Agapetos House Fellowship Ministry Update 2020

Hello from Indonesia! I hope and pray that you and your loved ones remain healthy and well taken care of. All of us here are doing good. Our small town in the mountains of North Sumatra is doing much better compared to the rest of the country. We currently have just over a hundred total confirmed cases. Yet we still limit our travels outside our region since the pandemic is still raging in the densely populated bigger cities not too far from where we are. We thank God for His protection during this unprecedented time we are living in and ministering in.

Three weeks ago we restarted our in person weekly prayer and Bible study meetings. Most Churches in our small town have also restarted doing in person service with limited capacity. Thankfully there has not been any new clusters popping up so far. We continue to stream our services online in Indonesia because of the response we are seeing from those in different part of the country.

A couple weeks ago, we had a weekend retreat with our house fellowship ministry leaders. It was a wonderful time of worship, teaching and fellowship with one another. We also did a water baptism for three individuals who went through one of our teaching courses. It was a blessing to see them take that next step in their spiritual growth. By God’s grace we have also continued to help more struggling families with groceries and other expenses like hospital bills and rent.

Our team continues to minister to people individually and from house to house. A few weeks ago we were invited to pray for two families in the village. One of the ladies we met has been paralyzed from the waist down. As we shared the word and prayed together she said that the feeling in feet started coming back again. We are believing for a full recovery for her. Another family we visited there was having problems with evil spirits as we were told. Both families received Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Our annual retreat and Bible camp took place in October 2020. Thirty-six of us rented out a small hotel by the lake for two days and had a very blessed time together. We had a wonderful time worshiping, teaching the word of God accompanied by barbeque and fellowship. What this pandemic has actually done is make us even more closely nit. Glad to report that not one person among us has fallen ill so far. It also helps that we live in a small town where there has been relatively fewer cases compared to the rest of the country. In December we had our Christmas celebration. It was attended by all the families in our house fellowship. We were blessed with a special drama about the Christmas story from the kids in house fellowship. We had a marriage seminar the following day as well. These two events were much welcomed after months of isolation because of the pandemic.

Praise Reports and Prayer Requests

God blessed us with a ministry van at end of 2017. We have been trying to get the ownership papers changed to Esther’s name all this time. Finally we were able to get the new papers about a month ago. The reason it took so long we found out is because one of the workers in the office stole the money we paid to get the documents changed. That was a very frustrating experience. Our van is from 2008 and is starting to break down more often that before. Therefore we are planning to sell it and buy another one. We can’t put it on the market yet because we are still waiting for the new plates. Please pray for this situation. We will also need to raise more funds so we can get a better van.

I have applied to extend my Indonesian temporary residence visa for another five years. It actually expired in June. We have already sent all the papers to the capital and now we are waiting for a reply. Last we heard they had to close their head office for a month because of an outbreak. So please pray that this will be completed without any more issues.

Our son Ben graduated from K5! We are very proud of him. We are supposed to be starting grade one this week but we are still waiting for his school books to arrive from Canada.

If you have any prayer request, please feel free to share it with us. We will make sure to pray for you.

Thank you for taking the time to read our report. We are hopeful that the times we are living in will be fruitful for the kingdom of God. Thank you for your prayers and continued support.

God bless you.

Gola, Esther and Ben
Global Good News Initiative