SPOTLIGHT ON MISSIONS: Mickeal & Sharon Quillman • Zambia

Mwabuka Buti (Good morning)! It is hard to believe that July is over, which means our winter is almost finished. Yes, you read that correctly. Your summer is our winter since we are in the southern hemisphere. Each day, the weather is getting warmer. It seems this year is just flying by.

Sharon and I will return to the United States in only five months for our first furlough. While we are very excited to visit with as many of our churches as possible, we are even more excited that we will be back for the birth of our fourth and fifth grandbabies. This will give us four granddaughters and our first grandson, Mickeal Quillman IV. This is the first child for our oldest son and the second for our youngest son, Matthew. We are so thankful God worked out the timing for us to be there to celebrate these new lives.

We are scheduling visits with churches from the US that would like for us to come and speak. If your church would be willing to host us, we would very much like to visit with you and your congregation. If your church would consider hosting an evening get-together with multiple churches, that would be even better, as it would allow us to share our ministry here in Zambia on a broader scale. Contact me at pastorquill@gmail.com.

If you have read our previous reports, you know we have been asking for prayer for one of our local headmen. He is an unbeliever and is caught up in the witchcraft and animistic religion that is prevalent in Africa. When his wife became a believer, he punished her for attending church or Bible study. Through this tribulation, she continued to attend and pray for her husband. I am excited to share that her husband has now attended Sunday morning services for six weeks in a row! He has not accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior yet, but we serve a faithful God. Please continue to lift him and his family up in prayer for his salvation.

We continue our weekly Bible studies with the community and are pleased with the response. We are also halfway through our BMA doctrinal study with our church leadership. That is a very important step toward organizing Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church. Our children’s ministry has continued to grow, and we are praying for God to raise up more leaders to help us as we train and disciple these children. We are averaging 60-70 children each Sunday morning and have 130 children for Bible study on Thursday mornings. We are praying for God to send us someone who can help us with a ministry for our teenagers and young adults.

The Temple, Jonesboro team just left and did a great job of helping us minister through soccer and netball to our teens and young adults. This will open the door for more interactions with our teens and young adults. They also helped us paint our church building, inside and out. Pastor Andy taught our local headmen and village leaders a leadership class, while Sharon and Connie taught our ladies what it means to be a godly wife and mother. The council chairwoman for our district even attended this teaching.

Phil & Anita Swayne recently visited with us from Heritage Baptist Church in Waxahachie, Texas. While they were here, Anita taught my wife to crochet and they began to make hats and little coats for our children. Women all over town and the villages saw both ladies working and were asking to be taught to do this. When the Swayne’s arrived home, they began collecting supplies to bring back and teach our ladies. Anita plans to make a return trip Sept. 27-Oct. 4 of this year to train the ladies how to crochet so they will have a skill for their family and something they can do to supplement their incomes. If any ladies would like to come and help, please contact me for more information about this. Men are also encouraged to make this trip so we can train and equip our men while the ladies are learning this new skill and being discipled. This short, one-week trip would be a great introduction to Zambian Missions. Please continue to pray for us here as we adjust to having power and water for only six hours per day and seek alternative options to combat this situation.

Please join us in praying for the ongoing drought and famine in Zambia and the salvation of the headman. We also praise God that Sharon received good results from her recent medical tests and that we have another grandbaby on the way.