Thank you very much, Ben, and thank you very much,
Christchurch, for inviting us again.
We're glad to be here. My name is Michael and I always
say this is my beautiful wife. I'm blessed and you are blessed
too. We thank you for your support
for us, our compassion work. Many of you have supported our
children and the work in West Africa.
So I'd like to just take us briefly through what we are
doing and then ask that you continue to pray for us.
We are glad to be here and we are enjoying every bit of our
time here. Thank you.
OK. So we are in base in Ghana is
the first flag you see. And then there is Togo and
Benin, 3 nations. So from Ghana in the voter
region in Hou, if you show the next slide, we've been moving
into three nations. OK, next slide, please.
And we are based in the City of Grace Church in Hou in the voter
region of West Africa, where I have Apostolic oversight over
the churches in Ghana to go and Benin.
And we are praying to move further into other nations in
West Africa. We have three children.
I know we have three children. And maybe I'll tell you their
names and their ages. The first one is John, who is 17
years. Second one is Casey.
Yeah, she's 14. And the last one is Grace.
She's 6. I know that men focus on bigger
things, so we have three children and women focus on the
details. So And so my youngest daughter
knows everybody's birthday and she'll be reminding me because I
don't have to forget her birthday.
So I have a lawyer now that helps me.
All right, so we have 24 churches in all in West Africa.
We have 12 of them in Ghana, and we have one in Togo, and then we
have another 11 in Benin. Those serve as Christ Transit
churches in West Africa, which we oversee.
From who in the voter region? OK, next one.
And our vision in City of Great Church is to be a people in whom
God draws by his spirits, a graceful community of God to be
the place where children and the elderly will find peace and
enjoy God and to be a church base of 3002.
Plant our graceful spirit and missionary churches in the Voter
region, Ghana, Africa and the world.
I don't know where we'll get to Blackpool.
We're already here and what normally what I do from who is I
visit the churches around in Ghana, in the two regions of
Ghana, we have the 12 churches, the voter region and the Bono
East Region. And I use this relationship to
strengthen them, to help them set up leadership and then to
have local relationship as well to help them to document their
churches, which we need to do, and then to licence the pastors
as well, help them to bring stuff, how to generate income
for the churches and address pastoral issues that are around.
So when I pay an Apostolic visit, those are the things I do
or try to achieve with every visit, either for a weekend or a
week. All right, next slide.
So those are some of the visits I've done to the local churches.
The first one picture you see is me travelling from the voter
region to the Bono East Region of Ghana.
Ghana has 12 regions and I go strategically because the, the,
the, the man in the blue and white shirts T-shirt there is
the driver, but he's one of the eldest in the church called
Joffrey. I chose him to drive because
he's what we call driver mechanic.
He knows how to fix cars as well.
And our roads are not too good. So when the car breaks down, he
will fix it. And then I have a Joanna, my
sister-in-law, who is looking after her children.
We, we, she has to come with us because we're borrowing her
truck, which is office truck. And the office says that
wherever the truck go, she must be in it.
So she has to be in it to go with us.
So we're actually appealing that I can get a truck like that.
The appeal is to run. I'm sure Ben will tell you about
it and if you want to join and contribute towards buying me a
track like that so I can go around.
You're welcome. It's on the Waymaker platform.
And then the next person is essential Holist prison worship.
So I go to the prison worship leader because some of the
churches are not well established and they need a
worship leader. So depending on where I'm going,
I select the people to go with me and the other lady better is
my translator because where we are going, I don't speak their
language, say the cucumber tribe and she speaks cucumber.
So I have a translator, worship leader, truck owner, driver,
mechanic and myself for that journey.
So if you can also serve, please come.
Maybe if you can speak French, I go to French countries, I don't
speak French. So you can come and interpret or
translate. And if you can also drive a
mechanic, then you can come and drive.
And when the car breaks, now you fix it.
And so the, the, the, the church in Bueno is the next slide.
That's picture. That's where we went to.
