When Chantana* accepted Christ, she was excited to share her newfound joy with her neighbors. She wanted them to see Jesus as a loving Savior instead of following the religious rituals into which they were born. Because of your gifts, Chantana was able to invite 40 of her neighbors to come to her house to have their eyes checked by reading a gospel tract. Seven of the 40 became believers! Together, they started a new Bible study in their remote community, with 14 attending regularly.
Your generosity provided four optometry lens sets for missionaries and national partners to use as an outreach tool. A local church began using them to check people’s vision. The nearby Muslim community appreciated that the church was helping them, and many are now open to gospel conversations. Previously, numerous efforts to build relationships and establish trust were attempted in that district, and national believers were frustrated at the lack of response. Nothing they tried led to interest from even a single person, but the lens set arrived and opened doors for the gospel.
“These [lens] sets opened doors like never before,” said the local pastor. “Many spiritual conversations resulted from using gospel tracts to measure their eyesight.” Most of those who attended the clinic had never heard the gospel. Because of your gifts, the gospel is moving into areas previously closed to hearing the good news.
Please join us in prayer:
Thank you for joining us in addressing the world’s greatest problem: lostness. Your gifts and prayers to the Preach & Heal ministry enable us to share the good news with those who need the hope of Jesus. You are a co-laborer with us in the gospel. We value your partnership!
*Name changed for security
More than 1,000 people have heard the gospel as a result of the trauma-informed coloring book project; IMB missionaries and local believers are discipling 60 who have followed Christ, and one new church is forming. Keep in mind that we are using this strategy among a group that is literally a moving target–refugees along the refugee highway in Latin America. So, these numbers are only the beginning. We won’t fully know the final outcomes until we are all together in glory!
The IMB field worker directing this project shared: “One of the young ladies we are training to use the book began to cry and share her story of being abandoned and hurt by her family. After sharing her trauma and grief, she became excited about using the book with the groups she leads. She said that most people in her culture are taught as children that you don’t share your feelings—that feelings are supposed to be kept inside and not talked about. She loves teaching that we can open up and tell Jesus everything, and He will understand.
One of the pastors who works in a shelter at the border uses the book with all the older children and teens. He is also able to visit the children who have been taken from their parents because the parents did not have documents proving that the children with them were theirs. The children are kept in a detention-type center. They can’t get out of the shelter until their parents have all their documents, which can take weeks or months. Several children have received Christ as their Savior during the pastor’s visits. Recently, the pastor sent me a picture of an older child who received Christ and had written his prayer to receive Jesus in his book.
Praise God that in the midst of trauma and grief, God is drawing people to His love, comfort, and grace. Through your gift to the Dr. Rebekah Naylor Preach and Heal fund, you are helping hundreds of refugees of all ages discover that Jesus sees them, loves them with an everlasting love, and heals their wounds.
Thank you so much for your generosity to this ministry and people across the globe blessed by the medical care you support. Your prayers and sacrificial giving show Christ’s love to those seeking hope amid physical, mental, and spiritual needs. Your partnership enables IMB medical missionaries and teams to build relationships, develop trust, and deliver the gospel through medicine.
New telemedicine kits enable needed medical access. Your gifts are providing telemedicine kits for use around the world. With these kits, medical personnel—including medical students, nurses, and residents—can put a stethoscope to a chest in the Middle East, an otoscope into an ear in Sub-Saharian Africa, perform a brain scan in South Asia, or remotely monitor a heart in Central Asia, and a doctor in Ohio can listen in real-time.
Because of your generosity, Dr. Geoff Little* and others like him use their skills to multiply medical missions globally. Telemedicine opens doors in closed countries where American, long-term workers cannot freely enter and equips medical assistants to provide more specialized care. More than 20 people have become brothers and sisters in Christ from a witness through telemedicine. Pray for additional US doctors to serve as healthcare consultants, meeting global medical needs.
