Spring 2000

Week ten

What’s inside:

People Group Focus; An Update on the Fulbe; Project List; and God’s Heart for the Nations Bible study.

Also, there was no IMB student e-mail newsletter for the week of March 26.

Unreached People Group (UPG) focus:  The Tumbuka of Malawi and Zambia

The Tumbuka live in the northern Malawi and in eastern Zambia. This region of South-Central Africa is home to the Nyika Plateau National Park and Vwaza Marsh Game Reserve. The Tumbuka people group is made up of a mixture of people who entered this region over the last 500 to 800 years. The majority of these people are Bantu in origin. The Bantu include several tribal groups with a similar linguistic history, Bantu languages.

Chitumbuka is the heart language for the Tumbuka. All of the groups that have moved into the area over the last centuries have adopted this language, including the Ngoni of South Africa who conquered the Tumbuka in the mid 19th century.

Many Tubuka have a Christian background. Some even go to church regularly, but few have a personal relationship with Jesus. Rural areas have had less exposure to the gospel. The total estimated number of Tumbuka is 1,150,000 to 1,400,000. There are only 40 Baptist churches amongst this group.

Prayer Points:

• Pray that new churches will be started. 
• Pray that literature will be made available in Chitumbuka, the heart language of the Tumbuka. 
• Pray that students might be reached at the Mzuzu University. 
• Pray that health educators might reach out to their physical and spiritual needs. 
• Pray that Christians would help dig wells to provide clean water in rural areas.

Look at what God is doing through the lives of college students. These are statistics on students sent through the Collegiate Mobilization Department in the International Mission Board:

FIRST QUARTER STATISTICS: 
Students sent out as of March 31, 1999 TOTAL: 134 
Students sent out as of March 31, 2000 TOTAL: 885

College students are AWESOME! You ARE taking God’s glory to the nations so that all people can come to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

An Update on the Fulbe:

You may remember that we focused on the Fulbe Jeeri of Senegal in our first newsletter last fall. Here is a recent story about God moving among them. Pray that soon they cannot be called an UNREACHED people group …

More than 60 Fulbe young people gathered for a fellowship near Jos, Nigeria, and rejoiced that in the past six months more than 80 Fulbe had accepted Christ in one area of the country. One young man was beaten by his brothers after he returned from the meeting. All the new Fulbe believers in that area have been persecuted to varying degrees, and many have been severely beaten. Ask God to comfort and strengthen these believers in their distress. Pray that their patient endurance would bear witness to Christ’s saving power.

This information is from “Advance!” by Mark Kelly of the International Mission Board. Copyright (c) Dec. 1999, Kainos Press. “Advance!” is offered free of charge; please circulate it freely. To subscribe, send an e-mail to subscribe-advance-newsletter@xc.org.

Project List

There is still time to apply for some projects starting late this summer! Here are some of the opportunities.

The deadline is April 30 for all projects beginning July 1 and after.

*Details on all projects are available on the web at www.thetask.org/students on the Mission projects link.

Bible study:

GOD’S HEART FOR THE NATIONS