On August 20-21, Cornerstone Church (AG) in Nashville, TN, produced the live version of The Long African Day in Saturday night and Sunday morning services and received more than $100,000 in combined offerings—a record for the church.

“This was the most successful missions event ever in the history of my 20 years at Cornerstone,” Senior Pastor Maury Davis says.

The $100,000 offering nearly doubles Cornerstone’s previous missions offering record of $54,000.

“The giving was extraordinary,” Davis says. “People who had never given to missions before gave in this offering. When people move into the realm of missions giving it is a wonderful joy to see people make that step. The Long African Day helped make that happen.”

Davis attended the premiere of The Long African Day in Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, on March 28, along with more than 350 others. He was deeply moved by the presentation and determined to bring The Long African Day to Cornerstone.
It turned out to be a historic decision.

Likewise, The Long African Day was produced at Central Assembly of God in Springfield, MO, on July 17. The offering response in cash and commitments totaled nearly $40,000—also a milestone for Central—and 107 indicated they would like to travel to Africa for ministry in 2012.

An encore of The Long African Day was shown at General Council in Phoenix, AZ, on August 3. In response, 48 churches committed to give Africa one day in the next year.
The Long African Day is a 47-minute multimedia presentation of the harsh realities and the spiritual revival which comprise daily life and ministry in Africa. The main appeal is for churches to “give Africa one day” and either produce it live or play the show version—both of which are on the DVD released by Africa Region, Assemblies of God World Missions.

Any church interested in producing The Long African Day as a live or show version should preview the DVD, which can be requested free of charge at www.thelongafricanday.com, or by calling 417.862.2781 ext 3150.

Funds raised for The Long African Day are used to build tabernacles, train church leaders, drill water wells, resource African churches to respond to the AIDS pandemic, and facilitate children’s ministry on the continent.

At around age 11 she dropped out of primary school. As a result her potential for learning and eventually being useful to the family as an income-earner was gone.

Customarily, if a young girl has no financial value to the family because she hasn’t learned a trade or received even a basic education, she is given away in marriage by her father and a payment is received for her. This is often done to girls as young as 12.

Ayesha suspected her father was about to give her in marriage to an older man, one of her father’s friends.

So she ran away, arriving in the capital city of Accra where she ended up in the “Sodom and Gomorrah” slum area. She was immediately identified as a homeless young girl and was approached with an offer of employment.

Ayesha accepted, but later found out that the offer was not as it seemed. Ayesha found herself living in a simple room of corrugated tin and wooden planks of about 12’ by 8’. This is enough for one person, but Ayesha had about 15 roommates, all girls of roughly the same age, and in the same situation.

“In this area there are people who rent out sleeping space,” says Don Tucker, director of Africa’s Children. “And I mean that Ayesha would find a place where she could rent on a weekly basis enough square footage for her body and nothing more. She would have to pay one merchant to have water to drink. She would have to pay another one for sanitary facilities, bathing facilities, or the toilet. And she would work hard every day in the market area.”

To earn money she sold little packets of ice water, which she carried in a metal basket on her head. This was very hard work for Ayesha (who weighed about 85 lbs and stood about 4’ 9”). The weight she placed on her head and small shoulders was about 50 lbs.

Ayesha had no health care. No family except the 15 other girls she slept with; no connections to help her get out of the slum; no one had compassion on her; no spiritual guidance other than the local mosque, which she visited each Friday.

Ayesha was going to live this way forever, or until she died. The slum is called Sodom and Gomorrah because of the depravity and crime it is known for. Many of the young girls who have no protection are raped and/or forced into prostitution—this road eventually leads to death.
Ayesha was at high risk for this.

After a few months Auesha found Lifelines, a ministry of the Ghana Assemblies of God, and supported by Africa’s Children .

At Lifelines Ayesha is given a clean and safe place to sleep and at least two good meals a day. She is taught personal hygiene and also given introductory lessons in embroidery, baking, and sewing.

After one year in the Lifelines program Ayesha is assigned to an apprenticeship with a master outside the Lifelines compound where her skills in her new profession and as a business person are perfected. Then she is able to make her own living, able to leave the slum area, perhaps marry, and enjoy a better life.

In addition, Ayesha is introduced to Jesus. There are regular Bible studies, worship times, and discipleship classes for the girls.

Lifelines brings in 100 girls at a time for this rescue program, ranging in age from 12 to 19. All are orphaned or abandoned/runaways. Many have been forced into prostitution, raped, or abused in other ways.

“Thanks to Lifelines…up to girls every year finds fantastic liberation, not only from their poverty, not only from their malnutrition, but most importantly from the spiritual darkness that they find themselves in,” Tucker says.

