Appleseed Updates

Unreached & Empoverished in Oaxaca, Mexico

Because of your help, our team is traveling to Oaxaca in February to train a dynamic team of church planters who are working in the second poorest state in Mexico among unreached peoples.

A seven-year old girl takes on responsibility for her Oaxacan family by caring for her siblings and the yard animals.  She will probably not complete primary school as she works hard to help her family survive in rural poverty. 

Extreme Poverty.  The rural farmers of Oaxaca are often trying to support their families on one dollar per day where the price for a gallon of milk can be three dollars.  Three quarters of the residences in Oaxaca are living in this extreme poverty.

Unreached People Groups.  “Unreached” means there is no church in the group capable of evangelizing the rest of the people in the area. Many of these groups have no organized church meeting or Bible study, and in some cases, they have no Christians at all.  The prayer of these church planters is to see a movement among the Oaxacans that bring the grace, hope, and transformation of Christ.

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What YOU Helped Us Accomplish in 2009

It’s great to reflect on what you have helped us accomplish in this past year alone:

• Kenya: 3rd, 4th, & 5th generation churches now reproducing and reaching thousands.
• Women’s Vocational Center started providing jobs for the most vulnerable in Africa.
• D.R. Congo: Training new leaders to reproduce churches (three dozen new churches and growing.)
• Madagascar: Our second year of training missionaries who are planting churches in bush villages in conjunction with health clinics that are serving thousands who would otherwise have no health care.
• China: New missionaries have arrived in China, learning the language, and building relationships.

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Prayer and Power

People often ask if we see greater miracles, signs, and wonders in underdeveloped countries.  We do, but is it only because they are needier and therefore God has a special measure of mercy?  Perhaps.

Then again, Victor Choudhrie, a church planter who has seen thousands of churches started in India, suggests that our western focus on a more academic approach to theology may hinder our understanding of how to operate in God’s power:

Sadly most Christians are biblically illiterate or at best semi-literate, (this includes theologians) and therefore do not know their authority, hence in error of not being wise enough for the salvation of others nor can they equip anybody in righteousness (2Timothy 3:14-17). Biblical literacy means knowing that you have power over all the power of the enemy and therefore have the ability to caste out demons. Additionally it requires the ability to deftly wield the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God to convict those who oppose (Titus 1:9).

Thank God that this is fast changing as more and more “laymen” acquire keys of the kingdom, resulting in increasing number of saved souls. Jesus did not challenge us to be greater teachers or preachers than Him but to do greater works than Him (John14:12).

We seem to be living in a season where all Christian, westerners included, are re-discovering that the power of the kingdom of God is readily available as we believe it and learn to exercise that authority, for the sake of the expansion of the kingdom, through prayer.

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