The Communaute des Eglises des Freres Mennonites au Congo (Mennonite Brethren Church in Congo) will host evangelistic services July 4-11, according to Garry Prieb, who is traveling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to speak. Prieb is requesting prayer for the event.
Each evening, Mennonite Brethren will host open-air evangelistic meetings in Tembo, a city in southwest Congo near Angola. Prieb and MB evangelist Georges Kaputu are featured speakers.
“The entire city is invited,” Prieb wrote in a June newsletter to supporters. “We are hoping many see the flyers and posters, hear the music, follow the loudspeakers and come to Jesus—leaving their selfish and animistic ways.”
During the day, Prieb and a team of local MB leaders will train hundreds of leaders from southwest Congo and Angola with teaching from 2 Corinthians. The Ndinga Moyo (Word of Life) MB Church in Tembo will host the training.
Prior to the evangelistic meetings in Tembo, Prieb will serve as the closing speaker July 3 at the Yolo Sud MB Church’s conference in Kinshasa, where the theme is “Walking and Working Together for a Glorious Destiny.”
Prieb will also hold seminars in Kikwit—an 11-hour jaunt from Kinshasa across potholed asphalt—and Gungu to encourage church planters.
In the past year and a half, MB churches in DRC have planted 58 churches and added 3,353 believers, Prieb says. The MB church in DRC numbers more than 600 churches.
Supporters of Prieb’s ministry have, through the 501(c)3 Lumeya International Ministries (LIM), helped purchase 25 properties to build permanent structures for church plants. More property is needed.
“Many of the 58 newly planted churches are meeting in thatched enclosures, in half-finished cement homes, in courtyards or in rented facilities,” Prieb wrote in his newsletter. “Nevertheless, there is rejoicing in the air.”
Funded by donations through LIM, Prieb’s partners provided scholarships for 97 MB student leaders in September 2021, and have also provided funding for building repair.
Read more about Prieb’s ministry in DRC, including Bible distribution to members of the child militia, in this January 2022 CL article (https://christianleadermag.com/trading-bullets-for-bibles/).
Janae Rempel Shafer is the Christian Leader associate editor. She joined the CL staff in September 2017 with six years of experience as a professional journalist. Shafer is an award-winning writer, having received three 2016 Kansas Press Association Awards of Excellence and an Evangelical Press Association Higher Goals award in 2022. Shafer graduated from Tabor College in 2010 with a bachelor of arts in Communications/Journalism and Biblical/Religious Studies. She and her husband, Austin, attend Ridgepoint Church in Wichita, Kansas.
