LMAfrica Newsletter – August 2022

The Lord’s Table meeting began in Cairo over two years ago during the 4th Annual Conference in Cairo in January 2020. It was a glorious time testifying the fruit of the prayer in the Body and the direct labour in Egypt since 2011. While the church is still small, there is something solid for the Lord here. Three local saints have gone through the Full-time Training in Pretoria (FTTP) and a fourth local saint will start his first term of training in August 2022. We look to the Lord to cause the local saints to send their roots downward so that they can bear fruit upwards (2 Kings 19:30) this coming year! For this purpose, we are looking to the Lord to send some saints to visit us periodically to strengthen and encourage the local saints and the serving ones and help shepherd us into the fruit-bearing life.

While many meetings still remain virtual due to Covid-19, the Lord is opening the door for more and more in-person gatherings. In particular, it was wonderful to be able to gather together physically to have the annual conference in Cairo from 17-19 February 2022! Several coworkers came from South Africa, the U.K. and the U.S.A., along with a number of saints from Europe and Lebanon, to blend with the local saints. Over 40 saints joined us in person and more than 60 saints from outside Egypt joined via Zoom.

We covered the topic “The Genuine Church Life” with three live messages, then for the final message, we showed a video of Brother Lee sharing on ‘The Spirit with Our Spirit’ with an Arabic sound track. It was glorious to blend together with each other face to face!

Since Arabic is the 5th most widely spoken language in the world after English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and Spanish, it is crucial to translate the ministry into this tongue. The Arabic publication work has three main branches: 1) The Arabic New Testament Recovery Version translation project, 2) The translation of the Life-Study and stand-alone titles, 3) The translation of the semi-annual trainings and Cairo Winter Conference (both written and oral). While the priority of the Arabic publication work is the Arabic New Testament Recovery Version project, we can testify that the Lord is gracing the Arabic translation team to continue producing new titles in Arabic. These titles are for both local saints in the churches to be perfected and constituted with life and truth, as well as for new ones and unbelievers to get to know the ministry of the age and be caught by the heavenly vision. This labor is very crucial for the Lord’s move and spreading to the entire Middle East.

Another important aspect of the publication work is making the Arabic ministry books known to the general public, especially by presenting the ministry at the largest book fair in the Middle East held every year in Cairo. This year, more than two million people attended the 53rd Cairo International Book Fair (CIBF), which took place from 27 January to 7 February 2022. Egypt’s Ministry of Culture reported that nearly 300,000 visitors entered the fair grounds on the last day. The event took place at the Egypt International Exhibition Center, covering 40,000 square meters. CIBF had over 1,000 publishers from Egypt and 51 from both Arab countries and foreign publishing agencies. Despite many challenges that the serving ones faced, this time was nevertheless a real victory to the Lord and a shame to the enemy.

Some highlights from this year’s book fair:

The Lord also blessed us with many visitors with a Christian background. Three young men came: two highschoolers and a college student. They were open and asked for further contact. The college student has now become one of the church in Cairo’s faithful contacts and meets regularly with the serving ones. May the Lord gain him thoroughly. Another dear believer was interested in the book The All-Inclusive Christ. While the serving one was sharing with him about this book, the dear brother interrupted him and said, “Let me write down all the verses you are mentioning from the Bible about Christ as the all-inclusive land. I will buy the book!” There were many other encounters like these with believers which took place at CIBF.

Something new happened this year at the CIBF. A friend from another Christian booth came and ordered several titles and said that this order was for a Syrian friend who lives in Syria and that if he likes the books, he will place big orders to be shipped there. We also received online book orders from Iraq and we are currently in the process of fulfilling them. We believe that this is the Lord’s way of answering the saints’ prayers regarding opening distribution channels in the Middle East through CIBF…. We thank the Lord for this great opportunity, and we thank all the members of the Body for standing with us and supporting this labour in many ways. Our work cannot be carried out without the service of the Body.

For a full report on the book fair:-
https://newsletters.lsm.org/having-this-ministry/issues/Mar2022-011/cairo-book-fair-2022.html