Jewish people have not heard the gospel in such a way that they may consider Yeshua as the long-promised Messiah of Israel.
Here are some sobering facts about just the 50 largest unreached people groups:
- All 50 of these people groups have less than 2% Christ-followers
- Individuals in these groups may have very limited if any, access to the Gospel.
- These 50 unreached people groups are comprised of 1.48 billion souls.
- One in five people on earth lives in these 50 unreached peoples.
- Every group is larger than 10,000,000 in population.
- None have an indigenous church capable of taking the Gospel to the entire group.
- Primary religion: 23 are Muslim, 18 Hindu, 6 Buddhist, 2 Ethnic Religions, 1 non-Religious.
- 44 of these 50 unreached people groups are in the 10/40 Window, 47 are in sensitive countries.
Mar 16:15 He told them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the Good News to every creature.
Mar 16:16 He who believes and is immersed shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned.
There are still many lost people in this world and our task to take the good news first to the Jew and to the nations, and this important task should gain momentum as we face troubling times.
Instead of despairing, we should be part of the process that will hasten the Lord’s return;
2Pe 3:11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what kind of people should you be? Live your lives in holiness and godliness,
2Pe 3:12 looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God. In that day the heavens will be dissolved by fire, and the elements will melt in the intense heat.
The message of Yeshua is the answer to the salvation needs of the world.
May His peace envelop you in these times.
Shalom, Shalom
Being immersed is a giant step of faith
CONGREGATIONS
Our family of congregations is increasing and so is the persecution.
Our Chainda congregation has been driven out of their building and our old water well taken over by a prominent landowner and his family.
Our Chinkuli congregation has been subjected to incessant verbal assaults and threats by a local tribal leader and several villagers.
Our Beth Shalom congregation in Ndola is now meeting in houses due to the COVID-19 lockdown and refusal by the owners of the building they are renting to allow them to return to worship.
The rest of the congregations are enjoying some peace but are very much affected by the lockdown.
The Global pandemic – Corona Virus
We have had intense challenges like the rest of the world, with restrictions to conduct Shabbat services due to the naval Corona Virus Pandemic since the beginning of March 2020. We however engaged into substitutional ways of congregating such as live streaming, a handful group of Chazzanot, Rabbi, and the Tech team would only meet to air the guiding role of Shabbat service while the rest of the membership participated from home. We also co-operated gathering of small groups into Zones prior to the members’ proximity; inclusive Passover Seder which was observed in the heat of Covid-19.
Currently, with the local authority’s restrictions, we’re able to meet, of course with a permit from both Ministry of Health (MoH) and Lusaka City Council (LCC) in the observance of strict masking up, social distancing, hand-washing, and sanitization together with the weekly disinfecting of the sanctuary building and the entire synagogue premise.
There too has been a recent change, where we’re permitted to have a certain number of services with an official one-hour duration each. We had been greatly affected when this came, however, we are very grateful that we are still permitted to call upon our G-d even in these unusual times.
The Kasisi Congregation
New babies and the baby dedications in the synagogue
Welcome, Atara Bush into our synagogue together with Ahava Mufungwe our newly born babies who have just been dedicated. We celebrate the growth of our local Messianic community.
We celebrated the mikvah of four precious members of our messianic family. Hallelujah!!
Missions
We have continued our outreach among the Lemba Jews and others through visitations and airwaves.
We are reaching out to two groups in Malawi’s Mzuzu and Blantyre cities. Pray that viable Messianic Congregations would be born.
Day school
Due to the closure of all schools by the Zambian government, our creative teachers began following up all the orphans and poor children of Jerome Fleischer school in their respective communities to find out how they were doing, they also gave them schoolwork and assignments.
Only grade seven classes were allowed in school by the Zambian government and these have made a lot of progress in their educational studies.
Sadly, the day school has been subjected to several attempted and successful break-ins by criminals who have come to steal the children’s food and school supplies.
We have increased our security and brought in a caretaker who now lives at the school
Remembering the mass Birthday celebration of last year.
Meal-time for some of our children at the school.
Orphanage
Had an attempted break-in by four criminals around 3 am in the morning. Our two security guards working the night shift were able to fight them off and in the process caught one of the criminals.
Other news
Our internet provider has gone bankrupt and we have lost the zmf@microlink.zm email and yalenga@microlink.zm email. Kindly use the following to get through to us
info@localhost
yalenga@localhost
Thank you for updating our information on your address list.
