NEWS END OF MARCH 2010

Dear Friends,

As I write, we are about to present end of term exams to KIST students, and have just one week of classes left to teach in Yala and Siaya. Our last long-term missionary to KIST is due to leave today, so that I am left with a 'new generation' now running KIST. This is effectively the third set of missionaries from the USA on the ground since I first came here in 1993.

Simple things can be profoundly encouraging. The most distant class that I teach, on Tuesday mornings at 10.00am, about 3 hours cycling from home, seemed ready to collapse. Our one keen student seemed to be faltering. "No I am not going to give up" he told me yesterday. This is despite the fact that apparently many of his (Christian) colleagues have been telling him that he is wasting his time learning the Scriptures. I believe him - he isn't going to give up. (I have explained before, that it is hard for many people to accept the kind of teaching we give without their getting paid for it, because it doesn't tell people either how to make money or how to get healed, ie drive away demons.)

Pray for my time with a Congolese church leader studying in Nairobi who is to spend this weekend at my home discussing issues concerning vulnerable mission and how they could be applied in his ministry contexts back in Congo. The week after Easter I am planning to set-out on a trip to Tanzania via Nairobi, to include time in Dar es Salaam with a colleague who joined a VM conference last year who works in the city with Scripture Union. Before going to Dar es Salaam I am planning to spend 6 days in rural Mbulu - a few hours from Arusha.

Give thanks for ongoing interactions with the wider world of missions' thinking. Pray for direction in following up recent contact with New York University regarding the Millennium Development Project. Give thanks for incredibly good reviews I received for an article entitled "The Great Delusion: Post-Colonial Language Policy in Africa for Mission and Development Reviewed". The reviews tell me that in terms of content, I am absolutely on target. The promotion of English in Africa as a way to 'development' really is, in some ways, leading Africa down a dead-end road. The article needs to be 'dressed up better'.

Jim