I bring you greetings from Ghana, in West Africa, in a town just north of Kumasi called Mfensi. It was my privilege to teach at the Messiah Center all last week and the Lord’s presence was there! About 100 men participated in the National Conference for Ministers and Church Leaders. What a wonderful time of worship, teaching and fellowship. The event was organized by my Ghanaian partner, Evangelist Yaw Asante. It has been my privilege to work with him for several decades and I admire his heart for pastors as well as for the lost of Ghana, especially the Muslim north. Yaw is always urging men who have a heart for the Lord to become bi-vocational pastors and go north. During the conference, Yaw spoke on the hardships, long-suffering, patience and persistence necessary for success and fruitfulness.
I shared the principles from my book, Biblical Pictures of the Church.
Another brother who spoke that week was Pastor Ransford Obeng, pastor of CCC, one of the largest churches in Ghana, located in Kumasi. He spoke on the practical aspects of pastoring.
It is an honor to speak alongside these amazingly dedicated men—they always challenge and encourage me.
Another man that I admire for his specific dedication to reaching Muslims is Pastor Ahmad Agyei. He has sacrificially given his life to live in hostile territory, befriending Muslims for the sake of the Gospel. He has written several books on understanding Islam and Muslim evangelism for those who want to bring Muslims to Christ.
In my spare time (!), I helped brother Albert who runs the farm at Msfensi. He is getting ready for the dry season and organizing the supplies it will take to put the drip irrigation in place now that the rains are ceasing. I also assisted in getting the soccer field ready for sports evangelism camps. There are so many possibilities for touching lives when you can use different approaches.
In this picture, you can see me with brother Stephen who came up to me at the conference with an amazing story. When he arrived at last year’s conference, he was despondent, in debt and severely depressed. He owed so much money that he had lost all hope of surviving or being able to care for his family. But after hearing my messages on “The Biblical Perspective of Work” and brother Yaw’s on being a bi-vocational pastor, he went back home and started gardening. God blessed him with such fruitfulness that he got out of debt and began to prosper. This year he came to the conference with money to give to other pastors. He even gave gifts to all of the conference leaders and organizers. How good of God to bless Stephen and for him, in turn, to bless others. His generosity encouraged everyone present, as you can imagine.
Through our partnership with New Directions and Impact of Hope, we bought bicycles for 5 rural evangelists. They are working in remote villages among idol worshipers and Muslims. You would have thought we had given each of them a Mercedes! We take so much for granted that we can’t imagine getting excited over a bicycle for our main transportation. But if you had spent most of your time walking from village to village, and you were offered the chance to ride (in less than half the time and with much less wear and tear), you would have done the same thing: praised the Lord and received His gift with great joy!
As our time together ended, we felt a unity that often comes when you have time to pray, learn, weep and worship together. We almost didn’t want it to end.
Thank you for all of your prayer-covering for Ghana. Please continue now as I fly all night to Kenya. I hope to report to you again soon from among the Samburu.
With Much Love in Christ,
Dr. JL Williams Founder: New Directions International (Retired)
Board Member: Impact of Hope International
Professor-at-Large: Carolina Evangelical Divinity School
P.O. Box 4066
Glen Raven, NC 27216
Ranjan Fernando has been a personal friend and partner for many years since God sovereignly connected our lives and ministries. As a native of Sri Lanka, the small tear-shaped island off the East coast of India, Ranjan has been our primary partner there for nearly two decades in this largely Buddhist country. I hope you will be blessed, encouraged and challenged by his latest newsletter. - JL
This small house behind my home has been my work shop and storage area for the 38 years we have lived here. Now we are gutting and remodeling it for my new office. Nothing fancy, only functional.
Dear Impact of Hope International Friends & Partners:
I am sending you these pictures below to update you on a “new direction” in my life. I am relocating my office from the NDI Headquarters to my home, which has been my consistent base of ministry and mentoring with young people and national partners across the years. My home office will be my new base of operation and office for Impact of Hope International (IOH), where I will continue to serve as the President of International Missions.
Since I am helping do a lot of the building work, I will not be able to answer many emails or phone calls until mid-June. Thanks for understanding. Please take some time to look at my pictures below or visit my Picasa web album here.
In His Healing Love,
Dr. JL Williams
Founder, New Directions International (Retired)
President of International Missions
Impact of Hope International
The first load of lumber is delivered to start the remodeling on the inside.
The first walls are studded in place.
A new sub-floor is put in to cover the old broken and unlevel concrete beneath.
ND alumni, John Fraser, does the remodeling. He is a licensed contractor who has been on many mission work trips with me across the years.
In the midst of this building project, Professor Mohamed-Ibrahim Yattara, and his wife Fatouma, came to stay with us for 5 days of speaking. Since he worked his way through Bible College painting, I put him to work helping me paint the new walls!
To save money, I did all of the painting with the help of Mohamed.
We had great fellowship painting together—and some of the paint actually got on the walls and ceiling!
