SEPTEMBER JOURNAL
NewsletterPublish date: 09/13/2005
Dear Friends and Partners,We greet you in the wonderful and matchless Name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
It is with great joy that we write to you this month to tell you of the awesome things that the Lord is doing. We have several crusades scheduled over the next few months including our annual Ministers’ Conference from October 10-14. This meeting is for those in, or called to, full-time ministry, but everyone is welcome. Don’t forget to sign up for our golf game that week, as well. We are most excited about our next mass-crusade, Good News Mamelodi (GNM) from October 26–30, on a cricket ground in the township of Mamelodi, just outside of Pretoria, South Africa. Pretoria is the capital of South Africa. Preparations for Good News Mamelodi are coming along with great favor and great excitement.
Church Involvement: In all of these townships, they tell us that you can never get more than 30 pastors at a time to show up for anything and we had nearly 300 pastors show up for the pastor’s meeting. We have about 150 churches on board with us so far—this is a miracle! We are working on recruiting and training volunteers and choir members—we want to form a 500-member Mamelodi mass choir. We have had no opposition; people are just very excited about the crusade.
Offices: We have offices on the cricket grounds. These offices are pre-fabricated buildings that are broken and run down. Just as in Umlazi, we paid for lights to be installed on the bleachers and left them there, so we sowed into Mamelodi by repairing and refurbishing these buildings. We repaired the broken windows, installed security bars, fixed and painted the offices, so that the community will be able to use them after we leave.
Radio: We currently have two FM radio stations signed up to broadcast GNM live—one Christian and one secular station. Impact Radio, the Christian station, reaches a 65 mile radius and Soshanguve Community Radio, the local cultural station, reaches a 160 mile radius. Both stations reach millions of listeners in the Gauteng area, including Johannesburg and Soweto!
Buses: God has given us favor with the Putco Bus Company and we expect to use over 700 buses in the five days to bring people in from the city and the surrounding townships. Each bus will cost anywhere from 650 to 1000 South African Rand or $105 to $160. That means we need at least $112,000 just for the buses.
We believe that GNM will yield a great harvest of souls—pray with us for the $600,000 budget to be supernaturally met in the next month so that we can pay this crusade in full before it begins. Please be a part with us in Good News Mamelodi. Pray for us and send the very best gift you can this month.
This year Christmas is on a Sunday. So that you can have enough time to put this on your calendar, we are announcing our Christmas schedule now. On Tuesday, December 20th, we will have a special Christmas concert at The River at Tampa Bay and we will also have special Christmas services on Friday, the 23rd at 7 PM, Saturday, the 24th at 6 PM, and Sunday, the 25th at 10:30 AM (one service only). We will be celebrating New Year’s Ablaze from Friday, December 30th, 2005 to Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 nightly at 7 PM. Sunday, January 1st we will have one service only at 10:30 AM.
We were looking forward to running a month of meetings in January, however something amazing has come up, so from January 8-15, 2006, we will be holding our first mass-crusade in India, in the city of Vishakhapatnam, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. We are trusting God for a major harvest to kick off the New Year. Please be in prayer with us concerning this endeavor. Now Winter Campmeeting 2006 will be held for only 8 Days from January 22–29. This will be our greatest Campmeeting ever!
Update: The number of souls saved, through our ministry and the ministry of those who are closely linked with us, since our daughter, Kelly May, went home to be with the Lord on Christmas Day 2002, is 1.1 million. Hallelujah!
We want to say “Thank You Partners” for standing with us in faith, prayer and generous financial support. Psalms 57:2 says that you can cry out to God Most High, Who will perform on your behalf and reward you. He will bring to pass His purposes for you and will surely complete them! May God richly bless you!
Yours for Revival and the Harvest,
Drs. Rodney and Adonica Howard-Browne