NEWS MID APRIL 2013

Good Friday

Dear Friends,

One pastor after another told me that they will not have a meeting (i.e. service) on Good Friday. The reasons they gave: people are just too busy in their fields and at market (Friday is a market day in my home area). To me, Good Friday was too important an event to miss. What to do about it? If I was to try and encourage my pastor colleagues to have a service, it would be as if I was troubling them. Instead, when I got no response, we just went ahead to arrange a service ourselves as a household (14 of us in all) at my home church. In fact, I took 4 children with me and went door to door in the early morning reminding people about Jesus death. Then we had our service. Then I took another 5 children and we passed through more homes doing the same in the afternoon. (The houses we visited were mostly of the old and the infirm). Maybe next year I find another church that has a Good Friday service and simply join them?

I am glad to be able to report the prospective visit of Ross Maynard, trainee pastor of Andover Baptist Church, to here in June! Ross should spend two weeks, which are to overlap with the two-week stay of the North family from York.

Here’s the latest of our Alliance for Vulnerable Mission Bulletins. It contains information about a journal edition that is almost completely given over to vulnerable mission!

I continue to be impressed by the servant-heart of the Coptic folks that I find myself mixing and serving with here in Kenya. Continue to give thanks for the privilege of having been given a room here on their compound. As well as good Christian fellowship I am thus enabled to take advantage of the good security they have, 24 hour electricity, and even a communal kitchen/dining area.

It often feels like an enormous privilege to be serving in so many churches and pastoral roles around my home in Yala. There are a number of local pastors now whom I am spending time with periodically, typically moving with them on foot or by bicycle visiting their parishioners. I attend numerous fellowships in a great variety of churches. Give thanks for all these opportunities of sharing the Gospel with folks.

For an update on my plans for later this year see here. Please put 14th to 16th November in your diary for the November UK vulnerable mission conference. Those who book early could get free accommodation with local church members in Norwich. Cost of the conference including meals but not B and B is £50 for the three days.

Jim