Oakseed thanks the Lord for a wonderful time of fellowship around the gospel at our annual Pennsylvania Banquet on Saturday evening!

Our guest speaker was Dr. Frew Tegene, director of Love Never Fails in Ethiopia. Dr. Tegene shared his testimony of how the Lord brought him to know Christ as a young person and laid ministry to commercial sex workers and HIV patients on his heart, how the Lord provided for the creation of Love Never Fails to meet these needs, and how this ministry seeks to bring dignity to and care for these women.

Dr. Tegene chose the name for his ministry from 1 Corinthians 13:8, which says, “Love never fails.” (NIV) He explained:

“I have experienced the mercy, the love, the charity of the Lord through my years, and when I first met these people, who are people who live in sin, I said to myself that the love that the Lord has bestowed upon me, I believe he has that for these ladies; it’s not just for me. … And the way he loves me, the intensity and passion with which he loves me, he loves every other sinner with that same passion and intensity. … The love of the Lord has never failed me, and I’m sure it’s not going to. It will never fail those ladies; it will never fail anybody.”

Dr. Tegene shared that they have been able to share the gospel with many ladies throughout their work, and this year they had the privilege of seeing eight ladies come to Christ! All of them are being discipled in the church, and five of them were baptized a few months ago.

He also shared some ways we can pray for him and the ladies they work with.

• Pray for Dr. Tegene to not grow weary or discouraged. They are battling a heavy spiritual darkness, and there are days when it is hard to get out of bed knowing what he will face during the day.
• Pray also for wisdom and protection for him and his family. There have been times when ladies tried to manipulate the situation by spreading slander and lies about him to his church and his family to try to get the ministry to give them money.
• Pray for spiritual freedom for the ladies with whom they work. Dr. Tegene says that physical poverty is related to mental and intellectual poverty, and the devil has more ground with people who are not learned, especially in the context of the religious culture in Ethiopia, where people go to church and dabble in devil worship at the same time. These ladies are also held in this bondage and need to be freed from these influences.
• Pray for these ladies – the commercial sex workers, the HIV patients, and the poor – to come to faith in Christ. This is their most important need!
• Pray that Love Never Fails would be fruitful and flourish and that these ladies would evidence real changes in their lives, both physical and spiritual, and be brought out of poverty as well.

If you want to know more about Oakseed and our ministry partners, we invite you to join us at our Virginia banquet on November 11. We will welcome Maheshwari Deep, director of Sugandh in India, to share more about what the Lord is doing there. For more information about this banquet, please visit our website.

Dr. Rick Horne, Oakseed Ministry Liaison to Africa and the Dominican Republic, conducted an interview with Dr. Tegene.

De. Frew Tegene, Director of Love Never Fails in Ethiopia

Dr. Frew Tegene, Dr. Rick Horne, and Pastor Satish Moses (Oakseed Ministry Coordinator and Ministry Liaison to Asia)