And the third one. And the fourth one is the church
in a birthday where we visited and we have to do an open air
meeting because they meet in the classroom, which is not big when
I have visited them. And the other picture is also
another church, another church and the leaders training one of
the churches. So just say a picture of some of
the visits I did this year before I came here.
Next slide. OK, so we've been doing
conferences in Ghana and Benin. So once every year in August, I
bring the churches together, churches around to who?
And we have what we call devoted to Jesus convention.
When I attended Devoted 2018, I said it was devoted events or
devoted festival. I didn't know what they were
devoted to. So when I went to Bagana, I
started devoted to Jesus. I wanted to be very clear so
people know what people know what they are devoted to.
So this year we had devoted to Jesus.
And next year in the middle, Jeremy will be coming in August
to be with us. And so you're also invited to
Devoted to Jesus convention. Please come.
And last two years we had it in Jose and Jane from the Horsham
Church came to be with us. So once every year we do devoted
to Jesus conference and the churches in Ghana in Togo and
Benin will come together. We happen to have a the
Willoughby family, Mark and Beth Willoughby from City Church
Sheffield and they came to visit us and stay around for the
convention. All right, next slide, please.
OK, So that devoted to Jesus convention in Benin supposed to
be in French, but I can't speak French, so I translated it to
English. But if you look at the first
picture, it is in French where we have the 11 churches in Benin
is led by Simplice and Mary. He works with other 11 pastors
who are working as Christ Centra.
So that's Simplice and myself here.
And last year I went with Mabel as the first time.
I went with Mabel because Benin, it's a very dark place
spiritually. So I have to be sure that God is
with me before I go with my wife.
So please pray for this. Francophone countries
Christianity is not very high there because they were
colonised by France and the French didn't actually teach
them the gospel. The only churches you see is the
Catholic Church. So Benin, for instance, the
population, you have 48.5% of the population being Christians
and half of that are Catholics and the rest are everything else
that calls themselves Christians.
So I challenge the pastors to change the statistics, at least
have 50% of the population to be Christian.
But what's happening currently is that the president is a Pagan
and they worship this that which means snake, we have a snake God
and they dedicated one day to the worshipping of this *** by
the whole nation. The new president has increased
that to three days. So you realise whether we are
gaining or we are losing as Christians there.
So please, you want to pray, pray for us West Africa, pray
for the Francophone countries especially that God will send
missionaries there. He will send us there and send
you there to go and preach to them.
All right, next slide please. So we have leaders weekends
which is something we do twice in a year.
We bring the leaders together and now other get messages from
Jeremy and myself or other leaders in the international
team to encourage the leaders in West Africa.
Next slide and we have what we call remember the poor which
gave birth to the compassion work and they remember the poor.
We started with her where she's a teacher, went to school and
the government was supposed to provide free compulsory basic
education but it is not free and so the schools need to generate
money to take care of the children.
So they asked to pay school fees.
And then she came back to from school and said some children
have been sent away because they cannot pay school fees, so we
should help them. And I said, well, I'm not able
to help myself. How do I help them?
But we try and started helping them.
And that's how eventually we made Compassion, which now
sponsors a lot of the children. We have 198 children, all of
them sponsored now with your help.
Thank you very much. And they will also help people
with skills acquisition and training and one thing we call
rural Uplift, which is helping people to do more of what they
are already doing. So if you're a farmer and you
have one piece of plot, we give you a loan.
So you can do two plots or three plots.
We've given out loans. We didn't get them back.
So that project is suffering. It's understandable.
OK. So we thank you for sponsoring
the children. And we're in the third year now.
They're all doing very well. They have they're all being
enrolling schools. They can go to the hospital
because they have National Health insurance and their
physical needs to have been taken care of.
God bless you. Next slide.
So that's compassion Wake. Next slide.
As a compassion children this Christmas last year and this is
how they started, they are now looking very good and doing very
well at school as well. So children otherwise we didn't
have opportunity to go to school are now attending school and
they're doing well. Next slide One other thing we do
is the radio ministry. I preach on radio every Monday
morning from 5:00 to 5:30 AM on the state radio.
