Hello all!

So excited to share with you what’s been going on over the past couple of months here in Angola. This will be a newsletter of “what has been” with a shortly to come “what will be” update in the next couple of weeks! We have been running at what feels like a crazy pace for the past few months and are so glad to have a chance now to share it all with you.

Since our last update, we’ve started bible studies in our two main ministry locations, as well as a discussion type study over the topics we want to share with our friends here on the farm before we go out and share in the villages.  So far, we’ve discussed “Who is God?” covering the Trinity and why we talk about God in so many ways! Who is the Father? Why do we talk about Jesus so much? Is the Holy Spirit doing his own thing or is He connected somehow? We’ve also talked about “Who are We?” in relationship to who God is! Are we His enemies or his friends, and what makes the difference? 

But only one nephew receives the inheritance, and no one knows who it will be until after the uncle dies. We had a cool discussion about how different our portion is in God! We know we receive the promises He gives us, and those promises are all the riches of glory in Christ! It was so cool to communicate our secure and confident hope in God is not anything like the hope we have in receiving things of the world, but it is abundantly more than we could imagine, and we can have confidence that it is ours!

Over the last few months, we’ve had the chance to minister in another location called Bibala that is being ministered to by our country directors, Dan and Rachel Hoyme. Branden had the chance to take a trip with Dan, and now that they are back in the states on home assignment, we took another ministry trip there to check in with the people Dan and Rachel are ministering to! The people group in this area are called the Mundengelengo, and have a similar language and culture to the Kuvale people the rest of our team works with in the Namibe desert. Ministry just began this year in this area, but they have already connected with the Soba Grande of this people group, who is their highest leader. He has been traveling with Dan and translating for him, finding new locations for him to minister, and we are praying that his heart will be softened and opened to the gospel! It’s a very big deal that someone with so much authority in this area is excited and open to traveling with our team, and he will be an amazing open door for our team to find other people groups and villages throughout the area. 

The second week in July, almost 80 missionaries visited the farm where we live for a Spiritual Life Conference. A team from a church in North Carolina came to run a program for the kids, and to share with us! It was a really cool time to get to know a lot of the missionaries who have been working in Angola for years, many of them for multiple decades. This conference happens in every country that has Servants in Missions (SIM) missionaries, usually including only their own organization, but here in Angola the SIM team opens it up to any missionaries who want to join in. They have a 4x4 driving competition, chilli and a bonfire out at the airstrip, play games and sports, and lots of time of fellowship, worship, and praying over one another. It was really encouraging to us to get to know better the community here in Angola, and to hear about so many amazing things the Lord is doing through so many people here!

At the end of July and into August, we had our very first visitor from the states! Kallen Selby, our friend from Mountainview church in Branden’s neck of the woods came to spend a few weeks with us before he heads off to college. During his visit we had the chance to minister in a village that was new to us, where a family who grew up here on the farm has started a church! They have been asking us for a while to come and show the Jesus Film at their church, and we had the chance to do that and minister to the family and surrounding village for a couple of days. Alberto and Paulo are the leaders of the church, and they were willing and happy to let us share the word with some of their family members who have not been receptive to it in the past. (Sometimes we need someone from outside our immediate family to come present the same idea we’ve been sharing for years, haha). Simão is Alberto and Paulo’s uncle, and the patriarch of the family. He’s heard for years the word of God, and the church his nephews lead is within eyesight of his home. In our time just sitting chatting with the family, while some of the ladies braided each others hair and the kids played, we began asking Simão if he had ever decided to follow God. He said he had never really been interested, because he didn’t see what benefit there was to following God. We shared about who God is, our creator, our comforter, our provider, our healer, and asked him if we could pray for him for healing in his body. He agreed and we prayed for him for pain in his back and for his eyes which he said watered when he tried to see far away. After praying a couple of times, he was shocked that the pain in his back was gone! We prayed for his eyes, and Rachel stood very far off for him to tell her how many fingers she was holding up. He got it right every time, with no issues in his eyes. Simão believed that day that God wanted to be in relationship with him, and decided to follow him! We’re excited that he already has a built in church family to teach and encourage him, and for the example of godly leadership that he will be to his family.

Next week, we will lead our first Farming God’s Way conference since we arrived in Angola! We have never taught FGW in Portuguese, and we really want to make sense and for people here at the farm to receive it well, in the hopes that they can help us share it in other locations in the future! You’ve probably heard us talk a lot about Farming God’s Way, but if not, in short, it’s a program designed to incorporate biblical principles and the way God does things in creation into agriculture. (If you like that kind of thing you can read more about it at www.farming-gods-way.org). (Below are FGW conferences we held in Zambia!)

We would love to hear how you are and what you’re up to! We miss you all! Thank you for all your messages and prayers and love all the time. Let us know how we can be praying for you, what we can celebrate with you, and everything in between.

We love you!

The Benders