Through Africa’s Children, there is rest and hope for Africa’s little ones. Africa’s Children supports orphanages, schools and feeding programs throughout the continent.

“I want to thank everyone who gave and made it possible for me to have access to the opportunities here at Lifelines,” Ayesha says. “Please bring more help so that other girls have the same opportunity that I was provided.”

The kingdom is growing in Assemblies of God churches. Today more than 16 million believers worship in more than 65,000 of these churches.

For every new soul saved and every new church planted, trained leaders are needed to provide teaching and direction.

This is Africa’s Hope—Spirit-filled, biblically-trained leaders. Africans reaching Africa.
In Kenya the African day is still very long, but one man makes a difference. Pastor Peter Nuthu pastors the New Mathare Assembly of God church in Nairobi, the capital.

But this is the middle of Pastor Nuthu’s story. Where did it begin?

“I gave my life to Jesus when I was 12 years old,” Nuthu says. “While I was in high school I felt the burden to serve the Lord, the call of the Lord. But I never knew how to enter into the ministry.”

Somewhere across the sea, young Peter Nuthu’s prayer is answered by an America pastor who contributes funds for scholarships to help African students in Bible school to be trained for ministry.
“I went for four years through the scholarships that came from America, from those pastors who know the importance of giving scholarships for Africans to be trained,” Nuthu says.

What difference has Peter Nuthu made for the kingdom?
“God calls men to serve other men. And we are serving our community…We are feeding 1,050 children every day. If we don’t intervene and come into their lives they are hopeless. There is no future for them, because they come from vulnerable families. They come from the slum areas.”

Pastor Nuthu’s ministry touches lives in many ways. An orphanage feeds, clothes, houses and educates more than 1,100 children. Many leaders are trained through Nuthu’s teaching and sponsorship to Bible school. These leaders then go out to plant churches in the slums.

And every week the Word of God is proclaimed from Pastor Nuthu’s pulpit!

The compassionate touch of Jesus is multiplied through Pastor Nuthu because someone across the sea helped him answer God’s call to ministry.

“Africa’s Hope has brought hope to Africa through training and preparing the Africans themselves to minister effectively to the church of God,” Nuthu says. “In Africa now, through Africa’s Hope, we are partnering with other countries to focus on training. And in the near future the African churches are going out to Asia, to Europe and even back to America.”

Wherever a new church is built, wherever water wells are drilled, wherever HIV/AIDS ministry takes place, wherever children are reached—wherever any ministry takes place in Africa—trained leaders like Peter Nuthu are needed.

Currently there are more than 12,000 Bible school students in Africa. Many of them depend upon scholarships to help get them through their training.

The revival we are seeing in Africa is part of The Long African Day. Trained leaders will help sustain this revival. It’s true what they say, “Trained leaders are Africa’s Hope.”

Cry Africa is a network of believers who combat the stigma and spread of HIV/AIDS through education, compassion, and spiritual encouragement—especially for people like Eva and Michelle.

This mother and daughter live alone in the mountain village of Dopeni in South Africa’s Limpopo region.

They remember happier days before being infected with HIV. Now, their days are long as life and strength slowly fade.

“It was in 1999,” says Eva. “I was working for the government. I was ill. I had to go and see the doctor, and the doctor advised me to do the test. After a week I was called by the doctor and she told me that I was HIV positive.”

A death sentence. The doctors gave Eva no hope. Suddenly life changed. Eva could think of only one thing—dying.

For Eva the long African day was just beginning. In the months that followed she learned that Michelle, too, was HIV positive. As the horror of this realization hit home she began to see her neighbors become infected by this killer disease. Like wildfire HIV was spreading through the Limpopo region, and the entire country.

South Africa has the highest known number of HIV infections in the world—about 5.6 million cases.

The entire continent is ravaged by HIV/AIDS. About 60 percent of new cases in Africa are women and young girls; more than 90 percent of AIDS orphans are African; in the mountain kingdom or Lesotho it is believed that more than one quarter of the population is infected; and it is estimated that 160 Africans are infected with HIV every hour.

In just a few years, many voices faded away in Dopeni as HIV claimed victim after victim. The graveyards filled up. Homes were emptied. Families were decimated. The days grew longer and more hopeless.

Then Eva met Pastor Jeremiah Mathelemusa. Through his ministry Eva found treatment for HIV, and was also introduced to the Lord Jesus Christ.

After Jesus radically changed Eva’s life and gave her hope she began to reach out to others living with HIV. She started a support group in the community for people living with the disease.

