By Lester Wehyee
It is my pleasure to introduce myself to the IOM America readership and to all the children of God who will have the opportunity to read this information from God’s ministries. Romans 8:28, all things worked together for good to them that love God and are called according to His word. I am Minister Lester N. Wehyee from the Republic of Liberia, West Africa. I am married to my beautiful wife Leigh Wehyee with four biological children and two other orphans living in my house. Dr. Phinney is my spiritual father, he and mum, Janie, are spiritual parents to us and grandparents to our children. Even though I am busy being the Founder of Gethsemane Evangelical Prayer Ministries and New Hope orphanage, I consider it to be a blessing to have IOM America adopt our ministry and for their recent appointment for me to serve on their Advisory Board and be their Representative for the continent of Africa. Dr. Phinney and I are very excited about God’s potential in this partnership. I met the Lord right after I was arrested by rebels—along with 50 others. Their objective was to put the entire group to death. Needless to say, I was so afraid I couldn’t get anything out of my mouth besides the word “Jesus” - and I said His name over and over. To my surprise, and grief, everyone was put to death except for me. Not only did I come to accept Jesus as my Savior but I knew that he kept me alive to accomplish what I am about to share with you. New Hope is a Christian community based non-profit organization helping to address the needs of children in our poorer communities by providing them spiritual guardians, edu-
IOM ADOPTS NEW HOPE ORPHANAGE Lester Wehyee: We are blessed to have IOM America adopt our ministry and for appointing me as their Representative of Africa.
cation, food, medication, child rights and other services. Our program is aimed at meeting the needs of kids who are considered less-fortunate, those with disabilities, whom parents were killed during the brutal civil war in Liberia, and those whose parents cannot absolutely afford to meet up with their needs as mentioned above. The opportunity of impacting on the lives of these orphanage children and other destitute adults is ripe and at the full-front in the interest of the kid and adults who souls maybe won to Christ, but faces number of social, financial, spiritual, and psychological problems in it implementation and IOM will now be attempting to help us with that. This program was designed under the GEM CHURCH and strategized and had already started the provision of humanitarian services for the less-fortunate children populace in Liberia thereby helping to reduce incident of hunger, diseases, and illiteracy from the lives of kids and need your support/aids as a means of leading them to the savior.
New Hope Celebration
The first and foremost gift to our kids and adults (new converts to Christ) is to know the saving knowledge of God thereby making them to know that Jesus is their savior. The purpose of the New Hope is to give the children a sound Christian education, addressing their physical and spiritual problems, de-traumatizing the trauma through spiritual discipleship, motivation and appraisal and battling their social deficiencies to prepare them for a good citizenship and salvation. The measurable outcomes of and role expectation of the New Hope is to aid these less –fortunate kids/orphans in their growth towards full maturity, to make them aware of their limitations and capacities so as to be able to make proper adjustment to life challenges, to help become socially, spiritually and physically fit and productive members of the church of God and to play their roles as feature leaders in the life with fullness of commitment to their fellowmen and to Jesus Christ and to multiply (Acts 9:31). Both Dr. Phinney and I believe that if we genuinely know God & allow the mind of Christ to operate through us, we will love and care for those in need. The conviction of the gospel truth always impacts every area of life, both spiritually and physically. Please pray for us regularly and if God leads you, help us with our mission and partnership. We have many opportunities here in Liberia as well as with the IOM mission for all of Africa. Lester is an IOM Adviser, IFEL Representative of Africa & Contributing Writer
www.e-sword.net
If you are not a prayer partner but would like to be a part of this exciting ministry—simply text this code to 602-2922982 (TTP077). You will receive two prayer texts per week. The only thing we ask is that you reply with a minimum of “I prayed.” Our permission based texting is regulated by replies.
