NEWS FOR END OF JUNE 2009

Dear Friends,

Severe financial shortage has forced us at Kima to close 3 weeks early. This has meant that from 19th to the end of June, we have had to take all the classes that should have been taken up to the end of July! Students have to sit in class from 8.00am to nearly 10pm, and lecturers are under similar pressure.

I was short-listed for the position of acting Principal of KIST, but am glad to say that an American volunteered at the last minute and has been given the position as from September 1st 2009. Pray for him in planning, adjustment, and raising the necessary finance.

Please pray for plans that I have begun to make, to visit Europe / USA in late 2010 so as to share classes / seminars at missionary / Christian development oriented institutions. If you have a contact that may be helpful to this end - then please let me know. I hope to locate a number of colleges, so that I can stay for a week at each.

Some conversations are striking. In a class in Siaya Theological Centre, we were discussing the Uganda Martyrs. Vast numbers of Christians from around the region recently went to commemorate the anniversary of their martyrdom. "Yet" said a student, with others nodding in approval, "no one is going to name their children after those Ugandans as they do after other heroic Christians". "Why" someone asked? "Because they are not White" was the response. Whatever may be the state of 'racism' in the West, here we definitely have a problem.

Jim