If You Give a Man a Fish

There is a Chinese proverb that says, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.”

Here at Project Samuel, we believe in teaching people to fish! There is no such person as ‘Atlas’ that is capable of carrying the weight of the world on their own shoulders. We are all in this together, and everyone has a part to play. When Jesus walked the earth, He not only fed men fish, but He taught them to be fishers of men. He empowered and discipled 12 men, to carry the baton long after He was no longer physically with them. We want to “feed” people in every aspect of their lives, physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. But, we also want to teach them to feed others! We don’t only want them to eat what we give them (as missionaries) while we are here, but we want them to learn to take what we have offered and reproduce it in every aspect of their lives.

Our Women’s Bible Study group is growing! They are not only growing in their individual spiritual lives, but also as a ministry. We have a dream to see our Bible Study grow and reach out to the three closest villages to us. We hope that we can reproduce our passion for outreach to each of those groups and that people all across our area will be ministered to by the women in our Bible study group.
In order to reach this dream, we have to empower others to take the baton and run! We are currently training two women to eventually be able to manage, operate, and grow the ministry. One will be over the Bible study as a whole, and the other will be the outreach coordinator. We have been discipling them one-on-one through the Word of God. We teach on what it takes to be a servant leader and they have taken leadership style and personality surveys so that we can work on areas of strengths and weaknesses together. Once we have empowered these two ladies to lead, one day, they will disciple women on their own to take the ministry into other villages! It’s a pay-it-forward system that will teach many to fish and feed many for a lifetime!