Dear friends,

As I write, we have about seven weeks left in The Gambia. As you can imagine, we’ve been feeling all sorts of emotions about it! We’re very grateful to God for some encouragements these last few months, most notably…

Nick organised the first ECG (Evangelical Church of The Gambia) SOW Day Preaching Conference at the end of April. We felt it would be worth it if five people came so we were blown away when over 60 people turned up! It encouraged us on a number of fronts: 
•    the way the contacts Nick has developed over our time here backed and advertised the conference;
•    the hunger demonstrated for teaching on preaching (one participant noted that, although there are endless conferences constantly being advertised here, none are on preaching);
•    the number of pastors that attended and the diversity of churches represented (not just ECG);
•    the SOW course material that Nick taught from on the day was well received;
•    the enthusiasm expressed for this to become a yearly conference.
Join us in praising God for these encouragements and pray that what the participants learned would be used by the Spirit to grow them in faithfully ‘preaching Christ…so that lives are changed…to the glory of God’. Pray for SOW to be able to continue to work out how to serve the church here in training preachers – whether that be at the Tubakuta campus with full-time students or delivering the material in more flexible formats (such as a day conference). We have been encouraged by some early interest from pastors who are considering enrolling people at SOW for the coming academic year.