Dear Friends,

These are the Last Days and we live in terrible times. God is working in strange ways and there are some terrible things happening to the brethren in different areas of the world.

As some of you are aware we have an increasingly large work in Africa. Over the last week or so we have sent a mission comprised of five members of the board of CCG at Burundi to the Pygmy tribe on the border area of the East Congo and Burundi. The mission was carried out in Giheta at Gitega Province using our brethren from Kamenge. Somehow they found out about CCG and contacted the coordinators there asking for a mission. We sent five men for five days to introduce the people to the doctrines of CCG. Burundi and the Congo are part of the French work as they are in French speaking Africa but they also speak Kiswahili and Kirundi so are working also with East Africa whose main language is Kiswahili. All but one area’s coordinators speak English also.

Our officers tell us that the Pygmies are in terrible straits and their life is one of abject poverty. They are exploited by many people. The training went well and they asked to become part of CCG. Denis and the team formed a training cadre of 23 people who elected a senior coordinator as spokesman for contact between the HQ at Bujumbura and their people.

We will try and help them as we can. Those interested in helping may use the Paypal facility on the web and on the new African site on the CCG web to provide assistance to the various tribes there.

Whilst they were away the war broke out in the Goma District of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of the Congo people are being killed and deprived and many are starving to death.

A number of our brethren in the Congo have fled out of Goma and taken refuge in the church at Bukavu Panzi. Denis and some officers went into the Congo DR and are trying to stabilise the brethren there and make them somewhat safer. One of the emails we received from one of the groups in Goma said they did not know if they would survive or not and the situation is desperate. They asked us for prayers for the brethren there.

The CCG Officers from Bujumbura went to Bukavu Panzi via the church at Uvira. We have heard from them there at Uvira on Thursday and they said they hoped to get to Bukavu Panzi the next day. All in the CCG churches in that area of the Congo will assist as much as possible but they need help. It is extremely dangerous.

Please pray for their safety and for the safety of all the church there and in Burundi and Rwanda. Our church in Western Rwanda is also exposed. There is a lot of tribal conflict across the border there and it is very dangerous.

The food shortage in Kenya is also a problem but the brethren there are safe. So also are Uganda and Tanzania.

We have organised a hall in Nairobi on a permanent basis and it is also to be used as a Translation Centre. We have established a communication and translation network with computers and printers now from Nairobi and Mombasa through to Kampala and Kasese in Uganda and Kisumu and Rongo in Nyanza, Kenya and to Musoma in Tanzania to Bujumbura in Burundi and in Rwanda and on to Kinshasa in Congo DR and north to West Africa and Morocco and to South Africa.

There are many problems there all over Africa. Zimbabwe is a complete mess. Cholera epidemics have broken out and the people are weak from famine induced by the Zanu PF insanity. Inflation is 231,000,000%.

They all need prayers and actual help.

You can send this email out to your friends in the Churches of God. In the past, the Church of God system rendered as they say: “every assistance short of actual physical help” to others in need.

We all have a responsibility to assist our brethren and we would appreciate assistance, in this time of trouble and need, to fund these emergencies all over Africa.

Think what you can do for these people who are less fortunate than we are. At the moment the US dollar has strengthened and the exchange rate is 77 Kenya shillings to the dollar. Now every dollar given helps more than it has done so in the past. You have an opportunity to assist those in need more than you might have done previously. Do not send funds to an individual nation or person. The church knows who is most in need there. There are also a few utterly unscrupulous people that pose under different names and email addresses so as to defraud the whites in the US and in Europe and Australia. We actually caught one of them bragging to a group from Musoma that had been part of LCG, after they were booted out of CCG, that they had used a false address to lure one of the pastors down to Dar es Salaam under false pretences. They thought that was funny. We caught one group from Rongo-Migori running a racket involving eight churches at least with more than that many names. We have vowed to stamp this corruption out of the Churches of God and we are working with others to do so. Unless you know the area do not send funds, let the church do it.

We have been informed by communications operatives here that Nigeria is run by criminal gangs that force people to communicate to exploit people and the gangs have disconnected the telephone data base to ensure that Western target nations do not have access to the data base. Never, ever send money there.

Send this message to your friends and relatives who may wish to help us help them.

Your prayers cost nothing and the prayers of a righteous person are of great effect.

We need to buy Bibles and paper and ink cartridges, and funds for copiers and water and food and seeds and fertilisers and food production projects and chicken and fish farms and sanitation and medications for malaria and typhoid and cholera and vitamins and on it goes.

These people don’t have computers and they need photocopies of the papers handed to them each Sabbath. The cost is great as there are many churches and often very significant congregations in each church. A small Bible costs a week’s wages for these people and we have to get it to them.

Next year’s pre-Passover conference in Africa will involve some one hundred ministers from ten or more nations. We have to get them there, feed them, house them, and give them training and develop projects for them.

Pray that God gives us the funds to help them all and to continue to develop Africa.

With God, all things are possible.

Wade Cox

Coordinator General