We started around 2003. So I started with Maybelle.
We go to preach, preach in English and then she interpret
into every and it reaches 1.6 million people.
But when we started having children, she has to stop
because she couldn't go again at dawn.
It starts from 5:00. So we have to be there five,
4:30 AM and have conversation with the radio presenter to warm
up our voice so we can speak properly.
Then five, we start the programme.
Now it's gone digital. So it means more than 1.6
million are listening to us Monday mornings.
If I'm here, they have to play a recorded version.
So you can also listen. We send you the link and then
you can listen to us next slide. So sometimes I come here and be
part of the international Apostolic team that Jeremy has
who normally have a meeting before devoted Devoted.
When I start, I don't know how to finish devoted event or
devoted festival. One of them.
Thank you. So this year we came to Crewe.
Is that how you call it Crewe? OK, so we have the international
meeting for three days and that leads to devoted events and
thank you all for supporting to bring me here to attend this
meetings next one. OK, so one we have school of
leadership. The first cohort has finished
second and now we are doing the third cohort.
We use it to train our leaders as a tool we have and we need
you to be praying for us. All of our leaders have done the
School of Leadership now and it's a policy that to lead a
Christ Central Church in West Africa, you should have done the
School of Leadership. But we need sponsorship for the
students because the school is Basin Ho and people need to
travel one weekend every month to come and attend it.
Some need transport to come, some need money to get the
materials. I do all the presentation at the
moment, so I'm the only teacher. So I listen to the videos and
then make my notes and then I teach the course.
So if I'm not there then the school is on hold.
So I need people to come and help me and many of you are good
teachers. Please take some time and come
to West Africa and help us teach.
We finished the Old Testament, so when I we go back, we'll
start a New Testament this month ending.
So when I get back, my troubles continue.
Next one I think is finishing now.
So the big vision we have now is Vision 1616, which all of you
must be part of. You see the Ghana map to the
right, It has 16 regions and at the moment we have churches in
two of the regions, Bono East and the Volta Region, making 12
churches. So we still have 14 regions to
cover with our churches and down that picture is the nations of
West Africa. We have 16 nations in West
Africa and we are in three of them, Ghana to go and Benin.
So we still have 13 nations to go.
So the vision 1616 is to plant 16 churches in all the regions
of the 16 church, 16 churches in all the 16 regions in Ghana and
plant churches in all the 16 nations of West Africa.
It's a big vision, brothers and sisters, and let's God help us,
we will not even start it. So we, we invite all of you to
have those can speak French, Arabic and Portuguese because
one of the countries in West Africa speaks Arabic, Western
Sahara and the Guinea Bissau speaks Portuguese.
Nine of them speak French, five of them speak English.
I only speak English. So I need help to go across the
borders and pray for political stability and all that.
For us. We have links in Liberia and
Cote d'Ivoire which we need to go but travelling within West
Africa is very expensive. By flight is so expensive and by
Rd I need a track to be able to go.
So please help me to get a track and we're praying Sheffield.
A lady prayed and said, God, please give Michael this truck
so that the money that has been collected now will be used for
something else. I thought I had faith for that.
That is very good. Then another lady said, God, I
please, please, can you give Michael a private jet?
I said, what private jet? That one?
I don't have faith for it. But what then, I asked myself,
are those who own private jets, they are not even Christians?
So what's wrong with a Christian having a private jet?
So I have faith for it now in the name of Jesus.
So if you can give me a private jet, you are welcome.
So I can fly. Amen.
So vision system, system, we invite all of you through prayer
to contribution. Either you get me the track or
the private jet and we need to translate the School of
Leadership material into French. Martin Cheswell tells me now,
tells me that it will cost a lot of money to be able to do that,
about £15,000. We'll be looking for that money.
It's not coming yet because we need it for these nine nations
in West Africa to help us go. So please pray for us, get us
the track for the private jet translates.
I have faith for the private jet now.
Oh, help us to translate the School of Leadership material
into French. I think that's all now.
Thank you very much.