Judy Acheson's prayer needs

The latest prayer letter from St John's CMS Mission Partner, Judy Acheson, has been published and in it Judy lists the following prayer requests as well as giving an update on progress on the second edition of the book Young people, with God let us rebuild our beautiful country.

Prayer requests:

• Planning the provincial office, the role of each member, possible further training and the finances. I hope that we will be able to meet in Kinshasa with Bisoke and Uchama (his secretary) to discuss all that this involves and how to bring it all about at the end of April.
• Income generating projects in each diocese for the youth department to provide funds for the diocesan youth worker - his salary, travel and running costs of his office.
• Income generating projects for our provincial office so that salaries, rent, travel and office expenses can be paid. I am very concerned that we achieve this so that Bisoke and the team will have some level of independence to plan their own work rather than being dependent on
looking for funds for everything they want to do.
• Further development of our youth leaders' training centre in Mahagi. We have funding for another three years as well as some funding for building. I hope to visit in April. We would like to offer a three-year diploma course in leadership at this centre from 2009. This obviously will involve much hard work in planning the courses and providing adequate buildings and
staff. Please pray that the Ministry of Youth, having officially recognized our training, will fulfill their part by paying the staff and provide certificates at the end of the course.

Book 2:

Fernand continues to travel around the country meeting youth leaders from different churches to introduce book 2. ‘Young people, with God let us rebuild our beautiful country’. He is amazed at the response. In Bas-Congo, students from a teacher-training college in Matadi asked him to hold a special seminar for them in how to use the book! What an opportunity. In Kananga, Kasaï Occidental, the young people were so challenged that they set up a network across the city calling all young people to work through the book and together decide what they can do to change both their own city and have an influence further field! A vicar in Mbuji-Mayi told Fernand when he returned there that the book had totally changed his attitude to women. He
realized that he was being a hypocrite and so went home to ask forgiveness from his wife and daughter for treating them badly as second-class citizens and he said that the family was now very happy.

We do want to say thank you to the churches that have sent CMS money towards this initial training, as well as the trust funds that CMS have found for us. With such a good amount of funding, we can train right round the country and God is truly blessing these seminars.

We still have the revisions to do to this book, following on from the workshop in October. Hopefully we will finish this in April and then present the book again to the Ministry for the final validation. We will then send the manuscript to my friend Yvette in Australia for her to do the graphics and set the pages ready for printing. She makes the book look very professional. We will then hopefully get the book into Lingala, and maybe Swahili. I am also hoping that we can do an
Africa edition in English.

Do pray that the Ministry fulfills their part by finding funding for printing and further training around the country.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Switchfoot - Stars.