Friends
Please take a moment to read an excerpt (below) from the latest email I received from our friends Mbonisi and Tashinga Malaba. We have been working with Bones and Tash over the last decade whilst they have been leading the church in Bulawayo Zimbabwe. Over the last year they have been building foundations for a new church plant in Nairobi Kenya and we are keen to continue to stand with them as we seek to commit to church planting in the nations. As we mentioned on Sunday a few weeks ago a number of us are standing with them in January by taking part in a 21 day Daniel fast.
In the book of Daniel, we see a couple of occasions when the prophet and leader engages in a partial fast to commit himself to worship, honouring God and seeking a breakthrough in prayer. (Dan 1:11-21; Dan 10:1-3) It is a great way to focus our hearts and minds and seek God afresh both for ourselves and for the church locally and internationally. We would love you to join with us in this adventure of faith. What might you abstain from for three weeks? A great way to decide is to ask others. What does our best friend think we should give up for a season? What might they think we hide behind when we are under pressure?
We would also like to invite you to join us at our week of prayer starting with a men’s prayer breakfast on Saturday 7th January. (Check the eBulletin for more details).
So please read the email below and seek God for Jubilee and for OneTribe Nairobi!
Thanks for all you do
Blessings
Simon
“On the church front (OneTribe!), things are going up a couple of gears in the coming weeks. As I explained to you, we plan to start off 2017 with 40 days of Mission. The first half of that will be lots of prayer (the “Daniel Fast” – we are so encouraged by your doing that at the same time) We launch public Sunday meetings on the 22nd of January, and then for the second half of the 40 days, we have 3 short-term outreach/mission teams (one from Cape Town, one from Johannesburg and one from Dar es Salaam) coming to serve in the city. We’re also excited to be welcoming Vinu Paul (from Newfrontiers India and a gifted evangelist) to speak in our last Sunday meeting of the 40 Days.
I’m reaching out to a few leaders and churches closest to us, to ask if you would specifically Partner with us in Prayer during this upcoming season. We are persuaded that it will take a miracle to build this church, that there’s no way we can do it in our own strength and that we need to pray this church into existence. In line with this, we’re having a “Pray for Nairobi” week from Monday the 9th to Sunday the 15th of January. We would love it if you would link arms with us through;
• Prayer
o We’d value your own prayer, and the prayer of anyone in your sphere of influence who you think would like to personally (even daily) be praying for us throughout the “Pray for Nairobi” week and perhaps even beyond
o We’d value corporate prayer for OneTribe Church and for Nairobi, either in existing church meetings or in prayer meetings specifically for Nairobi. As you and I discussed, it would be good to look into skyping into each other’s meetings so that we can be mutually edified by each others’ faith
• Prophesy
o We value the power of prophesy. We would really appreciate it if you would mobilise any prophetic gifts in your sphere of influence to pray for the church and for what God wants to do in and through OneTribe in Nairobi. We’d be grateful for any prophetic words that might come through in this context.”
