NEWS END OF MARCH 2018

Dear Friends,

All Nations Christian College, often described as the largest missionary training college in the UK, is wanting to take vulnerable mission onto its curriculum. We are very privileged to be able to have a joint conference, co-sponsored by the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) and the college. Spaces are still available to attend this conference, to be held in Hertfordshire 31st May to 2nd June. Details here.

More information here.

For a plug for the conference, see conference in Germany in June.

A strange irony I have to live with every day . . . last night I was so pleased to see my children sitting at the table we have at home, working hard on their school homework. Now, of course, I have come here to Kenya, to encourage people to value themselves, and to get to know God. The irony is, that as an adoptive-parent, I am expected to fall in line with national policy, which is that all children learn in English, and what they are learning is a version of secular British thinking. The same secular thinking, being rooted in the UK, doesn’t even really make sense to the children, but they have to spend 12 years of their life learning it anyway, or be nobodies in the Kenyan job market.

Myself and some of my Swahili students

(the Tanzanian lady helps me in the teaching)

I cycled about 35 miles in total one day last week. The objective, was to follow up an application for birth-certificates for some of the orphan children in my care. My bicycle chain came off once on the whole trip, and it did so while I happened to be about 10 metres away from a bicycle-repair-man on the side of the road!

Pray for the opportunities ahead of us at Easter time. “We don’t know what to say on Good Friday,” a pastor friend told me recently. “We want people to be saved, but we want to know a risen Christ, not one who is on the cross.” My mind went to Matthew’s Gospel 16:21-28, where when Peter rebuked Jesus for saying he would be killed, Jesus called him Satana (Satan)!

Please for my anticipated travel, to start in a month’s time:

Tanzania: speaking at missionary retreat, 25th April to 7th May.

UK: visiting churches, and conference, 8th May to 14th June.

Germany: visiting churches and conference, 14th June to 28th June.

Please order your copy and read my latest novel, African Heartbeat, to understand Jim’s ministry better, before I visit the UK.

Jim