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Pastor Carl Naitram of the Grace Bible Church.

Local Pastor to help build orphanage in Africa

 

One local pastor will soon be heading to Mozambique to assist in building an orphanage there.
 
Pastor Carl Naitram of the Grace Bible Church told The Barbados Advocate that they have ministries in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda and Burundi and he will be travelling to Mozambique and Zimbabwe in the beginning of September.
 
“I am going to Mozambique to see the churches. We have several Grace Bible Churches there – about 20 of them. Though I am going primarily to organise a place for the orphans. We have nearly 200 orphans at our churches out there take care of and we are trying to see if we can help them put up a building.”
 
So far, they have acquired the land and on the weekends, a group of young people go and teach the orphans to read and write and to give them a meal. The idea for the construction of the building came about because these young ones often spend the night either sleeping on the streets or with extended family
 
He said, that the members of their church will assist in whatever way they can but they do not usually participate in fund-raising activities.
 
“We don’t do things to raise funds. We don’t believe that that is how the church should do it – beg for money and things like that. We believe that if God wants you to do something, God will supply the need. So we don’t put it out there like we are asking for money, but if people give money, then we will put it towards that.”
 
Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, he will be attending a conference with their sister churches and to make plans to start a Bible College there. 
 
The Pastor said that the relationship with Africa started in 1991 with a letter that he received from Zimbabwe asking for assistance, which all involved attribution to the will of God.
 
“The letter came one day from Zimbabwe with no country of destination on it. It was just marked Grace Bible Church and I don’t know how it got to Barbados because there was no country of destination on the letter. When I opened the letter,a man was asking for Bibles and for tapes and he thought that he had heard our radio broadcast. Though obviously it was from somebody else, from another Grace Bible Church.” 
 
“I wrote him back to tell him that I received his letter by mistake, but we would try to help him. About six weeks later I received another letter but from a different person altogether, telling me that he received my letter by mistake. 
 
“However, they believe that is how God had answered their prayer because they wanted to start a church but in order to do that, you must first have a mother church and ‘we have been praying that God would put us in contact with someone that we can associate with and we are taking this as God’s way, God’s answer. Will you come over to Macedonia to help?’”
 
The church started in Zimbabwe and because of family and other connections, the churches then spread to Mozambique, then Malawi, Zambia and then in recent years to Rwanda and last year, to Burundi, he stated.

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