Mobile medicine multiplied in Ukraine. In areas of Ukraine with limited medical care resources, your partnership enables many to find help and healing. A local Christian doctor uses the telemedicine kits you provide to see many more patients and offer a higher level of care than he could manage without them. Using the internet, U.S.-based healthcare consultants assist this doctor and his assistants in providing care. Pray for this Ukrainian doctor as he remains in his country, helping his countryman meet basic medical needs.
Telemedicine transformed a village. Amahle* lives deep in a remote village in Western Africa. Cut off from most medical care by distance and civil unrest, the 11-year-old suffered multiple seizures each day. Her father, the local witch doctor, tried and failed to cure her. Finally, the family chained Amahle to a tree in their compound for her own safety. In desperation, her family asked local Christians to pray for her healing. As the church began to pray, they connected with IMB personnel several hours away and asked for help.
Because of your generosity, the IMB personnel had a telemedicine kit. They invited Amahle to come to their city for an evaluation. A healthcare consultant in the U.S. worked with local medical staff to diagnose and develop a care plan for her. The results were remarkable! Amahle’s hours of being chained to a tree ended, and her new life began. Amahle’s transformation was so stark that she and her mother accepted Christ. Like the blind man healed by Jesus (John 9), others in the village soon saw the changes and followed Christ as well. A new church has formed in a nearby village as more trust in Jesus as their Savior. Now, Amahle sings in the choir and participates in other activities young girls do. Pray for Amahle’s father to follow his daughter in trusting Christ.
Thank you for your generosity and prayers. Your sacrificial gifts and intercession are truly transforming lives as we partner together to solve the world’s greatest problem, lostness.
*Name changed.
Thank you so much for your generous support of the work of IMB teams engaged in healthcare ministries and those globally receiving love through medical care. Your partnership enables IMB medical missionaries and teams involved in healthcare work to carry out their specialized ministry while training local healthcare workers to be missionaries through medicine.
We want to share with you some of the ways God is working through your generosity:
The Americas. Thank you for partnering with us to equip pastors in the Americas to meet needs in their communities. Your generosity enables us to ship medicines and books to these national believers so they can reach out and administer primary care to those God has called them to serve. They can also continue learning and growing as ministers through the books they receive. We just sent the first 30 books to one group of pastors, and we are sending another 27 books to others this month. The box pictured here contains vitamins, antiparasitics, and other items.
Asian Pacific Rim. Some local village men meet on Friday nights to study God’s Word, pray together, and grow as followers of Jesus. One man suggested having a free health screening in front of his house for everyone in the village. A local church—where the men were baptized just two years ago—offered to host the free screening on their anniversary and partnered with our team to that end.
On a hot Sunday morning, our team, one of the group’s facilitators and his wife, both nurses, set up a tent in front of the house where the men meet weekly. These men wanted their neighbors to know they are Christ-followers, and the free health screening was a way to demonstrate God’s love.
More than a hundred residents received invitations to get blood sugar and blood pressure checks and then see a doctor for a brief consultation before receiving medicine and an offer of prayer in Jesus’ name. Ninety-three people attended. Praise God! Those who did not participate were discouraged by local Islamic leaders from attending the Christian event.
Thank you for your generosity which enabled these men to demonstrate Christ to their community. The event was also an opportunity to promote our nearby clinic, establish new relationships, and deepen existing ones in the faith. This church plant is the only Christian witness in their village.
Europe. We are reaching out to our community through a fitness and wellness center. We held our soft opening this past week with a fabulous turnout. Now we have open-gym time blocks and classes each weekday. So far this week, we have had 22 people come work out, and a few have stopped by to check out the facility. Word is getting out! This summer, we will hold several special events, including a coaches’ training and certification class that will train coaches here and other Christian workers across Europe.
Prayer Requests. Your prayers are so important to us.
Thank you so much for your kindness, generosity, and partnership! Your prayer and gifts are truly making a difference through this project!