New doors are prepared to be installed.
John’s assistant, Rodney, was a great blessing in this project—which I could not have done without them.
When it came time to move out of the NDI Headquarters which has been sold, my good friend, Ted Randall, sent over his movers. He is from Providence Church in Raleigh and a veteran of many mission teams.
Since the building will not be completed for a couple more weeks, we are having to store everything on my driveway.
Here are the strong men who did all of the moving for me—what a blessing and back-saver!
Praise God for brothers like Ted and his men who do their “moving and shaking” for the Lord! They have helped me load a number of containers for shipping to Africa.
Here is all of Patt and my office furniture waiting for the new office to be completed. Now pray that it does not rain! What I cannot fit into my new small office I will ship to a Bible College in Zimbabwe we are helping build.
Here is a brief video report on our efforts to begin a reforestation initiative in Haiti in remembrance of the estimated 250,000 people who lost their lives in the January 2010 earthquake.
JL shared this message at the national Youth Rally held near the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 26th. The message is divided into two parts to meet Youtube’s time limitation’s.
One of the brighter sides of my 3 trips to Haiti has been my interaction with NDI Alumni, Ambassador Lewis Lucke. Because of his past deployment here as Ambassador, he was immediately redeployed here after the killer quake on January 12th. And since we had come to Haiti together a little over a month prior to the earthquake, it was a timely redeployment for both of us to a country and people we both are passionate about. In addition to overseeing the monumental tasks of rescue, relief and redevelopment, Lew has had to receive all of the US Government officials who have come down. Members of Congress, Senators, Speaker of the House, Presidents Clinton and Bush. Here is one that Lew shared with me of his greeting of President Bush on the tarmac when he recently visited Haiti. These two men obviously have a warm relationship and great respect for each other. If you will look back and look at my earlier reports on Lew, you will see a personal exchange between them on President Bush’s last day in office.
Ambassador Lucke passes the baton of leadership here on April 1st to other people. He will return home to Austin, Texas, for some well deserved time with his wife, Joy. They have been separated since the earthquake hit. So pray for both of them that God would wonderfully restore the time that they were apart in some quality and quantity time together.
One thing for sure. Both Lew and I have agreed that we will be back in Haiti together a number of more times in the months and years ahead!
I now have a twitter account where I will be posting quick updates on my travels and prayer needs from our partners around the world. I hope you will honor me by following my “tweets”! You can follow me here: @jlwilliams_org.
JLWilliams.org is where Patt and I will share our personal views and perspectives on a wide variety of issues from the Bible, to politics, to world events, business and entrepreneurial issues, to my international travels. We hope you will find them provocative, challenging and edifying.
I bring you greetings from Ghana, in West Africa, in a town just north of Kumasi called Mfensi. It was my privilege to teach at the Messiah Center all last week and the Lord’s presence was there! About 100 men participated in the National Conference for Ministers and Church Leaders. What a wonderful time of worship, teaching and fellowship. The event was organized by my Ghanaian partner, Evangelist Yaw Asante. It has been my privilege to work with him for several decades and I admire his heart for pastors as well as for the lost of Ghana, especially the Muslim north. Yaw is always urging men who have a heart for the Lord to become bi-vocational pastors and go north. During the conference, Yaw spoke on the hardships, long-suffering, patience and persistence necessary for success and fruitfulness. 
Another man that I admire for his specific dedication to reaching Muslims is Pastor Ahmad Agyei. He has sacrificially given his life to live in hostile territory, befriending Muslims for the sake of the Gospel. He has written several books on understanding Islam and Muslim evangelism for those who want to bring Muslims to Christ.
In this picture, you can see me with brother Stephen who came up to me at the conference with an amazing story. When he arrived at last year’s conference, he was despondent, in debt and severely depressed. He owed so much money that he had lost all hope of surviving or being able to care for his family. But after hearing my messages on “The Biblical Perspective of Work” and brother Yaw’s on being a bi-vocational pastor, he went back home and started gardening. God blessed him with such fruitfulness that he got out of debt and began to prosper. This year he came to the conference with money to give to other pastors. He even gave gifts to all of the conference leaders and organizers. How good of God to bless Stephen and for him, in turn, to bless others. His generosity encouraged everyone present, as you can imagine.
Through our partnership with New Directions and Impact of Hope, we bought bicycles for 5 rural evangelists. They are working in remote villages among idol worshipers and Muslims. You would have thought we had given each of them a Mercedes! We take so much for granted that we can’t imagine getting excited over a bicycle for our main transportation. But if you had spent most of your time walking from village to village, and you were offered the chance to ride (in less than half the time and with much less wear and tear), you would have done the same thing: praised the Lord and received His gift with great joy!
JLWilliams.org is where Patt and I will share our personal views and perspectives on a wide variety of issues from the Bible, to politics, to world events, business and entrepreneurial issues, to my international travels. We hope you will find them provocative, challenging and edifying.