MID NOVEMBER 2018
Dear Friends,
Language Teaching
As I write, I am making preparations to travel across the lake, to spend next week with a group of German missionaries, who want to learn the Luo language. German people are running an orphanage, a number of schools and so on. I gather that I may well have 10+ students. I should be teaching using German. Pray that this will be a valuable time, and that some will be serious with language. (English is so widely used in Kenya, that many foreigners quickly give up on African languages.) I plan to make a number of ‘family’, pastoral, and ministry visits on my way to and from the above teaching, including attendance at a church conference in Kisumu next weekend. Prayers valued.
‘Extraordinary local Fruit!’
I started wandering the paths of Gem, Yala (my home area in Kenya) 25 years ago now. From 1994 to 2011, we had a bible teaching programme running, which had me visiting churches to promote our classes. Since 2011, I have been visiting churches and fellowships in the same area, simply to share God’s word with them. . . . All that in a sense came to fruition on 1st November. I attended a meeting. There were about 40 of us. All but two were men. About 30 churches around Yala were represented. Of those 30 churches, there was perhaps one church that I had never visited! Everything was conducted using the Luo language. The purpose of the meeting was to bring unity between the churches. That’s a notoriously difficult thing to achieve. The meeting was amicable, positive, peaceful, inspired, and productive. Similar gatherings are now to be held monthly, except in December. Many things are in prospect, including bible teaching, conferences, ways of help the youth of the area, too many of whom are drawn to alcohol … My 25 years of sweating as I travelled around Yala is contributing to some very positive fruit!
YouTube
In the interests of promoting theological education in East Africa, I am turning to YouTube! People tend to process heart issues orally rather than in written form. Hence I have recorded some of my recent preachings using my phone, and have posted them on the web. Not sure where this will lead to. Processing recordings is quite time consuming. This could develop into oral presentation of bible-courses. I have posted youtubes in the Swahili and Luo languages. To see what I have posted so far, see here.
‘Extraordinary global Fruit!’
Many of your will know that I have successfully published a lot of material related to mission, drawing on my long-term experience in Africa to date. Every day, from just one publishing source (academia.edu), about 20 different people download and (presumably) read one or more of my articles. Here are just a few of my ‘students’, those who have downloaded articles in the last week: Francisco Buque (Mozambique), Zoya G Proshina (Moscow), Jean Léo Léonard (France), GF Handel (Amsterdam), Sung-Hoon Kim (Oxford), Stefano Giudici (Nairobi), Caroline Hilhorst (Lusaka), Yong Seung Han (Jo-burg), Nicholas J. S. Gibson (John Templeton Foundation, USA), John Matlock (USA), Oumie Saine (Gambia), Adedayo Joseph (Nigeria), Chingatso Nka (Jakarta, Indonesia), Mechthild Roth (Kenya), Tom Steffen (USA). Amongst them are retired scholars, theological students, cultural researchers, missionaries, and so on.
Jim.
YouTube Channel