NEWS MID NOVEMBER 2015

Dear Friends,

13th to 23rd of November, God willing, a friend from Germany Frank Paul should be visiting me. I am very much looking forward to Frank’s visit. Frank served as a missionary in Argentina for 18 years. He is a great supporter of vulnerable mission in Germany and the Spanish-speaking world. For his book in English translation see here.

The new Egyptian doctor has been here at the Coptic hospital for a year or so. I hope I encourage him by taking an interest in his residential patients, by calling by and praying for them in the evenings once or twice weekly.

I continue to endeavour to make regular visits to a church plant by a friend. He planted this church about 2 years ago. It is a ‘very indigenous’ church, seeking to bring the words of Jesus deep into the African cultural context. (Update: the church plant has ground to a halt! I hope I can encourage him to re-continue. Ostensive reason: government clampdowns on non-registered churches and church premises that do not have title deeds.) Sunday morning he was selling cups of tea in a newly opened café.

Pray for 14th November, when I hope to have a gathering of 12 or so foreign missionaries and others at my home, to include people from Egypt, Canada, Germany, and the UK.

Give thanks for some door-to-door visiting I have recently been able to do with my home church pastor. Somehow we had lapsed and for a few years did very little visiting. The strange thing about the experience is that he seems to know everyone and everything in that village, compared to which my ‘local knowledge’ is abysmal!

Pray for N and O, an old couple struggling to survive across the valley from my home. Pray for A., a patient at Coptic hospital now for weeks. She was very badly burned, and is recovering all too slowly.

Pray for and give thanks for a book I am drafting. The provisional title is ‘The Godless Delusion; in the West that is killing Africa’. It is seeking to ‘revive’ British Christians by drawing on insights acquired in African context. In other words: it seeks to uncover some of the deceptions of so-called Western secularism.

For the first time in my life I think, I watched someone die. It was at 3.40am Sunday morning 1st November in a ward at Coptic hospital. This is a lady I have known for many years. She was chatting away, bothering and complaining, then the next second she was (humanly speaking) gone for-ever. (Jesus said ‘I am the resurrection . . .’ so not forever according to God’s word, our Hope!) It was quite amazing to see how easily life can leave, all that is left is a mere empty vessel.

See here for your free pdf download of a book, then search for ‘Harries’ to find my brief contribution to it. The book is called Agents of International Development and Shalom.

I covered a distance that is 7.8 miles AS THE CROW FLIES Thursday afternoon on a very heavy bike with one gear, including a net rise in altitude of 120m, in just one hour. Not bad eh?

Best wishes,

Jim

For information on my latest book see: here.