WHEELING — The Ohio Valley will be able to share in the joy of Bishop Darrell Cummings becoming Bishop of the Eastern Cape of South Africa this Friday, with an installation service scheduled at Wheeling University.

The service, to be held at 7:30 p.m. at Wheeling University’s Troy Theater, will be preceded by a special missions luncheon at the university at noon. A consecration ceremony took place in July in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Convention. Following Friday’s ceremony, a final event will take place in South Africa in October.

“My heart is exploding with joy for this opportunity,” Cummings, the pastor at Wheeling’s Bethlehem Apostolic Temple, said, “I’m begging for prayer that I handle it right.”

The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Board of Bishops elected Cummings Bishop of the Eastern Cape of South Africa during a meeting in March. He’ll continue to serve as pastor at Bethlehem Apostolic Temple, but will visit South Africa several times a year to serve as its spiritual and community leader. Cummings and his wife Latisha have visited the area every February and October for two weeks at a time for the last three years.

“We’re very honored to do it,” Cummings said. “In some ways, it’s a dream come true and not always expected. For a while I wasn’t sure that it would happen, but I’m very humbled and privileged that both God and our organization had mercy on us.”

Bishop Theodore L. Brooks Sr., the Presiding Bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, will preside over the ceremony. Prior to Friday night’s ceremony, the special missions luncheon will highlight the necessity of missionary work throughout the world. Several missionaries will speak, including BIshop Gwendolyn Weeks, who was Bishop of the Eastern Cape of South Africa before Cummings and suggested Cummings for the position.

Cummings said that in an organization more than a century old, he will be the first person from the Ohio Valley to serve as a diocesan Bishop for the PAW. It’s a monumental task to lead two congregations an ocean apart, but he said he’s ready to take on that responsibility.

“It’s a little scary, very humbling and it makes me feel as if, no matter what I’ve done in the past, I have to try harder,” Cummings said.