News for Middle of September 2003

'CENTURY!’

KIST enrollment has, for the first time ever, reached the 100 mark! Praise be to God, who continues to send his servants here for training in God’s word. We have now enrolled 33 new students, having graduated only 28 in July.

Give thanks for many crops now planted in this area, and so far good rains, meaning that they are off to a good start.

Give thanks for my studies at Birmingham university, for which I have now paid for the next 12 months. My having a heavy load of teaching responsibilities at Yala and KIST this term has so far been limiting my study time, meaning that I constantly have a stream of work waiting for me at my desk. (Not that this is new it just seems more endless than ever!) I am in the process of planning for the writing of the third of my draft Chapters.

Pray for us in YTC as we continue to seek to make up a shortfall of one teacher for next term. I hope that we may be able to recruit a student from KIST. Numbers have been low in a lot of classes as we have opened, but are gradually picking up. We now have 6 weekly classes as against only 5 last term.

Teaching at Yala currently finds us tackling an extremely widespread and complex issue concerning widows that faces the church in Africa. This issue is certainly there in Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Sudan and I suspect almost every other country in central and southern Africa as well as Kenya. On the deaths of their husbands widows are thought to have something known as okola by the Luo here, that has different names but resembles in its properties in different parts of the Continent. (The Kaonde in Zambia that I lived amongst some years ago call it bu tuzhi). This is a state of uncleanness that that must be removed by sexual intercourse in order for a widow to re-integrate herself into society. Pray for us as we attempt to find an appropriate Christian understanding that can help widows to maintain sexual purity while freeing them from spiritual (and other) oppression

Jim