Numbers

ITEC Executive Director Jaime Saint shares his thoughts as we close out 2023.

My wife and I sit down from time to time to talk about our family budget.  I enjoy budgets and working the numbers to maximize what we can do with what we have.  My wife, on the other hand, is a more creative person.  While I can sit for hours to discuss our budget, I know that her window is a little shorter, typically by several hours.  She will be interested in the discussion, but I know that within a couple of minutes, her mind is going to start focusing on something more fun and creative.  She will even say something along the lines of, “What’s the bottom line,” or “Just show me the numbers.”

 

The Great Commission, our mandate, tells us to make disciples as we are going.  Each one of the 7,800,000,000+ people in the world today matters to our Creator.  He is into the numbers.  

 

There are a lot of great mission organizations around the world.  God is using each of them to reach a lost and dying world with His Good News.  Since your window to read this newsletter may be short, let me get down to the numbers.  In February, we did a Farm and Medical training with a West African partner focused on making disciples.  After our training concluded, one of these disciples went back to a neighboring country where he was serving as a missionary.  Within days of returning home, he went into an unreached village with the offer to teach some basic hygiene and first aid. His training gave him access to this village.  After teaching these skills during the day, he showed the Jesus film that night.  That day, 164 people began a relationship with the Creator and were baptized.  

 

As we approach the end of this year, we want to invite you to join with us.  Most importantly, we want you to pray for us.  We are not able to determine the right partners without God’s leading, and, once we determine to work with a partner, our teams travel around the world.  So, we need your prayers for wisdom and travel for our trainers.  We also invite you to share our mission with your church family.  Our goal is to train Christ followers to meet felt needs in their communities as a door opener to the Gospel, knowing that the skills that we train in will also open doors in unreached communities.  Lastly, we ask you to join with us financially.  The opportunities that are being opened to us are growing, and therefore our team is also growing.  While we are not trying to become a large organization, we have a growing team that is focused on working with churches to help them incorporate training as part of their mission strategy.  We are only able to continue moving forward as you get behind us prayerfully, intentionally, and financially.  

 

Thank you for your faithfulness as you come alongside our team as we train indigenous Christ followers around the world for greater participation in the Great Commission!

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