Finding Leaders Amongst Refugees

For the past year or so the Houston team living in Los Arcos has been actively praying for leaders that we could invest our lives into. We know that it’s going to take the right people with the right giftings to launch a movement, but we’ve found it’s not so easy to find those people. Like many seasons we’ve found ourselves in, we’ve been reminded that the only way we’ll see success is through a supernatural work of the Spirit.

Some of the men we’ve poured our lives into within the complex in the past year are Man (Sangay’s dad), Mani (the deaf couple), and Sabisua. Man was pretty faithful for a while, but he struggled a lot to teach others, due to his introverted nature and lack of education, so he soon lost interest in the mission altogether.

And Mani has remained pretty faithful, having cut himself off from the Mormons’ influence and started attending a Christian church regularly, as mentioned a while back. But we never got very far with him just because were unable to find a willing and able interpreter. Finally, Sabisua continues to be a disciple and is actively pursuing his disciple Karkha. However, it’s going to take some time to work through some of his character issues before the Spirit has complete freedom to work in and through him, simply because he’s still new to the faith.

But we’ve been encouraged by a new contact recently, an African Muslim man, Tambwe. He’s a guy in his mid-50’s from the Congo who moved to the States about 2 months ago. Jacob met him soon after Tambwe arrived to Los Arcos, and he started going to his home regularly to minister to him. It turns out his parents and siblings are all Christian, but since he converted to Islam at a young age he’s rooted pretty deeply in that faith. He’s been super friendly with us, even as we share with him about Jesus.

We were especially intrigued by his background. He was a high school teacher most of his life, and has always shown natural leadership skills. One day, a man approached him with a job offer for a refugee organization, and Tambwe accepted. So he became the president of the Youth Society amongst refugees in the Congo, and he held that position 10 years before moving here. While living there, several people encouraged him to work toward becoming the president of the Congo, just because of his leadership anointing, and he believes Allah brought him here to prepare him for that presidency someday.

Every time Jacob goes to Tambwe’s apartment he shares some of the supernatural things Jesus is doing in our midst, such as healings, dreams and prophetic words. And we told him that we’ll begin praying for Jesus to visit him in his dreams to confirm what we have been saying. We’d like to ask you guys to be praying for such supernatural works in his life, since that might be the only way he’ll really believe us. If he does realize the truth about Jesus, I believe God could use him in a mighty way back in his country and beyond. (And we’ll try to get a picture of him soon :)