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Dear Friends in the Lord:
We greet you in the precious name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thank you so much for your faithfulness in your prayer for us, communicating with us and supporting us financially in our quest to spread the Gospel of Christ here in Ghana on the West Coast of Africa. Please pardon us for the long delay in writing.
Summary last Quarter 07
We ended the year 2007 with a series of activities that kept us quite busy in the last quarter.
At the Solid Rock Baptist Bible College we held our fourth graduation in October, which saw ten men receiving their graduation Diplomas. Three of them returned to campus to complete a fourth year which will lead to their receiving a Bachelor of Theology degree. The rest are all gone to the field and are in various ministries. Our next graduation will be in August 2008.School is already on break but the degree students have up to the middle of August to submit their project work before graduation.

November 25, was “Youth Day” at Tema Solid Rock Baptist Church. We received fifty first time visitors. Fifteen of them responded to the invitation for Salvation and were led to the Lord.
On December 2, we held the Solid Rock Baptist Youth games, dubbed “SRBY Olympics” at Tema which brought together about four hundred of our youth clubbers from four of our Churches to fellowship and to compete in athletics, volley ball and soccer games. For our young clubbers it was a great time and they went away, looking forward to the next “Olympics” in December 2008.
Shortly after the games in Tema, I set off for Kumasi with Gideon. Kumasi is four hours North of Accra, in the Ashanti Region. So on December 3, I spoke on the Campus of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology to the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship in an early morning service at 8:00am, and then we continued to Bourkrom Estates where I spoke in the morning service at Solid Rock Baptist Church of Bourkrom, Kumasi .
December 30 was “Women’s Day” at the Tema Church. We had 250 in our morning service with several visitors who came to trust the Lord as saviour. On December 31, we held a watch night service which lasted till 12 mid night. Many resolutions were made by Church members which is already making an impact in the Church.

Summary Jan –May 08
Bible Conference / Family Retreat
We began the New Year with a Believers’ Conference from the 3rd to 6th January 2008. This year’s Family Retreat was held on the 5th January and formed part of the Conference. The Family Retreat attracted about five hundred people. The Believers’ Conference which had about 160 people in residence, saw over six hundred people attending on the last day of the Conference.
Baptisms
In February we baptized 22 people in Pamfokrom for the Pamfokrom and Adzentem Churches in the Central Region. In March, on Easter Sunday, I joined Pastor Amponsah in Kumasi to baptize 12 people for the Bodomase and Bourkrom Churches after a joint church service in the morning.
Christian School inaugurated at Dromankese
On April 4, the Dromankese Church in the Brong Ahafo Region inaugurated the Solid Rock Baptist Academy with 160 students who are studying at the primary and junior high levels. The program was attended by the Member of Parliament of the area, the District Director of Education, and the chief of the town served as the Chairman for the occasion. Dr. Alfred Ofosu-Asante, Rev. Hayford Antwi of Nkoranza, Pastor Francis Ackah of Tema and myself, were there to lend our support to Pastor Ansah Damoah, the pastor of the Church in the village. An Open Air Meeting that was held in the night attracted hundreds of people from all walks of life. Many prayed to receive Christ as savior. An abrupt rain did not allow us to take any names, but, the following Sunday over a hundred people were at the morning service: about 40% increase in attendance.
We wish to appeal to our supporters to help us raise one thousand Dollars ($1000.00) to help the Church roof a classroom block which they are also going to be using for church services. They already have one hundred bags of cement and all the sand they need to build the block. Please send your check to IPM and designate it to Dapaah/SRBM Christian School Project.

