05/20/25 Sierra Leone, Buildings, Evangelism, Training

By Bruce Snavely | June 20, 2025

Add another country to the list of nations where Global Baptist Training Foundation trains national pastors and church leaders – Sierra Leone!! Fidele Shinga, GBTF African Director, Philip Willie, GBTF West Africa Director, and James Togba, GBTF West Africa Field Representative, traveled to Sierra Leone to start classes in two separate locations. They were met with the enthusiasm we experience all over the world when college level theological training is made available at no cost to pastors and church leaders who previously had no access to training.

The GBTF team in Western Uganda is busy training regularly. This week, they have a class of 55. We are thankful for this dedicated group of trainers, led by GBTF East Africa Director, Naboth Atusasire. Naboth is also busy building cottages to house GBTF teams that come to work with church plants. We have a team of 16 traveling to Uganda in August. A small donation to help with this building project would go a long way.

We continue to supply vehicles, motorcycles, cell phones, projectors, and other supplies to our GBTF directors, country coordinators, trainers, and church planters. These provisions are used to further the mission of training nationals to train nations who will then plant churches and win the African continent for Jesus Christ.

All of the effort to train national pastors and church leaders has the end goal of seeing new churches established (over 1,500 to date)!

Samuel Mambo is planting several new churches in South Sudan. GBTF partners have recently built a new building in South Sudan. Here are some baptisms that took place just this past Sunday.

Another GBTF trainer, Aaron Garyemah from Liberia, is helping get churches started in neighboring Guinea. Aaron and a team recently embarked on quite a journey into Guinea. They drove a few hours, left their vehicles and walked an hour to the river where they rowed across only to walk another hour. They held open air evangelism services and saw 37 people profess their faith in Jesus. Aaron and his team had carried, on this difficult trek, clothes and shoes to help these people who desperately needed the physical help as well as the spiritual good news! Aaron sent several amazing videos of this mission into Guinea. Make sure you watch the video at the end of this update to see women carrying babies on their backs a load of clothes and shoes on their heads. These are truly heroes!

Finally, Gilbert Okecha, GBTF trainer who travels throughout East Africa, holds training classes, helps get churches started, and is an encourager like Barnabas! Gilbert has sent a series of pictures of buildings in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that are in desperate need of repairs. The DRC is in the midst of civil war (again), but the gospel continues to spread despite these conditions. You may remember that one of our trainers’ houses was hit by a bomb. This family continues to recover physically but needs prayer for the PTSD the bombing has left behind. Another of our excellent trainers has been living in exile with his family because of threats from the government. They have returned to the DRC just this week. Any funds designated for DRC relief will go directly to meet the needs of these families and churches!