Stories
Beangezoka is a village about 13km North East of Mandritsara accessible by some challengingly muddy roads. A church was planted there some years ago now. Sadly, the pastor Rakotomalala passed away in December 2019, and so the church is now being led by a young man called John.
The 2021 Prayer Calendar is now available for you to download and use as you pray for The Good News Hospital! Work through the calendar each day of the month to pray for the different team members and teams working at the Good News Hospital.
This week we'd like to introduce to Miora, who is a close friend of many of the missionaries and we'd love you to pray for her as she takes on a new role - I am originally from the capital, Tana, but moved with my family to Mandritsara 13 years ago. I have worked at the hospital for four years now.
Berton is one of the hospital evangelists. He has been leading a team who is involved in church planting in a town called Mananara on the East coast of Madagascar. It is a materially wealthy town compared to Mandritsara due to the booming vanilla trade. However, the spiritual need of the area has been keenly felt by the project leadership for some years now.
We were not prepared for leaving Mandritsara and Madagascar to be so difficult. I think it is fair to say that much thought and preparation goes into cross-cultural service; much less goes into home-country re-entry. And so well over a year after having left Madagascar, we feel we are still in the transition state.
Bako has been the Malagasy language teacher for the missionaries in Mandritsara for many years. She’s suffered two retinal detachments and after much prayer and seeking a way, she was able to travel to Kenya on 7 January to see a retina surgeon in Nairobi.
There has been some rain in Mandritsara and the Mangarahara River is flowing again, though a lot more is still needed for a good rice harvest. There is also good news of a trickle of new workers coming to Mandritsara again after a long period of lockdown and almost no international traffic into the country. Most of this letter will tell you about new workers, but first we want to ask you to pray for Bako.
Time will tell whether the pandemic is really over in Madagascar. The team have been very conscious of God’s protection thus far. They are now of course in the hot, summer season – very different from the northern hemisphere. Please pray for the Lord’s continued wisdom especially for Nathan and for the project committee.
Thank you so much to everyone who’s been joining us in prayer for the hospital’s coronavirus response and the work of the red zone team over the last few months. Please continue to pray for us.
