{"id":6668,"date":"2017-08-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/ministry-partner-update-icomb-august-2017\/"},"modified":"2024-12-10T18:40:01","modified_gmt":"2024-12-10T18:40:01","slug":"ministry-partner-update-icomb-august-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/en\/stories\/ministry-partner-update-icomb-august-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Ministry partner update: ICOMB &#8211; August 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB) is made up of 21 national churches in 19 countries with approximately 450,000 members. ICOMB exists to facilitate relationships and ministries to enhance the witness and discipleship of its member national churches \u2013 connecting, strengthening and expanding.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Now is the time<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter praying and fasting, I was convinced it is time,\u201d shared Luis Alberto Mereles. Luis is a former prisoner with a long record of criminal activity and several escape attempts, one of them stabbing and kidnapping the director of the prison. He showed us the place that was the most dangerous one in the whole prison. It was locked and no guard would enter without a small army with him. He went in that section and asked the guard to lock behind him, who did it only after prolonged insisting. He started to preach and soon one convict, with a big knife clanging against the railing shouted: \u201cyou will die!\u201d He silenced him in the name of Jesus. He went on preaching and after making an altar call, 52 prisoners accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour. After a week, these 52 men received permission to go and worship in another section called \u201cFreedom,\u201d conducted as a rehabilitation ministry of the Concordia Mennonite Brethren church in Asuncion, Paraguay. Now, this heavily guarded and locked place has been integrated into the \u201cFreedom\u201d section, and is a place of hope, giving sentenced prisoners the opportunity to go to school, university, do handicrafts or little jobs inside the prison to help support their families.<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2014Rudi Plett, associate director<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB) is made up of 21 national churches in 19 countries with approximately 450,000 members. ICOMB exists to facilitate relationships and ministries to enhance the witness and discipleship of its member national churches \u2013 connecting, strengthening and expanding. Now is the time \u201cAfter praying and fasting, I was convinced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"network":[],"eventcategory":[],"class_list":["post-6668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ministry partner update: ICOMB - August 2017 - Mennonite World Conference<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mwc-cmm.org\/en\/stories\/ministry-partner-update-icomb-august-2017\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ministry partner update: ICOMB - August 2017 - Mennonite World Conference\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The International Community of Mennonite Brethren (ICOMB) is made up of 21 national churches in 19 countries with approximately 450,000 members. 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