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BY DAVID McCARTHY IOM Contributing Writer (AZ)
Every Christian has the Exchanged Life but few know it or how to enter into The exchanged life. It is the apostle Paul’s transcendent revelation, the very heart of his gospel. Without it, the Christian life becomes a weary struggle that never reaches its oft advertised potential. How different things are with it. Every Christian has an exchanged life, but few know it or ever enter into the good of it. Yet amazingly, there is no work required; just vision. For those who see it, there seems to be an almost endless variety of pathways that lead to its revelation. For some, the journey is relatively simple; the encounter of an individual, the reading of a book, or the seemingly chance attendance of a particular seminar. For others, it is a convoluted path of starts and stops with occasional insights until the full sun of revelation bursts upon the soul. I suppose my journey was somewhere in between. I inherited an intellectual Christian faith from my parents—they were genuine believers but for a long time I just thought I was a Christian because my parents were Christians and I believed what they believed. Or at least I thought I did. But that all changed when at fifteen I had my own encounter with Jesus. Thankfully, I’ve never recovered from it. Winston Churchill famously said, “We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.” It seems to me that many who profess faith in Jesus react to Him in a similar way. They pray a prayer or respond to a gospel invitation and think that is all there is to it. They have encountered the truth but end up going on as if nothing much happened. In my case, I experienced a stream of new thoughts and feelings that were very different from what had been there before I met Jesus. Not only does a new believer experience forgiveness of sins, but Jesus Himself comes to live within. And although transformation doesn’t generally happen overnight, how can life ever be the same again? After all, your spirit has come alive, your Maker has taken up residence within it, He’s passionate about you, and He cares how you live. At least that was my experience. Jesus was now alive to me. From that day forward I wanted to know Him and live Him although those probably wouldn’t have been my exact words at the time.
Editorial Comments: Kathy Hill, CO editor@iomamerica.org Entire contents of this publication is under © supervision of IOM America 2013 Reproduction permitted when entire publication remains intact. Digital view or copies can be obtained online at: click here All Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible, © Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963,1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
The pastor of the church I was attending asked me and my friend John to share with the congregation what had happened to us. John and I had been saved about the same time and it was obvious to everyone that we had become different people. After we shared one Sunday morning, a member of the church came up to us and in so many words said, “What happened to you once happened to me. But don’t worry, you’ll eventually come back down to earth.” Well, I actually hadn’t been worried about that at all. I rather liked living above my old, slavish, Adamic nature. Coming “back to earth” wasn’t what I had in mind. But hearing him, I did find myself worried that I might become as cold as he seemed to be. As he walked away, I whispered, “Lord, may it never be.” A few months later, John and I were reading the book of Acts together. We were stunned. “You mean the church was once just like Jesus; they did what He did and lived like He lived? What happened? Why isn’t the church like that today?” We asked the Lord if there was anything like that on earth. If there was, we wanted it. If there wasn’t—well we didn’t know if we could endure the status quo. We had now seen what was possible and it was really hard to settle for less. It was soon after that we were introduced to the charismatic movement. And that was a help to us in many ways. But after two or three years, I was still hungry for more although I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. Eventually I met a group of Christians that I described at the time as a phenomenon. I had never seen anything like it before. These people were excited about their faith and they were living it unlike any other group of Christians I had ever met. I was immediately attracted. Within the week, one of the young men invited me to stop by for lunch. We were both attending the university and he was living nearby with three other young men from the church. As I stepped into the apartment (it was a large two bedroom affair with a massive living room) I heard someone singing. One of my friend’s roommates was home. When he saw us, he stopped what he was doing and greeted us. I then asked what has become that rather trite American greeting; “How are you?” I can still remember his response as if it was yesterday. “Just enjoying Jesus as I’m cleaning up the kitchen.” Wow, that was different. The words were certainly unusual, but so was the twinkle in his eyes and the lift in his voice. And everyone in that fellowship was very much like him. They were genuine, excited about Jesus, and walked what they talked. I was sure they had what I was looking for. As I attended their meetings, I heard message after message about how we Christians have died with Christ and that He is now our life—and what that meant. The church seemed to continually emphasize the Lord’s indwelling and our living in Him. It was a clear exchanged life message but they never used those words. In the church’s little book room were writers that would soon become familiar to me. They included Watchman Nee, Andrew Murray, T. Austin Sparks, Major Ian Thomas, Oswald Chambers, and Hudson Taylor. I now know those men as teachers of the exchanged life, even though most of the time they didn’t use that terminology. But that was their message. In the months that followed, I discovered who I really was as a believer, the nature of the life I had already received, and the faith to walk in this new revelation. It changed my life in so many ways. For me it wasn’t about overcoming a dysfunctional family situation, or substance abuse, or some psychological maladjustment. I just wanted to know Christ as those in the New Testament appeared to know Him. This new revelation was a key to introducing me to just such a life. Read David’s full story in the up and coming X-Changing Life magazine.
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