Impetus

APF 40th Anniversary Garden Party

Join us (hopefully!) at St Margaret’s Church, Whitnash, Leamington Spa on Saturday 26th June, 2-4pm for a garden party to celebrate 40 years of APF.

Including:

• African catering and music
• Keynote address
• Recorded greetings from African partners
• And more

Visit https://bit.ly/APF40 to reserve your free entry ticket today!

* If it is not possible to have a physical gathering, we will have an online event instead, although in that case you may have to do the food yourself!

eVitabu Sponsorship

Since the launch of the eVitabu sponsorship portal in January, we have recruited over 40 sponsors! Thank you so much for your generous support of eVitabu. For a monthly contribution of less than the
cost of a paperback book you can place a library in the hands of an African church leader. Visit www.africanpastors.org/evitabu and sponsor a pastor in Africa using eVitabu today!

And as ever, thank you.

Revd Dave Stedman
CEO

Looking back and looking forward…

Forty is a Biblical number. Moses, Elijah and Jesus each fasted for forty days. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years. Ezekiel lay on his side for forty days. The rains came down and the floods came up for forty days and nights. Saul, David and Solomon each reigned for forty years and Goliath taunted Israel for forty days before being slain by David. Forty years is a Biblical generation.

APF was founded in 1981 so 2021 marks our 40th Anniversary. It seems timely that we celebrate God’s faithfulness throughout that time and look back at APF’s ministry and achievements.

Looking back

This edition contains memories and testimony from one of our founders, a long-standing trustee and a grateful beneficiary of APF’s ministry in Africa. There are also recent examples of how APF continues to enable effective ministry that brings community transformation through local African churches in Kenya, Zambia and many other nations.

Looking forward

Our lead article highlights the progress being made with eVitabu together with an invitation for you to be among the first to use our new eVitabu sponsorship portal and sponsor an eVitabu user. For less than the price of a paperback book each month, you can give an African church leader access to an library of resources from their mobile phone. Visit:

www.africanpastors.org/evitabu

For our 40th Anniversary, we are praying for 400 eVitabu sponsors.

As ever, thank you.

Revd Dave Stedman
CEO

The interruptions are our work.

Henri Nouwen wrote of a now-famous conversation which helped him think about interruptions as something other than a bother. He writes, “While visiting the University of Notre Dame, I met an older experienced professor who had spent most of his life there. While we strolled over the beautiful campus, he said with a certain melancholy in his voice, ‘You know… my whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that my interruptions were my work.’”

The coronavirus pandemic has been a major interruption to the work that APF had expected to be doing in 2020. Scaling-up the eVitabu app, training conferences, tree-planting, bike and Bible distributions and more… It has all been paused as various forms of lockdown, quarantine and curfew affect everyday life in Africa. Future planning and visits have been mothballed so, in addition to the anxiety and loss surrounding Covid-19, it has been a painful bother.

But in the space created by lockdown, APF has adapted. We’ve held regular Zoom conference calls connecting partners from across Africa for reflection, Bible study and prayer. Technology has been harnessed to bring UK supporters together too. Using social media, we set up a Covid-19 Relief Fund. Within two weeks of opening, your generous donations raised over £10,000 which we quickly passed to African partners who have set up local community-based responses to the triple threat of lockdown, locusts and landslides which have hit the region in recent months.

This edition of Impetus contains theological reflection on these calamities as understood by our partners in Africa and tells just a few of the stories of how the Covid-19 Relief Fund has been used to enable effective ministry in lockdown. APF’s plans have unquestionably been interrupted but the work continues: maybe we too have discovered that the interruptions are our work.

Thank you for your continued support.

Revd Dave Stedman
CEO