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We ❤️ San Pablo de Yao (Cuba)
We love our sister church in Cuba! San Pable de Yao is located in the Sierra Maestra District in the southwestern area of Cuba, and we have enjoyed a fruitful missional partnership with them for many years. The pastor is Juan Arrechea Alarcón, and he is joined by his wife Katy and his two children, Daineris (age 20) and David (age 9).
Over the years, we have provided financial support to help Pastor Juan receive a theological education at the Matanzas Evangelical Theological Seminary in Havana, Cuba. We are proud to share that he graduated recently! We are also proud to know that San Pablo de Yao is growing! Check out this recent message from Pastor Juan:
"When we began pastoral ministry in this Church, we only had fifteen members. We have seen how God has helped us and we have been able to win fifteen more members to Christ. We have a mission. In this mission, we have two children and three brothers. We pray for this mission so that God helps us and we can grow. In the time that I have spent as Pastor in the Church of San Pablo de Yao, I have had wonderful experiences with the Holy Spirit, and I have seen how the Lord has used me with the gift of Healing. Please pray for a sister of the Church who suffered from epilepsy and has never suffered from this disease again. My wife and I pray at 3:00 in the morning. I have had many experiences with the Lord at this time."
You can support our partnership with Pastor Juan and the Church of San Pablo de Yao by supporting our annual pumpkin patch on the front lawn of the church. All profits from the pumpkin patch are used to support our partnership with San Pablo de Yao.
We ❤️ ZOE Empowers (Rwanda)
ZOE Empowers is a highly effective three-year empowerment program which helps orphaned and vulnerable children in Africa and India take charge of their own journey from extreme poverty, isolation, and abuse to lives of hope and sustainability. ZOE goes into communities where teenagers and children are already living and combines households into empowerment groups to create a new family that works together. They help the children express their dreams for their lives, and they provide the training and strategic resources that the group needs to transform their own lives in just three years.
We have partnered with more than forty United Methodist churches across the Tampa Bay Area to support 25 households and a total of 76 children in Rwanda - starting in January 2023. We invite you to pray for this amazing group of children who have named themselves the Abishyizehamwe "Togetherness" Empowerment Group. We pray for hope, health, food security, good crops, a safe place to live, and knowing that God is with them. We also pray for the empowerment group's facilitator (Albertine Umubyeyi) and the country manager (Epiphanie Mujawimana). Praise God for the work of empowering kids and families across the world to lift themselves out of poverty!