Please donate to this African church

As promised, I finally made contact with a friend of mine who not so long ago served as a missionary in Togo, Africa. As you know from my many recent posts and updates, Togo has been very hard hit by the massive flooding that struck sub-Saharan Africa recently. I asked my friend (Wes) if he knew of a specific church that might need some help. He does...

The church is in a town of about 10,000 (as near as I can tell from websites translated from French!) called Amou Oblo. Here's what Wes had to say about them:

The Baptist Bible Church at Amou Oblo was started in the early 1990's by a young man who was saved at the Kempton Memorial Hospital by Justin our hospital evangelist. He soon went back to his home town and began to witness to others and, as a result, a small group of believers were formed. A local pastor began to meet with them, and as is the case too many times, this man was teaching heresy. Soon the other believers realized they needed to stop this teaching and find a new pastor to lead them. In 1996, the small group approached the church planters at ABWE and requested a pastor to come and continue the work there. ABWE at that point had just started a Bible Institute and were training many possible candidates, but that would be 3-4 years away. In the mean time, Justin began making the 1 Hour trip to Sunday Morning Services and Wednesday Evening Prayer Meetings. We [Wes and his wife] began working with Amou-Oblo upon our arrival in 1999. We took Justin each week to teach Sunday School and Preach Sunday and Wednesday. We began to train teachers for children's Sunday school, began a new Christian's class, and baptismal class for those interested in taking that next step. The church really started to grow through evangelism and outreach. By the time we left in 2002 [to return to the US], the church was averaging 75 on Sunday Mornings.

Currently Pastor Bamas has taken the work. He is a graduate of the Bible Institute and a great man of God. He has started 2 new churches [in Yaokope and Patatoukou] along with Amou-Oblo and travels 30 miles to these new churches on Sunday as well.

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This church is situated in an area hit hard by the flooding, and they need our help. I just saw a news headline that wondered out loud why no one in the international community seems to care much about this particular crisis. Remember, folks - we're talking about over 1.5 million people who have been made homeless by this flooding. Think about it. Take the population of the following US cities: Lynchburg, Fort Wayne, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, and Baltimore (cities I know many of you are familiar with) and you still don't have 1.5 million. Image all of those people flooded out of their homes...

If you have any money you can spare, please contact me via this email account and let me know. I'm going to pool our efforts and pass them along to Wes, so that he can be sure they get to the church there in Amou Oblo. My kids have been wanting to know how they can help these destitute people, and this will be a tangible way for them to be involved. What better way to teach our kids about compassion, love, and the importance of the Gospel?

Please, let me know as soon as possible what you'll be able to share. I prayerfully await your emails...

Hatushili