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Newsletter from Loren and Celeste Davis
October 2010
Dear Partner,
The crusade in the Muslim city of Malindi was a marvel. We had a huge multitude, including thousands of Muslims, who responded to receive Christ as their Savior. The government said this was the largest crowd in the history of Malindi. The last day was perhaps one of the greatest days of miracles we have ever seen. A paralyzed woman who had not walked in five years rose and walked. Her friend who cared for her, was beside herself when she saw it. A mad man who had walked through the streets naked was delivered. Realizing he was naked, he went and put clothes on before testifying of his marvelous deliverance..Malindi is no longer a Muslim city! (See the MALINDI CRUSADE photo at www.lorendavis.com)
Our crusades in Kenya were the first ones since Kenya's new constitution which brought in Islamic sharia law. We didn't know what to expect, but knew the Lord wanted us to go ahead.
God gave us victory despite facing the worst battle we have ever faced. We were not going to tell you about our hardships and all the treachery, but because of extreme circumstances, we have no choice. What happened cannot be hidden forever. Just before our crusade in Narok, Kenya, a month earlier, an American pastor who is openly our adversary, came to Narok accompanied by three of our former team members whom he had corrupted, luring them to leave us and join him by offering them sizable amounts of money. We were informed that this pastor had gone to government officials in Narok to have our crusade permit revoked. Later it was discovered that he had also used money to entice some bishops who were working with us, to join him, thereby sabotaging our crusade and dooming us to failure and embarrassment. Despite making this extreme attack against us, the crusade still was a great success in this small town. (See photo: NAROK CRUSADE) This pastor, later boldly used his agents to also try to sabotage our Malindi Crusade. Once again, their attempts failed miserably. (See photo: MALINDI CRUSADE)
The reason we are writing you concerning this incident is that we have been under extreme duress. During the crusade in Narok we had a major robbery committed against us and a pastor friend of ours and his wife, who were staying with us at the hotel. This happened the second evening of the crusade after the service while we went to dinner. Interesting, our friends and us were the only ones in the hotel robbed, although our rooms were far apart. Both of our CHI ministry laptops and all of our professional cameras, except for one small digital one in Celeste's purse, were stolen. Our combined losses were at a minimum of $8,500. The mystery about the robbery was that the rooms were not broken into, but keys were used to get inside. Because our former teammates had just stayed in the same hotel along with this antagonist minister, we became suspicious that they might be involved because they had already been tampering with our work. Our laptops had all of our ministry e-mail addresses on them and other important ministry data.
This loss would cripple our ability to communicate with our partners and could stop our documentation of the crusades by video, which is so important for our credibility. (To counter this, we hired a cameraman for the Malindi Crusade). TheC.I.D., Central Intelligence Department of Kenya, Kenya's C.I.A., took over the investigating of the crime and discovered that this pastor had gone intoleague with a mega minister from the U.S., to takeover the churches we had built in Kenya. The C.I.D. told us that they discovered that they were planning on opening a new denomination in Kenya and putting all the churches we had built under it. This would make this pastor their head bishop. (Just a note that when we built the churches, we set them up under already established registered Kenyan denominations that are doctrinally sound). This brazen move would bring them in direct conflict with the Kenyan bishops over these denominations and could literally destroy the faith of the people, most of whom are new converts who have just come out of Islam. The C.I.D. told us that our adversaries were corrupting pastors, bribing them by giving them money to defect and join them.
The C.I.D. had information that they intended to try to destroy our name and reputation in Kenya as well as in America, as well as stealing our whole team. (Whoever leaves, God will replace them with godly people who can't be bought!) They said that the local police chief and different police had been compromised so they wouldn't investigate the crime. Furthermore, the C.I.D. informed us that these antagonists are planning to contact our partners to slander us saying we had misappropriated funds.
Regarding our financial integrity, the Wall Street Journal did a major story on us. One of the things the investigative journalist did was to go meticulously through our finances to see if we had misappropriated funds. The WSJ gave us a clean report which was published. We have a professional accountant who keeps our books. Several years ago, while I was in business and before we started the ministry, we built our home with our own hands and paid for it as we went over a six year period. We drive an economy car, not a luxury one. Since that time we have been a debt free ministry for years. We only take a small salary to take care of our basic needs. We have never misused funds for building churches or any other project. Besides the cost of building materials for the churches, other expenses related to building churches are: providing for room and board as well as salaries of our team and carpenters; registration of vehicles; insurance and fuel for our truck and our other two ministry vehicles as well as their maintenance which is quite high because of the terrible African roads. At times we have had to subsidize building churches with crusade funds because of the great distances we go sometimes building and because of inflation. Our large crusades are also quite costly and we don't hold back in advertising to get the harvest as is evident to those who have seen our videos.
As of this date, several of our former team members who were working with this pastor have been arrested in Kenya by the C.I.D. in connection to the robbery. Since the robbery, several Americans connected to these antagonist ministries, came to Kenya after our Narok crusade to further implement this coup of the churches. One of them is a person of notoriety. They had been trailing us. Because of their unlawful activities, the government of Kenya had them deported. The investigation is continuing.
Please help us. If you get any correspondence with any allegations against us please understand that they are framing us to get us out of Kenya and ruin our ministry. Its original source could only be from those involved in this crime. Those who have been implicated have made it clear to the C.I.D., the purpose for this syndicated attack against us is to drive us out of Kenya and takeover the churches we have built. If you hear of or get anything regarding this, please give us the information to forward to the C.I.D. to fast track the recovery of our equipment.
Please e-mail us a copy of it, with the name and address of the sender to: lorendavisministries@hotmail.com.
Pray about what the Lord would have you do for our next crusade planned the first of the year and to help us continue our work harvesting souls in Africa. We need intercessors! Your prayers and support are vital to preaching the gospel to the masses of souls that are yet to be harvested.
Faithfully yours,
Loren and Celeste Davis
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a special gift for the work here in Africa.
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