#happy New Year! 🎉

Hello friend,

In this special New Year edition 😅, we’ll be talking about hosting a brother ✊🏽, working on internal tooling 🛠️, plans for Whatchu Believe 📝, and some inevitable life stuff 🤠!

Let’s dig in! ⛏️

Life update

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of hosting my brother, Judah, at my place here in Nigeria. ✨ 

While he was here, we had some friends over for a few days, looking through the book of Galatians 📖 and having conversations around its content 💬.

Oh friend, what better thing to gather around than the Word of God! 🥹

This is a thing that Judah has been doing lately in different parts of Africa, and we were glad to have the same here in Abeokuta ✨. I pray that the Lord uses Him as a vessel in many more parts of the world 🙏🏽.

Now, contrary to plans and expectations, I didn't start this year guns-blazing 🥲.

I'm a very optimistic guy, and my plans usually reflect this 😅. However, I've faced quite a number of disappointments already this year - some quite significant 🥶.

Though humbling, it is a good thing to be reminded that there is only one sovereign ruler of the universe, and His name is not Sam 🤠.

I trust that the One who calls the shots is good, and His plans are significantly better than I could ever imagine (even with AI tools 😅).

May we not grow weary of discerning and deferring to His will, as He makes it clear, regardless of how costly or humbling it is 🙏🏽.

Ministry update

Having shared Whatchu Believe MVP with testers, I was able to get some good feedback on the user experience of the project 💬. Lord-willing, these will be incorporated into the project as we work towards releasing publicly 🤞🏽.

I spent the last week working on internal tooling 🛠️ for task management across different platforms, especially because I work on tasks from different project management systems. As a result, I can now manage my daily tasks from a single platform without having to jump from system to system as I work on various projects across different organisations.

Content update for Whatchu Believe begins today, Lord-willing. We will be adapting this from a book for now 📚, and evolving as the need arises ♻️.

As things stand, we are still on track to, Lord-willing, go live with Whatchu Believe by the end of Q1 ✨.

Changed Lives

I met a guy last week and that was one of the few things he had to say in our brief time together 🤔.

This would not have meant as much to me if he was referring to a game of FC 2027 or something. He was talking about the conversations we had around Scripture! 🥹 I was really encouraged to see God's people hungry for fellowship around His Word.

We'll plan to, Lord-willing, have more meetings to sit together around God's Word throughout the year 🤞🏽.

Prayer requests

Here are a few specific ways you can pray with me 🙏🏽:

• Strength and Courage: Please thank God for sustaining me thus far, and ask that He continues to grant strength and courage to live unto Him regardless of situation and circumstances 💪🏽.

• Diligence and Productivity: Ask that the Lord causes me to be diligent in this ministry He has committed into my hands 🤲🏽. That, I will look not to tools and systems but to Him as the ultimate source of productivity.

• Fruitfulness: Pray that the Lord blesses the projects we work on, such that they bear fruit of conversion 🍇. May many be challenged in their current beliefs systems and nudged towards Christ, the Saviour of the world.

I pray intentionally for my partners regularly, and I'd love to know how I could be specifically praying for us. If you are interested, use the button below to share prayer requests, and I'd be happy to join you in praying for them.

Something to think about

Towards the beginning of the year, there were loads of positive affirmations and declarations flying around - perhaps more than the drones in the Dubai New Year drone show 🐦‍🔥.

I even saw one that was effectively saying that the reader was not going to have any sort of disappointments throughout the new year! 🥴 

Oh! Don't we just love a hitch-free year? 😅

One of those was forwarded to me on WhatsApp. I get the heart behind it, and I appreciate it, but I just can't get myself to agree to such lies 🥲.

Christ didn't promise us a hitch-free life on this side of eternity; none of the apostles did. And we know from experience that…

"🎵 that ain't the real life; that is just fantasy..."

However, there's actually some element of truth to such declarations - just warped. And, friend, I'll love for you to consider with me:

• do we even have any hope of a hitch-free life at all? 🤔 Revelation 21:1-4

  • if we do, when's that gonna be? 2026, or perhaps 2027? 🗓️

• do we get any good at all from the pain, suffering and disappointment we face on this side? 😭 Romans 8:28

• how do we think about God in the midst of our disappointments over here? 💭 Daniel 3:16-18, Psalm 42:11

May we be able to increasingly love and trust our God regardless of circumstances 🤲🏽.

That’s it for now, friend! ✨

See you in the next one, Lord willing. 🤞🏽

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