She's Growing Up!

Look at our Princess with her new hairstyle! Doesn't she look beautiful? We can't believe she just turned twelve! Where have the years gone?

From Our Pastor's Heart to Yours

Dear Friends & Supporters of the Bryant's,

The words of the Prophet Jeremiah, "Mine eye affecteth mine heart" (Lam. 3:51a), capture the emotions of my wife and I after our visit in Fiji with the Bryant's.  What a thrill to our hearts to have been privileged to visit this family in June this year to see the good work of these faithful servants!

Being Kent's pastor for nearly 30 years, I have learned something of his burden for reaching the children with the Gospel.  I have seen his amazing giftedness to teach and communicate the truths of God's Word.  Over the years, I, too, have seen the pictures of Fiji and many beautiful children and families.  Yet, to sit with Kent and Becky in Lautoka and to witness firsthand their blazing passion for their people, served to introduce us to extraordinary servants of the Lord.  We observed them to be a couple with a vision to reach out further with the Gospel and to establish a beachhead for Child Evangelism Fellowship in the South Pacific as defined in their vision for the Moriah Project, a haven and hope for for the children of Fiji.  The potential of a building in such a strategic location that will house a training center, a meeting place, staff housing, and offices will truly be a victory for the advancement of the gospel!


I am taking the initiative to write to you, as dear supporters and friends of the Bryant's, to commend you for your support and to tell you firsthand that this family is a worthy investment of your love, prayers and financial support.  If you are not presently supporting this missionary family or if you have considered increasing their support, I highly recommend you to do so as the Lord enables you. 

Thank you for taking the time to hear the heart of this pastor who has been richly blessed by his visit with these faithful missionaries who, without a doubt, demonstrate faithfulness in competence, diligence and integrity.  My wife, Gail, and I have been profoundly touched and blessed by these fellow servants of the Lord.

May the Lord richly bless you.

By His Grace,
Pastor Greg Allison
Bible Baptist Church

2047 Gate Number Two Road  / Creedmoor, NC  27522

Office:  919-575-3414    Fax:  919-575-3417

www.biblebaptistonline.org

Tsunami Scare -- Fiji Spared

When three earthquakes rattled Vanuatu today (Thursday morning at 10 AM local time / 6 PM EDT), the regional tsunami center in Hawaii issued a tsunami alert for the South Pacific islands, including Fiji.  Kent heard the announcement on the radio and Becky quickly checked the website to verify that the first wave of a potentially devastating tidal wave could be in Fiji  by 11:40 AM (Fiji time).  

The sirens at the Lautoka wharf with the PA system warnings told us that this was a real evacuation alert. By the time Kent arrived at our house, the kids and I had grabbed the evacuation pouches with all vital documents, the laptops,  bottled water, our prescription medications, and cameras. We did have time to make  the required phone call to CEF's Crisis Management Team as well as to  our parents to alert them that we were evacuating.  We took a back road up to a high mountain perch where we gathered with many others to watch the ocean and wait. It looked so peaceful.  Within an hour and a half, the all-clear sign was given to return home. 

Given the severity of destruction in Samoa caused by a tsunami last week, we are deeply grateful to the Lord for His divine protection here in Fiji today.  The destruction here could have been massive, but God was gracious to us.   

LORD,  WE THANK YOU!

The MORIAH PROJECT: In the Top 20!

The MORIAH PROJECT of CEF FIJI has been chosen by leaders at the CEF World Headquarters in Warrenton, Missouri as one of the top 20 missions projects for CEF around the world!

Please click on this link for further information about the project and how to give as God may lead you.  We're trusting our great and mighty God for His abundant supply.  Our goal is for US$330,000.00 of which we have US$15,000 on hand.  Thanks for PRAYING and giving as the Lord may lead you!

The MORIAH PROJECT (Project # 13 in the list)

"Queen Esther Retreat"

Katelyn, along with seven teenage girls, giggled their way through the weekend retreat led by Becky. They learned to stand, sit, and walk like a "princess" as well as treating each other to a facial and manicure. They had a contest to see how many ways they could identify the changes the star in the movie  Princess Diaries made to become a princess. Before going to bed, they enjoyed popcorn and the story of Queen Esther via the DVD titled One Night with the King. 