The Yalenga family
Alex was hospitalized for about ten days due to acute pneumonia and suspected coronavirus. The coronavirus tests went missing but Alex had to undergo two quarantines to meet the official demand that one has to be quarantined if they are suspected of or have the coronavirus.
Rabbi Alex is back on his feet now and up and about doing his work. We would like to extend sincere gratitude to our families, friends, partners who stood up with us in many ways and petitioned the Heavens for his and our sake.
The Yalengas will be having a baby this December. Hallelujah!!
The Yalengas have moved house and are now living on a smallholding just outside of Lusaka where they hope to grow more of their own food.
Prayer points
- Protection of the orphanage, congregations, and school from criminals and those who have been persecuting our people for their faith.
Prayer Needs
The Lusaka City Council has for the last two years accused us of being a business even though our registration papers and everything we do state that we are a religious charitable organization.
They slapped us with penalties of over K20,000 Zambian Kwacha and we have since engaged the services of a lawyer and attorney.
We are protected under the Zambian constitution as a charitable religious organization from paying the fees the Lusaka City council is demanding. As a matter of fact, the Zambian Government even gave us a Tax-exempt status.
Your prayers are most appreciated.
Praise reports
The court issue involving our frontage has finally been resolved. The court case has been dragging for twelve years now. Your prayers were answered.
The frontage land is now fully ours!!! God is so good!!!
PRAYER POINTS- Please join us in prayer for the following:
- Pray for our Chinkuli congregation and leader, the tribal leader has grabbed our water well and unleashed verbal persecution against our leader and congregation.
- Pray for our Chainda congregation who have since been displaced that they will soon be meeting under a congregation.
- Our new outreach to the Lemba Jews of Zambia.
- The salvation of the Zambian traditional Jewish community, the Muslim community, and African tribal communities
- Open doors for the gospel
- Spiritual and numerical growth.
- Pray for continued sponsorship for our Shalom Zambia radio outreach and that it will bear fruit among the 2.5 million listeners.
- Protection from counterfeit believers.
- Finances for ministry needs, including a sponsor for each child under our care, financial support for the Yalenga family and for the needs of the other congregations under the Zambia Messianic Fellowship covering.
NEEDS
- $80 a month will allow a child to stay at our orphanage giving them a safe place, a warm bed, three meals a day, and school. Children will be taken in after a sponsor is found.
- $25 a month will sponsor feed and educate one orphan for the whole month at our day school. We still have many children in need of sponsors.
- $90 will sponsor one radio outreach program to over 2.5 million people.
- $150 will help pay the monthly wage of one teacher at the orphanage day school. We have 8 teachers teaching over 200 children.
- $6 will buy a bible for a new believer.
- $50 will buy a goat to provide protein for children at the day school or orphanage.
- Monthly support for the Yalenga family who are in the full-time ministry taking care of 9 congregations, an Orphanage, a school, outreach, discipleship and raising new leaders.
- $100 to help build a playground for our orphanage
Thank you for being a blessing.
Shalom, Shalom.
For more information contact
zmforphanage@gmail.com
info@localhost
Donations are tax-deductible in the USA and are received with thanksgiving. For tax-deductible contributions in the United States, write checks (please designate Zambia) to:
Congregational Roeh Israel
8556 East Warren Ave
Denver, Colorado 80231
Those in the UK (and Europe) can now support the work here in Zambia in £ or euros (cheque, money order). Cheques should be made to B’nai Maccabim (http://www.bnaimac.co.uk) with Zambia on the back
If you have questions or are looking for possibilities of supporting the ministry, sponsoring an orphan, or being involved in our Graciousness Extended program or supporting the Yalenga family, please contact Maria Schmitt at zmforphanage@gmail.com or 719-487-9061.
You can also donate via Pay pal (not tax-deductible) at http://localhost/testsite/donations/. If you choose to send via PayPal, we kindly ask that you consider adding $1.30 for each $25.00 sent due to the amount of your donation PayPal will deduct if you are not a PayPal subscriber.
When you donate to the Zambia Messianic Fellowship you can be sure that you are contributing to an organization that is witnessing to the lost, discipleship of believers, raising new leaders, taking care of orphans, planting congregations around Zambia, fighting anti-Semitism, teaching the church about their Hebrew roots and responsibility to Israel and to the Jewish people, lobbying government for biblical values and helping the poor masses with viable economic activities.
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Shalom
