Current Update & Prayer Needs:

Prayer Needs for Benin - March 20, 2025
Praises:

Josue is doing much better with the death of Emmanuel at this point, but there will always be a hole in his heart! The Celebration of Life for Emmanuel will be on 3/29/25, lead by Pastor Benjamin, but many will share. It will be a big celebration, bigger than the Cotonou Church can hold, as Pastor Emmanuel was known and loved by so many! Praises for his huge heart full of love, to serve in any capacity that was needed, both for his family and in ministry with Josue! It is a great loss for Emmanuel to have passed from his earthly home, but a huge blessing for him to be at the feet of Jesus in heaven!

Plans included Emmanuel pastoring a church plant in the City of Allada this summer: these shoes will be hard to fill! He has been at the church in Asroli for 4 years, sharing the pastoring load with KK Paul, for the seven surrounding villages. A service will also be held for Emmanuel there! This has taken him 2.5 hours away from his family, to serve the Lord, so they visited as often as they could. But his family could not move at that point. His wife Robertine is a nurse: there is no job for her in Allada area, as there is little medical care there. (She has been given two weeks leave from her job.) His children, Joel (22) and Dona (20), have been in school. Joel finished his degree and has been teaching English in a school. He really likes it! (He has been given one week leave!) Dona is finishing her 12th grade year. (Pam did not realize until this conversation with Josue, that Dona was the little girl she fell in love with on her first trip to Benin! When a family is active in ministry, they are never seen just standing around together!)

Josue and Emmanuel met after they finished school. Josue was already in ministry; Emmanuel was an electrician, who soon became a pastor! Through all those years, they made many great memories together, that Josue is now recording so they won’t be forgotten! Prisca and Robertine have also been great friends, so she has been struggling as well, seeing her friend so full of remorse and tears! The children are still struggling in shock that their father has died. Glory, Gedeon, and Isaac also knew the family well, but they seem to be managing their grief ok. The ministry will reach out and meet financial and spiritual needs for as long as needed, to help the family through this very difficult time! Please hold all of them in your prayers!

Josue’s trip to Zimbabwe was wonderful! The meetings with leaders of YFCI from all over Africa brought great discussion to the table, regarding opportunities to reach the Youth for Christ across the continent! He was immediately dealing with Pastor Emmanuel’s sickness upon his return, so more will be shared
soon! Much of Josue’s schedule has been put on hold!

Pray for:

*Pastor Emmanuel’s family: in worldly terms, he left the earth unprepared for his family to go forward!

*for the Celebration of Life to be beautiful and bring much needed closure! For the burial ceremony to go smoothly: the full Gospel will be shared, may many be led by Christ to accept His saving Grace!

*for the service in Asroli to be full of rejoicing as their pastor is now where they all want to be—becausehe shared Jesus with them!

*Josue wants each of his pastors to take time for himself, to get a medical checkup and be encouraged to make preparations to help his family survive him well! May funds be available for this!

*Prisca and the staff at God’s Grace are doing well overall! One of the kindergarden teachers has just shared that her husband wants her to stop teaching. Pray for God’s provision for another teacher to take her place this spring!

*There is huge need for English teacher at God’s Grace! The teacher mentioned above was teaching English to the Kindergarten classes!

*For Benin: things seem to be on hold for now, no new developments; still nothing shared by the govt. about the attacks!

*Update on Victorie (teacher at God’s Grace, who lost his soldier brother in the terrorist attack in Northern Benin): he and an uncle were the two who were allowed to see the body before the burial. He is really struggling still with all of this as he was very close to this brother! But on Friday he received a call--that his sister has also died! She was not well and died! He has two more siblings, one of which who was recently in a motorcycle accident (thankfully not too serious), and they are all lost in their grief! 

* Josue to have a relaxed weekend, to prepare for the service next weekend.

Pray for Isaac: he is getting his first taste of travel within the US! His host family has taken him to Atlanta for his SpringBreak! Maybe he will come to CO for his break after summer session, if it is in God’s will!