Saturday morning, Kent graciously served us a pancake breakfast! The girls then enjoyed learning what God says about modesty in the Bible. Becky used a PowerPoint based on Dannah Gresh's book, Secret Keeper.  A great activity was sorting pictures from  fashion magazines into "throw away", "secret keeper" and "modify this to be a secret keeper" piles. However, the all-time favorite activity was "saree draping." A friend from church came with a dozen beautiful Indian sarees and taught us four ways to wrap six yards of material! Kent took photos of each girl who put their picture in a card she had made for her Dad for Fiji Father's Day on September 6th.  I hear that the father's absolutely LOVED getting a photo of his Indian or Fijian "princess".

A Typical Day? No Such Thing!

Occasionally, we're asked, "What's your typical day like?"  There is never a "normal, typical day" in the life of most missionaries and definitely, not in ours!  For the past eight weeks, in addition to the steady flow of overseas visitors, we have had a work team of local men carrying out maintenance and renovations to the house which we rent.    

This 70-year old house really feels like home because we have lived here for the past 12 1/2 years.  It was way past time for this maintenance to be carried out.  The entire exterior of the house has been painted, including the front fences, the carport gate and it looks so nice again.   However, the workmen are now on the rooftop pulling up the roofing tins and installing steel brackets around every rafter to make the house "cyclone-proof".  It has turned out to be a very noisy undertaking.  So, while the whirlwind of our daily life continues, we also dealing with whirlwind of noisy hammering above our heads. 

Pray that this work will soon be completed so as to not prolong the disturbance to our home school and the office work that Becky does here at home.  You can see from these pictures that the job they're doing is a BIG one!

A Parade of Visitors

There has been a "parade of visitors" passing through our home in the past two months and what a blessing they have been!

In mid-June, we were privileged to have our home-church pastor and his wife to visit with us for a week. Pastor Greg and Gail Allison, from Durham, NC, made their way to Fiji. We had a marvelous week sharing our HEARTS, our MINISTRY and our PEOPLE with them.

Following their visit, we were blessed to have Becky's parents with us for almost four weeks...John and Syble DeBerry from Myrtle Beach, SC. They seemed especially glad to see their growing grandchildren, Jeremy (15) and Katelyn (11 1/2).

Just a few days after Mom & Dad left Fiji, Miss Jan Johnson, the CEF Asia Pacific Education Consultant for this region arrived to be a guest in our home for one week. "Miss Jan" assisted us with conducting a 10-day training course. We were delighted to have her with us.

Within two hours of Jan's departure on August 11th, our next set of house guests arrived. We are pleased to have Carol Bratcher and Grace Stephen with us. These ladies are missionaries having just returned from their furlough. They have spent many days and hours looking for a house to rent. They are hopeful that a house they've seen and like will be available for them sometime around Sept. 10th.

Our next visitor from eastern North Carolina is Mr. Tommy Boyd due to arrive September 14th. Although he's coming on an official visit to Fiji for the U.S. State Dept., he is from a supporting church and is adding a couple of extra days to his itinerary to visit with us. We look forward to meeting him and having him in our home!

The Reason We Live in Fiji is...

...so that precious boys and girls like these will have access to the Gospel and come to know the Savior!

"Even so it is not the will of your Father...that one of these...should perish."

Matthew 18:14

Commiting to Faithful Men & Women

Teaching children effectively is precisely our goal in providing teachers with quality training in child evangelism.

It was our great joy to train NINE adults recently in our CEF Teaching Children Effectively~Level One 30-hour training course. The 11-day program began on July 30th and ended on August 10th. It was a grueling test of stamina both for the staff and the students, but God gave amazing results. We praise the Lord for this special group of people ~ seven women and two men who attended the training.

Pray for this group of students as they are now required to complete five teaching assignments among children in order to receive their certificates. Pray that many boys and girls will come to know the Lord through their teaching and sharing the Gospel.

Have You Heard?

Have you gotten the latest news on The Moriah Project?

CLICK HERE to visit the Moriah Project blog to see how far God has brought us. We continue to trust the Lord to do "great and mighty things which we know not", so as to make it possible for CEF Fiji to begin construction on the new office and training center immediately.

We are trusting the Lord for USD $330,000.00. Of this amount, we have a little over $10,000 on hand. God is trustworthy... so, we trust Him to provide for this need. Our building permits are in hand and all we need is...the money.

