Happy Birthday Bishop!
Thank-you for selfless leadership you have modelled before my eyes for more than 35 years!
Thank-you for always asking us to focus on the work of the Lord!
Thank-you for always encouraging us to use the money of the church to build for our Missionaries and Fulltime Pastors. You have always called our Missionaries our heroes!
Thank-you for always encouraging us to help our Missionaries to succeed in their life’s work.
Thank-you for the free four-year Bible School training you have provided our Pastors over the decades.
Thank-you for the stipends, food, medical care, free textbooks you toiled so hard to write for your Pastors and church workers.
Thank-you for the great support including money, accommodation, church equipment you provide our Missionaries and Fulltime Pastors to enable them serve God to the best of their ability.
Thank-you for the numerous church buildings you have led us to put up to support the work of our numerous Volunteers/Lay and Fulltime Pastors in Ghana and many nations around the world.
Thank-you for sending us, the Bishops and Senior Pastors to travel around to strengthen, help, support, counsel and provide the needs of our Missionaries and Fulltime Pastors.
Thank-you for thinking, thinking and thinking about our Missionaries.
Thank-you for the many Camp Meetings you have held to continuously teach our Pastors and guide them to build successful churches.
Thank-you for your emphasis to our Missionaries and Fulltime Pastors to work hard to build successful churches that will bring multitudes into the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and also ensure their personal prosperity right here on earth.
Thank-you for helping several of our Pastors who couldn’t have children to have free medical care at great cost to have babies. Thank-you for your personal interest and love shown couples in such situations over the years.
Thank-you for not seeking your personal interest and prosperity while building the church in so many countries, nations, islands.
You have refused to enjoy the trappings of an Executive because you have always insisted we build and put the church first in all we do.
We always argue with you that it’s been too long for the church not to provide you with such Executive privileges, but you just fend off our concerns with your usual smile; and you still have stayed your course to put the church first.
Through this great, selfless sacrificial leadership, filled with genuine and amazing love for all the Bishops, Volunteers/Lay Pastors, Fulltime workers, Shepherds, members in more than 90 countries, nations and islands around the world, today the little church the Lord used you to start at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital has become one of the greatest multinational organizations! and all this at a great personal cost!
Since I started working at close quarters with you in helping govern our worldwide churches, I have noticed at first hand many persistent challenges, difficulties, worries and pain you personally endure in your effort to help this huge organization to be led properly into more development and advancement of the Kingdom of God.
You have borne with grace the burden of leading the numerous Volunteers/Lay workers and Fulltime Pastors in this great institution.
You have accommodated the many Volunteers/Lay and Fulltime staff who have simply not complied with our Organization’s standards, directives and administrative guidelines.
The poor work ethics, laziness, useless socializing via endless hours watching movies, engagement on social media platforms, prayerlessness, unfaithfulness, lack of focus on the difficult task of church planting; the list is endless; on the part of some of the Fulltime Pastors and Missionaries, all of which lead to their inability to succeed in church planting, thus wasting the opportunity to achieve personal prosperity.
The sheer disloyalty, pride, arrogance and stubbornness of many who have been given great ministry opportunities…
I have seen the above and more….Your great fatherly and forgiving heart of love that always made you overlook our mistakes and thereby given many Pastors and workers in the church a second, third, fourth and many more chances in Ministry.
Time will not allow me to talk about your very many acts of benevolence to our Volunteers/Lay and Fulltime workers, as well as many in our societies:
- Payment of school fees for the children of our departed brothers and sisters which has made it possible for many to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, and prominent people who are helping to build our societies.
- Hundreds of hours you spend to counsel married couples to stay married, stating a strong stance against divorce in accordance with the word of God, which has ensured that many of us enjoy peaceful and blessed marriages.
- Your personal payment of school fees for many of our needy children to help them acquire education both in Ghana and elsewhere.
- You’ve set up a care system for all the beggars in Accra, through which they’ve all been registered and receive monthly stipend and delicious food all these years.
- You’re currently leading us to complete a modern Specialist Hospital to offer prosthetic limbs to the disabled in our society for free.
- Your Humanitarian efforts have long been extended to those suffering from blindness. You printed all the WASSCE curriculum in special textbooks and gave them for free to the School for the Blind.
- Not to forget your efforts at making a braille machine available freely to all blind students in Ghana.
- Even our prisoners have not been left out. Through your great benevolence, not only have you visited them to preach to them the Gospel of Salvation, but have caused many prisons with very poor living conditions to be renovated both in Ghana and elsewhere, to help even prisoners to serve their terms in dignity.
BUT ABOVE ALL THESE, I HAVE SEEN AT CLOSE RANGE YOUR HUMILITY AND SERVANT LEADERSHIP!
I HAVE SEEN A MAN WHO GREATLY LOVES GOD AND HIS WORK! (eeh… going to church on Sunday early, and leaving sooooo late…… 3am; 5am; 7am and even later!)
A GENUINE SERVANT OF GOD! NOT A HYPOCRITE! This is what most of your Ministry fathers, peers, subordinates and ordinary church members know you to be!
THIS GENUINENESS, COUPLED WITH YOUR GREAT VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE ACHIEVEMENTS ARE WHAT HAS INFORMED NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL, CHRISTIAN, GOVERNMENT, EDUCATIONAL AND CORPORATE LEADERS TO SEEK YOUR COUNSEL, HELP AND INPUT IN THESE AREAS.
You’re not perfect, like all mortals, but you’ve tried, and trying to do your best for God’s Kingdom to come.
Bishop, may the lord Himself bless you and keep you for many years to enable you continue to win the lost in Ghana and around the world for His glory and the expansion of His Kingdom.
We love you dearly!
We appreciate you greatly!
You are a rare example of a good leader!
Happy, happy, happy birthday one more time Bishop Dag Heward-Mills!
May you cross 90 years with ease in Jesus’ name!
Bishop Emmanuel Louis Nterful Convener, UD-OLGC.
BISHOP EMMANUEL LOUIS NTERFUL – CONVENER, UD-OLGC
