1st  Containter Shipped To Panama for this Trip

Our group leaving for Panama has already packed and shipped a container full of food and supplies.  What does that mean? Abundant Rain Ministries has already touched 132,000 lives for .24 cents a person. And we're not even there yet. Not only are we impacting this country that was recently hit by a storm so big that it shut down the Panama Canal, we are also changing the lives of the sixteen missionaries that stepped out of their box to help others. We have 13 year old kids that are going to preach the gospel to the Kuna Indians, some who have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that will impact their souls for all eternity.

Please be in prayer for the work God is sending us to do in Panama.

We are excited to be taking sixteen missionaries including many youth this March 2011 to Panama to minister to  people in Panama City as well as the Kuna Indians on the San Blas Islands. The Kunas are a native group of Indigenous people from the fifty inhabited islands on the Caribbean side of Panama. The islands have been described as being the size of a Wal-mart with parking lot each and having up to 300 families living side by side in bamboo walled huts with sand floors and straw roofs.  Due to the lack of a true economy on the islands, poverty is rampant. Children barely have any food and have very little clothing. Sadly the average life span for a Kuna is approximately thrity five years.   Abundant Rain is working with Floating Bible Schools International and the Panamanian Government's Ministry of Health to transport containers of much needed supplies and food. This work allows us to take the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all those we come in contact. This is a message that is so desperately needed in Panama as well as the utter most parts of the world.  Our youth will minister to the Kuna Inidans mind, body and spirit through song, dramas, puppeteering, activities, and teaching along with sharing the love of Christ they have in their hearts.  This is truly a life changing event for the people of Panama, San Blas Islands, and the missionaries sent from the United States.  You too can be a part of this through your prayers and contributions towards food or helping someone pay for their trip to Panama as most are trusting in faith for the proceeds to pay to go minister in Panama.

Abundant Rain is networking with Floating Bible Schools International

This ministry has exploded! In 1999 Allen & Kathy Sappington started living just like the Kuna Indians, on Nalunega Island, San Blas Islands, Republic of Panama, in a thatched roofed hut with cane-stick walls and a sand floor, and ministered for two years as senior pastos of Iglesia Palabra de Vida (Word of Life Church), a church Allen started in 1990. Allen started the only church on this remote island after an evangelistic service yielded a few new believers. The church didn't produce much fruit until they started living on the island in 1999, then things really began to hapen. At first they only held bi-weekly adult services. Then soon realized that after seeing many children coming to the church, the greatest harvest and potential impact to change the island of God lay in the children. So they started bi-weekly children's services that grew into a thriving children's ministry with most of the island's children in attendance. In May 2001, after much discipleship and leadership training, they ordained three Kuna believers from the church as senior, associate, and music pastors. 

GROWING THE CHURCH

As Kathy and Allen continued as overseers of the church work and continued leadership and discipleship training, the Kuna pastors have taken a heartfelt ownership of the work and not just a delegated ownership. They are doing a great job of increasing the minitry. The Kuna leaders have enhanced the children's ministry by separting the children into six different age groups usuing six Kuna teachers that had been trained. Now the children's teachers have their own young disciples who are in training. A youth service started with some of the young Kuna helping out in the children's services. Since setting Kuna leaders into the church, they have seen a tremendous growth in adult attendance. The church also has been able to extend the ocean side of the land sixty feet that will eventually contain the planned 2-story church/Bible school building needed because of the growth.

EVANGELISM

As an evangelistic outreach, a children's feeding program was established on two islands that currently serves over 130 children weekly with food and drink after the children's service. Because some of the families don't have enough food to feed their children, this program is touching the hearts of the children's family as well as the community. Lastly, the pastors, with many of their young leaders and church members, have also formed a strong evangelistic team that has gone to multiple islands. This team has been praised by other Kuna

CHURCH PLANTING

Along with the Kuna leaders, Allen and Kathy started their second church in 2003 on nearby Korbiski Island where they purchased land and built a church hut. One of their leaders and his wife are pastors of that church, and they are training some of the believers on that island to be the future pastors. Duing their time in Panama they have started three other churches on Mamitupu, Arritupu, and Naranjo Chico (Little orange) Islands. Kuna disciples, who have been training were set into each of these churches as pastors.

BIBLE SCHOOLS

Besides the children's ministry, leadership training, feeding program, evangelistic outreaches, church plantings, and annual pastor's conference, one other ministry God put inside Allen and Kathy's hearts is the ministry of Bible schools. This work is crucial for this remote area and these primitive Kuna Indians that inhabit these remote islands. The Bible Schools not only teach the Word of God, but train the students further by requiring them to practice what they have been taught in the classroom through participation in the local church and the evangelistic outreaches. By renewing their minds by the Word of God through the bible school and local church, the Kuna Indians who have received Jesus yet kept some animistic beliefs in their lives can be totally set free from their bondages.

VISION

To liberate this remote island chain with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, to help them realize that purpose of their lives which is to know God and mkae Him known.