Report from August Pastor Training

We had a great week in Region 9 with our Pastors and the entire ICA team in Lethem. It started out a little rocky since Carl and James missed the Charlotte flight to Miami because of weather out of Savannah but they only missed the morning of the first training day on Tuesday. Jai and I covered the morning session.

We had a chance to ask each Pastor to list the hardest passage of scripture to understand and preach. Also, we had each Pastor list the top two issues in their Church and/or community. This provided a foundation for understanding the issues each Pastor faced. Half the Pastors attending were new to our training. Several different denominations were represented at the conference. Several admitted they were discouraged from attending by their leadership. However, these Pastors are hungry for training and to develop other pastor friends and to network so they have someone to turn to for personal advise. We encouraged this interaction and everyone agreed to keep the discussions private.

Prior to every session we had music and worship lead by out ICA team that was very special and led to the proper spiritual framework for our study.

Carl and James led different modules of our sessions. This was the first time James had been with us in Guyana. After hearing James teach, I asked him to prayerfully consider becoming a member of our teaching team with the goal of having Pastor training every six months in both Region 9 and Region 1 with Carl leading one Region and James leading the other. James indicated he would definitely be praying about this possibility. ICA would cover his costs if he says yes. His Church is very missions minded and they may also partner with one of the younger pastors and their congregation which would be fantastic and may serve as a future model for ICA in linking US Churches with Guyanese congregations.

It was wonderful to see Pastors I have known before and great to make new friends with the new Pastors. I truly believe this is a way to make a real impact in these communities through helping these Pastors.

I wanted to follow up on the use of the tablets that were provided in this region by InTouch ministries. What I discovered is that the younger Pastors used them but the older Pastors did not because of their lack of tech skills. We have a real training need ahead of us to introduce technology in Guyana especially in the remote areas. Many of these communities now have Star-link sites in their communities provided by the Government which represents a real opportunity but only if the Pastors learn how to use it. Our Region 9 team for ICA is tech savvy and they are planning to spend time with each Pastor to help them leverage the resources they have been provided.

InTouch has an opportunity to put an AI front end on their tablets so you can just turn on the tablet then just ask a question and the AI searches the tablet and delivers the answer. Even i could use it if this was available.

Dr. Jim Strickland, the Interim Dean of the School of Agriculture from Clemson, was part of the team and he and I had a very productive week discovering the state of agriculture in Region 9. The opportunities are amazing.

God is moving in Region 9.

Call me with questions anytime at 704 293 0745.

Steve