We need a MIRACLE and He is able! But we also need some people who will seriously PRAY for God's provision. May we count upon you?

Faith & Patience Rewarded (at Last!)

June 3, 2009 will go down as a LANDMARK day! After months and months of hard work and waiting, Kent was finally issued the BUILDING PERMIT for our new national office today.

Our hearts rejoice over and over! We stand at the edge of the "Red Sea" with plans to dip our "toes" into the waters asking God to "part the sea" and provide the funds from heaven to begin construction.

This is the ideal time of year in Fiji to begin construction as we are now in our "dry season" until December. They estimate that it will take six months to construct the new office and training facility. We had 26 teachers in our training classes yesterday!

PRAY that God will miraculously PROVIDE the funds from amongst His riches to begin the construction soon. Our financial goal is USD$330,00.00 of which we currently have approximately $10,000.00 on hand.

BUT... we are READY... and WAITING on GOD. The NEXT "move" is HIS!

PLANTING SEEDS...Back to Basics!

We're trying something new that we've never done before! We're planting a small vegetable garden!

Fiji is just now being affected by the reality of the global financial crisis. Rising prices and job losses within the country are beginning to hit close to home for many families.

In that we tend to have extra people around our family dining table on a regular basis, Jeremy, Katelyn and one of our "Fijian sons", Kuki, are taking on the task of planting and caring for a small garden. We've planted tomatoes, okra, chinese cabbage (bok choy), english cabbage and local lettuce in the garden. Rain and sunshine are plentiful, so we're asking the Lord to bless the harvest of this little garden. It's a brand new experience for Jeremy and Katelyn!

Good News! Email's Up!

Good news (we think)! We have good reason to think that our regular email address is now working properly again (thank the Lord)! Several of you wrote saying that you were praying with us about this important matter. So, we thank you immensely. You may now resume use of

the.bryants@cefworld.com

to contact us via email. We apologize for the bounced emails if you wrote to us during our month-long "trial" when this address was down.

Thanks for being our friends. Drop us a line when you can! We'd love to hear from you.

E-MAIL WOES CONTINUE!

These pictures have absolutely nothing to do with email problems, but I thought they might brighten up your day to see a picture or two of Fiji.

The email problems with our permanent email address (the.bryants@cefworld.com) continue, much to our dismay. It has been so disheartening to know that we've lost several hundred email messages during the past four weeks...most of which we'll never see again!

Anyway, try reaching us at either one of these two email addresses until our permanent one is up and running again:

ceffiji@connect.com.fj or kbcef@connect.com.fj


Thanks for keeping this situation in your prayers!

E-MAIL WOES!

Our personal e-mail address (the.bryants@cefworld.com) has been "down" for almost three weeks now. You can only imagine how frustrating that has been for us. If you've written to us and had your message "bounce" back to you, then please try to reach us at this address:

ceffiji@connect.com.fj

We will let you know when our permanent email address is up and running again. There has been a substantial problem on one of the servers used by CEF Headquarters which hosts our email address. Anyway, we apologize for being "out of touch" and we appreciate your patience and prayers for us!

Please pray for a quick resolution to these technical problems!

Standing at the Brink of Something Great

City Council officials have given us every indication that, after 2 years of hard work and lots of "running around", our application for a building permit for the new CEF National Office and Training Center is entering its final days! We are elated and have been told to expect the issue of the building permit by Wednesday of this week!

We take great comfort in knowing that our mighty God is not affected by the global financial situation. He is able to provide abundantly and above all that we ask or think.

Will you join us in trusting the Lord for His provision? How thrilling it would be to begin construction this June should the Lord provide the necessary funds. Early estimates indicate that the new building will cost approximately USD $330,000.00 given the current exchange rates. That's not too much for our Heavenly Father. So, with expectant hearts and great faith, we are asking Him to provide miraculously and almost immediately so that we can begin to make plans for construction to begin in June which is the start of our dry season in Fiji.

Many Teachers Trained in Weekly Classes

We have been so blessed and encouraged by the incredible turnout for our weekly teacher training classes. In addition to conducting a Tuesday morning class for SS teachers and Good News Club teachers, we've added an evening class this year. The response has been wonderful! We've had as many as 17 adults for the morning class and as many as 25 adults in the evening training class during the past two weeks.

