September was a busy and exciting month for Team Expansion’s training team. In early September the team completed trainings in Brazil, but they quickly left again to complete what would end up being the biggest Jonathan Training we’ve ever had! Read about it in our VP of Training’s own words below.
From Eric Barry, VP Strategy and Training
From Brazil, I flew back to Louisville, and after a couple of days, flew on to Nigeria with a 5-man facilitation team to take the DMM training to two cities in Nigeria. The Lord had put on my heart to do something for Nigeria ever since I first heard of Boko Harem kidnapping and enslaving ~187 young Christian girls, and then doing it again a year later with an even larger group. Like the Sao Paolo training, God opened the doors through the 30 cities initiative. It was incredible.
We did two trainings: one in Lagos and another in Kaduna to the north. The Lagos training was outstanding. We worked with the largest Baptist Church in Lagos. A church that has started 136 daughter and granddaughter churches in 57 years – they’re an amazing bunch! We finished the last day with 252 in attendance. They committed to starting 45 3/3rds groups and on the prayer walk day they saw 45 decisions for Christ!
Solomon, Discipleship Pastor
I went prayer walking with Solomon, the Discipleship pastor, who will oversee implementing the DMM training church wide. After the prayer walk he got up and said, “In the past when we’d go to evangelize I’d carry a Bible and an argument would always start. This time I just went up to the Muslims and asked if we could pray for them and ask God to bless them. The barriers dropped. It was so freeing. I was amazed! I love this training!”
We approached one lady and she invited us into her home. Soon her family was gathered around. They were Christians. I told them we were training Christians to be disciples that make disciples. The wife said, “Well, we’d love the training, but we don’t attend your church.” Pastor Solomon jumped right in, “that doesn’t matter. We’ll be happy to train you. I’ll come myself. When is a good day and time?” I was thrilled – he’d caught the DMM vision. We train anyone anywhere to be a disciple that makes disciples that make disciples!
Kaduna
From Lagos, we flew up to Kaduna. This is in the middle of the violence against the Christians. We drove through neighborhoods that you don’t want to be in at night. Their government is Muslim dominated and has disarmed the Christians, opening them up to be targets. Nevertheless, the Church there is alive and well and vibrant! I’m not sure what I expected but I was amazed at their faith – they were awesome! They were not, and would not, be intimidated by Islam.
We trained about 530 people in total.
Listening to God
One Hausa elder statesman, a very distinguished Pastor, after the “listening to God” exercise, got up and said, “This is very important. I’ve never done this before. Our church members come to us, they ask for prayer. But we don’t listen to them, and we don’t listen to God. We don’t say, ‘we’ll pray for you and ask God,’ and then come back to the person and share what God has said. I’ve learned something new and valuable.”
Our entire trip to Nigeria was incredible, but on our final night, God did something truly unforgettable. Read my journal entry about the miraculous healings God allowed me to be part of.
