2023 | Quarter 3
Consortium Story Social Media Posts
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Each time a month has a 5th Saturday, we have a ladies afternoon for the young adult/youth leaders. It is an afternoon filled with fellowship, laughs, a fun activity, small group time, prayer, and a shared meal.
At the end of September, we gather the ladies together and shared in conversation and laughs while decorating sugar cookies with lots of icing and sprinkles! During our small group devotion time we looked into 1 John 4 / the attribute of God's love, specifically his love for us. We discussed the fact that God IS love – it's who He is. His love is kind, steadfast, and faithful. Practically, we talked through what this could look like on a day to day basis, specifically verse 19 "We love because he first loved us." The girls took time at the end praying for one another and for God to give them gospel opportunities to turn to show his love to those around them who do not know Him.
— Jenna Roberts
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Pierre is a 12-year-old boy that suddenly appeared on our doorstep earlier this year. He is deaf and is essentially an orphan. When he came across our path, we decided to meet with his family and pray through how we could invest in his life. Upon meeting his family, we could tell that it was not the safest choice to let him continue to live with them, so we prayed that God would help us find a place for him to live. Mawussé, a Christian Deaf leader that we have been working with for several years, learned about Pierre's story and he and his wife almost immediately decided that they wanted to take Pierre into their home. When we brought Pierre to Mawussé's house, Mawussé started calling Pierre his son. From day 1, Mawussé has been teaching Pierre Sign Language to prepare him to go to school. Pierre started coming to church and learning about who Jesus is. After attending a Deaf camp this summer, he made the decision to give his life to Jesus! Mawussé was blessed to have two parents who saw potential in him and wanted to invest in his future. Pierre didn't have an advocate fighting for him, so Mawussé has become that advocate, taking the blessing he has always had (a supportive family) and providing Pierre with the same thing! Pierre's life has completely changed directions when he got adopted into Mawussé's family and it has changed even more now that he is in Christ's family! Our desire among the Deaf is for life transformation through the gospel to take place, through access to education and communication in Sign Language. We are seeing this take place in the life of Pierre and all of our other Deaf friends and we can't wait to see the momentum continue!
— Azlyn McCarthy
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As an initiative, it has always been our goal to raise up leaders who will then go on to develop other leaders. Disciple makers that make other disciple makers. We have a passion for this, because we know our time is limited. We as the missionaries are not promised to be able to stay in Togo forever. So how can we see the ministry continue even after we are gone? We raise up leaders who will take ownership of the ministry and continue long after we are gone. It is casting vision to say that we are the scaffolding, but we are not the building itself. This is especially personal for both Jenna and I as we see our young leaders take the roles of doing camp ministry. Our young leaders and pastors can see how important camp ministry is, but now it is getting them to have the courage to own it as their ministry and not something the missionaries do. The past few summers we have been moving toward this direction. In Summer 2022, we still had a big hand in helping to run camps with our young leaders, but we also saw them step out in faith as they led one camp completely by themselves and we saw God move! This past summer, we completely decided to let our leaders completely run camps as we watched, observed, and coached from the side. They did a fantastic job! Now preparing for this summer, we are pushing them a little more. Last summer, though the leaders ran camps, we as the missionaries still ran a lot of the planning conversations. This next year, we prayerfully decided to let our young leaders take the responsibility of running and planning camps! We did not know how they would respond, but when we finally had the conversation, they were ecstatic! They got to watch us plan camps and give input. Now they get to plan/organize camps and we get to observe! This might sound little to some, but it is a huge step for us as a ministry to see these young leaders take responsibility of leading/planning this ministry. It ultimately pushes us to see the big picture vision of our national leaders leading the ministry for years and generations to come, whether we are here or not. We are excited to see what happens and excited to see how this opportunity will be used for God's glory!
— James Roberts
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TTI continues on and the women have been faithful to show up and continue investing and discipling their Titus'. The Saturday after the consortium call the women will all bring their Titus' together and what a celebration and encouragement for all!
— Suzanne Mauritzen