The SRBC of Drobonso in the Ashanti Region acquired an eight acre land a few years ago on which they have started a building project which is yet to be completed. However, some people are trying to encroach on the land. They need $700.00 to seal their documentation with the paramount Chief of the area so they could ward off all encroachers. If the Lord will lead you to help this village church please send your check to IPM and designate it SRBM/Village Church land project.
ACCIDENT: My desire to visit as many of our Churches as possible before the fall suffered a jolt when on the 7th of April while returning from the Brong Ahafo and Ashanti Regions I was involved in an accident. A drunken soldier lost control of his vehicle and veered straight into mine. The impact was so strong that it shattered the suspensions, bent the frame of the Toyota 4 runner I was driving. There were two of us in my car and four in the car that rammed into ours. We all escaped unharmed. I have been advised to get rid of the vehicle as soon as I can fix it. It is seventeen years old and was already becoming too expensive to maintain.
HOSPITALIZED: Though I came through the accident unharmed, I was at the accident scene all night till day break before I got help. I was exhausted and exposed to a swarm of hostile mosquitoes who just added the icing on the cake. Exactly one week later I was hospitalized for the first time in my life! I was in hospital for three day battling against a very severe malaria attack. My treatment to clear my system of the malaria parasite took ten days. But soon after that it was detected I had a very serious bacterial infection. I was put on a daily injection for another one week before I was cleared of that also. But during the period Vera also came down with Malaria, Gideon had a swollen foot which eventually needed a minor surgery to deal with. By the grace of God we are all better now. Gideon will still be going to hospital for dressing for some time but there has been a lot of improvement since the surgery. Please pray with us on our health.
OUR FAMILY’S EXODUS
We moved for the seventh time in sixteen years. This time we have moved from Tema Golf City to our Missions’ guest house in Dobro on the Campus of SRBBC. Except the Lord over rules otherwise, we intend to live here until we can have funds to build our own residence. (Dobro is just across the Greater Accra border with the Eastern Region on the Kumasi Road, and about 40 miles away from Tema) Our moving to Dobro will help us provide a closer supervision in SRBBC and a greater involvement in the development of the college in general. It became necessary to move because, over the years, we have not been able to raise full support for the ministry so every month we have had to part with some of our support either officially or privately to keep the ministries going. With a gallon of petrol now pegged at $5.50 and still threatening to go further up, cost of living have gone so high that we simply could not cope with the rent advances that the land lord’s were quoting. Of course commuting to minister in Tema will cost more, but then it will be according to our own dictated pace.
TEN YEARS CHURCH PLANTING EFFORTS IN RESTROSPECT: In 1997, shortly after our affiliation with IPM we set a goal of increasing our church planting efforts from 3 to 50 by the end of the year 2007. I am sure our supporters would like to know how we have fared over the decade. Our combined efforts enabled us to initiate thirty-eight new churches. Of the 38, two have disbanded as a result of lack of leadership or poor leadership. One had become in active as a result of dissension and the death of a leader. The members have started fellowshipping with sister Churches nearby as they await a revival of their Church activities. Six of the Churches are yet to be organized. So we ended the period with thirty active churches. Some are still very small but have the potential to grow.

OUR GOALS FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS TO PRAY ABOUT

We intend to use the next four years to visit and strengthen these young churches. We will also seek to work on the ones we have initiated but have not yet been organized and seek to have them organized.
Also to focus on building the Bible College so we could attract and accommodate more students.
In our fifth year we intend to re-launch an aggressive church planting program which will involve active participation of the student body of SRBBC and its graduates.
We shall seek to have more Churches planted within the forty mile radius of our college so that students would be guided to provide leadership for such churches till they have their substantive pastors.
The Solid Rock Baptist Federation, which is a fellowship, mainly of churches we have started and a few others that have come to affiliate, is being encouraged to poll their meager resources together so they could support our efforts in church planting.
Continue to develop the SRBY program and promote it in all our local churches as a means of consistently evangelizing among the youth and providing a plat for fellowship and discipleship

PLEASE CONTINUE PRAY:
1. For us as we prepare for a three-month deputation in the fall
2. For a good family car
3. For a new Van for the ministry
4. For Funds to build Bible College Library and Administrative block
5. For Tema Solid Rock Baptist Church Roof Project
6. For Dromankese Christian School Block roof project
7. For Drobonso village Church land project
8. For God’s protection as we travel on very dangerous roads
9. For God’s provision in the face of rising cost of living affecting missions.

Thanks so much for your prayers and support. The Lord bless you, richly!

In Christ
George & Vera Dapaah