NEWS MID JANUARY 2013

Dear Friends,

Please pray as I am considering taking in another child. This is a 5 year old girl whose father is not known and whose mother passed away a few years ago. If we take her, that will bring me up to 6 girls and 7 boys at my home.

Thanks to Marilyn James, whose voluntary copy-editing of my book shortly to go to print, has received the ‘OK’ from the publisher.

I’ve just had another article published in Global Missiology. See Here.

For another excellent article by a colleague Dr. Stan Nussbaum. See Here.

Give thanks for the opportunities that arise for sharing God’s word with Coptic Christians here in Maseno. There is a constant flow of short-termers here from Egypt plus Egyptians who live in other parts of the world.

14th January to 4th February I am to be at the Mennonite Theological College of East Africa which is in Musoma, an hour or two’s drive over the border into Tanzania and alongside Lake Victoria . I have been busy preparing for the teaching there, to be in Swahili, to a group of students on the two year certificate programme for trainee pastors. I will be be teaching an introduction to the New Testament.

Also at the end of the month I am to begin a training course to enable me to engage in theological education over the internet using Swahili. It would be fantastic if this could take off; it will be one of the first internet courses available in an African language. See Here.

Sharing the Gospel with some ‘traditional people’ recently had me experience yet again something of the aggression that ancestral spirits use to defend their territory, i.e. customary practices. It was mind-boggling. The challenge to work with the Gospel rather than with Western money in such a context is enormous.

Related to the above, a colleague is working on promoting awareness of and a countering of witchcraft. See Here.

Yours,

Jim