Obviously, it is meeting a felt need and our hearts rejoice! Pictured here is our "training bure" (boor-ay means "house" in Fijian). It's simply a temporary shed that we've put up in the backyard of the CEF property to utilize while we wait upon God's provision of a new office and training hall (which will seat 100). Interest is growing and new faces appear each week. We have recently purchased 50 folding chairs and hope to fill every one of them soon! Please pray for God's continued blessings on our training ministries!

God Gives PROPERTY TITLE

After 14 months of waiting, the Property Title to CEF's new property was finally placed into Kent's hands on Monday, January 19th. We are jubilant in that it has been a much sought-after document...one that has been missing, one that was once "lost", one that was buried under stacks of papers and files on someone's desk since April 2008 and now one that has finally been put into the hands of its owners!

This marks the crossing of one of the two remaining "hurdles" in pursuit of the Building Permit for CEF's new office and training center. Now that this document has been secured, the final step is to submit it to the local city council who should now issue the building permit within days, if all goes as planned.

Then, the FINAL "hurdle" is God's provision of the funds to build. Mind you, it's only a "hurdle" for us, but not for Him! We anxiously await His bountiful provision. Pray that God will help us to know how to assist Him in promoting The Moriah Project.

Fiji Floods & Devastation

Firstly, we are safe, for which we thank our Lord. Fiji has been pelted for five days with heavy rains and devastating floods. The storms have wreaked havoc throughout the country. Many homes, villages and even major towns have been destroyed by these floods. Major businesses in the tourist town of Nadi (pronounced Nandi) have been totally wiped out. At least three large towns on our island and one large town on the northern island in Fiji have been flooded by as much as 6 feet of water in every shop.

Devastation of infrastructure and roads have been surreal. Landslides have taken the lives of at least 2 teenage girls when they were buried alive. Nine other young people have lost their lives by raging rivers and flooding. Our roads are now filled with deep craters which will not soon be repaired. Gardens and fresh vegetables, if any, will now come at a premium. There continues to be widespread devastation. Heavy rains continue to fall and more is forecast in the coming days. The third "low depression" is on its way.

We've been blessed to have electricity and a water supply during these days. However, this picture shows what our pure white water filter looks like after only a week of filtration use. This is how it looked before the storms came! It is any wonder that Becky spends hours filtering and boiling our drinking supply?

We have seen that many people, mostly young people and children, are ignoring the warnings of police and government authorities and continue to play in floodwaters despite the potential danger. They're treating the floodwaters as a time of festivity! This is why several young people in their early 20's have needlessly lost their lives. So sad!

Pray that we will know how to be a blessing to those around us who have lost most everything they've owned.

Siki's Family Loses All

The heavy rains rushed wildly from highlands and mountains ranges showing no mercy to villages located along rivers and seashores. Siki, one of the Fijian young men on CEF staff, is burdened and concerned for his family back in the village about 4 hours from Lautoka where we live.

Siki's family home has been destroyed by flood waters. As much as 8 feet of water filled the house rising up to the ceiling of their village home. What took a lifetime to gather has now been washed away or destroyed by five days of heavy rains. His family is currently housed in an emergency evacuation center set up by the government and it will be days or weeks before they'll be able to return to their village to see what was spared. Pray for Siki, his parents, two younger brothers and little sister as they deal with their devastating losses. His parents know the Lord and ask for God's people to pray for them.

New Year, New Births!

Christmas was special for our family, but the New Year brought the greatest joy when Kent had the privilege of leading TWO young men to the Lord. The third was counseled for assurance of salvation. Pictured here (L to R) are Jim, Samuela, Josese and Tomasi. Tomasi serves the Lord with CEF Fiji and "sowed the seeds" of the Gospel in the lives of his fellow rugby teammates. "Sam" and Josese, both age 22, were "ripe unto harvest" and eagerly prayed to receive the Lord on Saturday, January 3rd. In fact, Sam came to know the Lord first on Saturday morning and later that evening, he returned with his friend, Josese, saying that he, too, wanted to receive Christ. All three young men were given new Bibles of their very own.

Jim came to Kent on Wednesday afternoon stating that he had begun to read his Bible and that it was the first Bible that he had ever owned. How thrilling to see these young men excited about their new-found faith in Jesus Christ. Do pray for them as we disciple them and encourage them to grow in the Lord.