“We gather every month and talk about our lives,” Eva says. “How we can go on living. How we can help others.”

Pastor Jeremiah and Eva established a network of more than 200 home-based care providers who go out into and bring food and medication to HIV/AIDS patients. They also provide spiritual encouragement to victims.

It isn’t just medicine that treats the stigma and pain of HIV—it’s the people of God. It’s people like Eva and Pastor Jeremiah, who are just a small part of Cry Africa’s network.

All across Africa the day grows longer for millions living with HIV/AIDS. There is no cure but Cry Africa fights the stigma and spread of the disease through education, treats its effects through compassionate care, and defeats hopelessness by proclaiming the gospel.

As a result, most of the water drawn to the surface by hand is unclean and makes the people sick. Children in Overspill are particularly affected.

Women and children walk many kilometers to draw water and then carry the 40-plus-pound loads back in wheelbarrows or in buckets on their heads. Sometimes they must do this multiple times a day.

The water is sometimes even deadly. Cholera outbreaks have claimed many lives in the past. Boiling the water is usually not practical because of a lack of firewood or other burnable materials.

But this is a reality of The Long African Day. All over the continent there is a daily struggle for water. In some places there is drought. In other places, water in rivers and lakes is contaminated with waste and chemicals.

“In Africa it takes a tremendous effort on the part of people to be able to have life-sustaining water,” says Steve Evans, director of Africa Oasis Project. “In a long African day people will travel many miles, stand in long lines, and go through tremendous hazards. The weight of five gallons of water is about 40 pounds. Imagine carrying that amount of water for miles. That’s part of the long African day.”

Women and young girls who walk long distances to fetch water are often attacked and raped before they can return home. The daily search for water is a fearful one for many Africans.

Overspill Assembly of God, pastored by Tsungyai Chinyama, invited Africa Oasis Project to come and drill a well which would help them bless and reach out to the community.

After two hours of drilling, the rig engineer suddenly runs over and looks over the edge of the drilling hole. With his hand placed on the hydraulic controls, and hearing new sounds coming from the drill shaft (now about 32 meters down), he looks up and smiles. Water is coming.

A few seconds later a brown stream of water gushes from the borehole.

The villagers gathered nearby instantly explode into celebration as a geyser soars 30 feet in the air.

Three days later, the new well is capped and new pump installed.

“We hit good water,” Evans says. “It will change the lives in this community for many years to come. We are so thankful today for the privilege of being able to be by a church. We are drilling water by churches because we want people to come for a drink of water and leave with Living Water.”

The following Sunday, Overspill AG celebrates the dedication of the new well. There is much singing as a large yellow pitcher is filled and passed around for the people to take their first drink from the well.

“I want to thank the Lord so much,” says one lady from the church. “This well…is going to bring many souls to the church. Non believers and believers are going to be blessed with this water.”

It’s the miracle of water!

“This long African day has ended with fresh clean water,” Evans says. “It didn’t begin that way. It began with a dry piece of ground and the people having to fear the water they drink…because of Jesus, the Living Water, we’ve been able to bring clean water to this part of Africa.”

As the church added new members it quickly outgrew Mandizera’s house, so the congregation began meeting in the chapel building of the Bible school.

After several years of saving their money New Jerusalem bought a plot of ground in a prime location right along a main highway in Harare.

Africa Tabernacle Evangelism (ATE) brought in steel from neighboring South Africa and fabricated the trusses and posts in the metal workshop on the Bible school campus.

Volunteers from the U.S., Assemblies of God missionaries, and local workers erected a new home for New Jerusalem. A great celebration ensues afterwards as Bible school students come to the property to witness the final screws going into the roof, and join Pastor Roland in singing and dancing to celebrate the new church.

Mandizera is ecstatic that his church finally has a permanent shelter under which to worship, and also a visible place for the community to come and hear about Christ.

“We thank [ATE] so much…I pray that you will continue doing this in many nations,” Mandizera says. “We have been praying for such a long time that we would have such a place, and such a building, but today we are rejoicing. It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful! I tell you, I tell you, it’s wonderful.”

The next Sunday about 200 people come to the first service of New Jerusalem AG under their new roof. There is fervent prayer and singing. Pastor Roland preaches his first message under the new tabernacle.

“This is a blessing to us because from now onwards many people will be saved, many people will be delivered, and many people will be healed because of this tabernacle. We are going to have so many more activities than what we were doing before!”

Across Africa only about one third of Assemblies of God churches worship in an adequate, permanent building or shelter. In Mozambique and Nigeria alone there are about 20,000 churches in need of a tabernacle structure.