Hello, yes, we are still here in Lesotho and we are still alive.
We are sorry that there have been no updates on our blog for the last 18 months. The work of the ministry and our travels both in the country and internationally have kept us very busy.
However, due to many inquiries and requests, we will now start again. It's difficult to choose what to report on from all the events of the last few months. So here are some highlights with a few pictures, and more details will follow in upcoming blog posts.
Visit to Germany in 2023
Many of you will have noticed that we were in Germany from May to September 2023. It was great to see many of you again and to enjoy our time back home. We visited numerous churches and reported on what God is doing here in Lesotho.
We were deeply touched by the warm hospitality we experienced in Germany, Ireland and Northern Ireland.
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We spent a weekend in Magdeburg and were lovingly cared for and supported by the FeG Magdeburg, Gerd and Birgit Sobbe, Martin and Beate Stange and especially my sister Daniela.
We stayed with good friends in Rötenberg in the south of Germany. Karl Heizmann and Brigitte & Johannes Götschke created an unforgettable time for us and our two boys.
In Ireland, we visited the parents of one of our volunteers who had been working in Lesotho for 12 months. These parents are long-time missionaries themselves and run a church planting project there. We were impressed by the passion and prayerful spirit of the people there.
In Northern Ireland, Christiane and I had the pleasure of staying with our friends Jen & John in a real Irish castle. It was a very special experience, also because it was the first time we had been traveling alone in Ireland and Northern Ireland in many years and we really enjoyed it.
(Move the mouse pointer over the pictures to see the description. Click on the pictures to load them in original size).
During this time, our boys spent two weeks at the Holzheim camp, the place where Christiane and I met and fell in love a few decades ago. So somehow we've come full circle.
There were so many other wonderful encounters and moments that it is difficult to list everything here. We also had the enriching opportunity to spend a lot of time in our home congregation - in the church café and in various home groups. That was a real blessing for us.
Missionary work in Lesotho
So much has happened in Lesotho in recent months, which we would like to report on in more detail in the coming articles. Our main task remains the founding and support of discipleship groups. Our goal is to establish at least one such group in every village in Lesotho. All our activities are geared towards this.
This is a daunting task as it is a challenge to reach all of Lesotho. Although we are already seeing wonderful progress in our region in the mountains of Lesotho, the challenge remains to reach even the most remote areas and villages.
God has 
however, opened a new door. In February 2023, we held a conference for pastors from Lesotho. This three-day training was designed to teach the necessity and biblical foundations of discipleship. Dr. Hendrick Vorster, founder and president of CPI from Australia, traveled to Lesotho to conduct this training with his team. For many of the 200 or so pastors, this concept was completely new. They could see the importance, but had difficulties with the implementation and the details.
We have decided to start on a smaller scale and train smaller groups of 15-20 pastors in each of the ten different provinces of Lesotho. This allows more pastors to participate, as there are no travel costs. In these training sessions, we go into more depth, answer questions and can better assess whether what has been learned has been understood and accepted.
These training courses give us pleasure, but also demand a lot from us. The time away from our families, the long and often arduous journeys to inaccessible areas and the cost of accommodation and fuel are a challenge. But we experience God's blessing and protection in all these situations.
And we are already seeing the fruits of our labor: a pastor in Maseru was able to train other pastors and members of his church with the OM training material. It was great to see how he understood the content and enthusiastically shared his own experiences to encourage others to start discipleship groups.
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have made it my personal mission to meet with pastors at the national level and denominational church leaders in particular to encourage them to implement this program in their churches. We are already recognizing the need for another conference next year to train and support more pastors.
I'll tell you more about that when the time comes...
A video (in English) of this training, which the pastor conducted on his own initiative, can be found on the YouTube page of OM in Lesotho.
Dear family, friends and supporters of our work in Lesotho, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who support us, pray for us, are our friends and encouragers and think of us! You mean a lot to us! We wish you a peaceful pre-Christmas period and a good start to the New Year.
We would also like to pray for you. If you wish, you can send us your prayer requests so that we can pray even more specifically.
With best wishes and blessings,
Stephan and family
