Hello, friends. I returned a few days ago from my most recent trip to Africa – this time to Ethiopia via Kenya.

First I made my way to Nairobi, studying for most of the 23 hours on the plane. When I arrived, I spent time with Bramuel and Patrick, ministry leaders with their respective organizations. Both are very interested in Pathways and are looking at launching new networks in the spring of 2016. They are connected with 650 churches, and say they can pull in a couple more organizations to expand the influence we will have. Wonderful!

Then I flew on to Addis Ababa and met my colleagues, Ron Gullman and Daniel Grell. Ron grew up in Ethiopia as a TCK (third culture kid – missionary kid), so he speaks Amharic fluently and helped much with our connections and details. We had some wonderful Ethiopian food while we were there.

On Monday we began our training, and we had a group of 14-16 trainers each day. They were so very encouraged by the training, and truly wrestled with the biblical texts as we introduced Bible study methods and principles to them through the book of Jonah. They worked together in small groups, made presentations, interacted with us, and grew much during their time.

Frequently they reminded us of the desperate need for this training in Ethiopia. Pastor Tesfaye stated, “This training has been such a blessing and it has shown us how we have been leading our people astray from the teaching of God’s Word. I have been confronted with the message of Jonah. In our time, we must apply these teachings in our church.”

Pastor Ela said, “I have grown so much spiritually through this training. I have learned much by techniques presented here. This training has challenged me with the idea of passing the training on to others.”

Pastor Altaseb honestly shared, “I have grown more faithful to the Word of God through this training.” Amen! That is our goal for all the pastors we work with!

There are strong plans in place to reproduce the training to many others throughout the six organizations/ denominations that were represented in the training.  This is essential for each of the trainings we do, for we are aiming at “training the trainers.”

Wednesday and Thursday, Oct.28-29, I will be up in Seattle doing a training for a group of pastors there. It seems like each day I talk with more people interested in launching Pathways networks, whether in Togo, West Africa, or in Burundi, East Africa, and many places between. In a couple weeks I head back to Congo to work with a new group of pastors there. Praise God for opportunities to “help pastors grow more faithful to the Word of God.”

Pressing on by God’s grace, Eric