Prayer Needs for Benin - Feb 21, 2025
Praises:

Josue will be leaving next week for a YFCI meeting in southern Africa. All area leaders will be making decisions regarding best practices to continue reaching out to the Youth across the continent! He feels it is a privilege to be in the leadership of YFCI for so long, and loves the support they give each other through friendship and prayer. He asks for prayer especially now: the decisions made affect so many young lives! The youth have the opportunity to hear the Gospel, maybe for the first time. But is the presentation enough to fully lead them to Christ for eternity? How can things improve and meet the youth right where they are? How can the leaders be supported to keep them on the front lines every day? Pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance throughout all the conversations, for the sake of the Youth of Africa! May there be much fruit for this trip!
Isaac is doing so well: he received a letter from the President of his college, commending him for his 4.0 GPA for fall semester! Huge accomplishment, when he could not speak English when he arrived last August, and two of his classes were English composition!!! Yeah that he was also properly prepared for the math and computer classes he has taken, to move forward with A’s!!! This semester he travels via Uber to Frisco for all of his classes, 3 days a week! Josue has given us permission to encourage him to speak to the drivers, and get to know each other, so he can start sharing the Gospel with them!!! He needs to be pushed in this area!

Pray for:
*No word yet about Visa appointment being rescheduled for Josue and Prisca! Please keep praying!
*may Prisca, Glory and Gedeon be safe and well cared for while Josue travels!
*Benin: a second jihadist attack occurred last week, again in the northern part of the country, near the Burkina Faso border. The government is still not acknowledging that these attacks are happening, so fear is rising again! The coup that militarily took over the government of Burkina within the last couple of years has no base to protect this border and keep the jihadists out, whereas the other countries who have had coups are keeping the French out and are being successful keeping the perpetrators out. It is a real problem that the perpetrators are residents of the area, so their identity is a blur with the innocent!
But in this second attack, a soldier killed was the junior brother of a teacher at God’s Grace-- Victorien, who has been on staff for three years now teaching biology!!! The brother was only 35; has left behind his wife and 5 children, the youngest at only 5 months of age! Government policy: only 2 people can see the body before burial this coming week! How to pick? The parents are aging but still living as well as his wife, children, and siblings! Will the government come along side this young widow and provide for the needs of this family? How will they survive financially, emotionally, and spiritually?
There was no political/military response to other jihadist attacks. Benin does have military equipment that soldiers have been trained on, but they have never been under fire, in the climate of a battle! They do not have the grit or emotional preparedness to understand how to fight for their country!
And is this really against the people of Benin, the government of Benin, or just a political ploy to keep this current president in office? The election is one year from now, in the spring: the current president should be the “sitting duck” and not be able to run for re-election; he has served his two terms that the Constitution allows. But will he get the Constitution re-written again, so he can run? After all, Benin has remained faithful to the mother country of France, and pays for the military equipment they receive from France, but France is undercover financing the jihadists! So in reality, the tax dollars of the most poor are being funneled to pay the attackers who are against them!!! What??? And there is now a French military base being put together in Benin, without Benin approval, that supposedly is just for teaching and training of soldiers!?! But it is known that there are way too many people there already for it to be just a training site! The area of the attacks is just about 1.5-2 hour drive from Josue’s most northern churches: these pastors are so on fire for the Gospel, they want to go even closer to the battle to win hearts for Jesus! How else will this scenario truly change? Josue’s team is discussing strategies and plans…Pray against any more attacks! Pray that people will not act out in fear, in ways that will worsen the situation! Pray for peace across the country as they live in the uninformed darkness!
*pray for all the pastors to remain encouraged; that they truly understand this battle is between darkness and Light! May the church congregations remain strong and faithful to the Word! May all the wisdom needed fall upon the right heads and hearts to resolve this biblically! Josue is praying for the wisdom he needs to continue to lead his network of churches!