Kenya Missions Update

August 1, 2005

Greetings in the Name of our Lord, Jesus the Christ!

It is wonderful to you on our prayer team! When you pray for rain, it rains. Night and Day! The streams are full and mud everywhere! Would I be fickle if I now asked you to pray for a bit of sunshine as well!

Yesterday after the worship service at church, I was giving some trees to the church that we have grown from seed. I was encouraging them to not only plant in their own yards, but to use all the extra for evangelism. That this would be a good way to "break the ice" so to speak, to tell them that we care for them as Christians and there is a lot said in the Bible about trees that they could use to just "put in a good word for God". Well, while I was telling a story about trees, it rained so hard that I had to sit down and wait for rain to slow down. See, the roof is tin and makes a lot of noise when it rains heavily. I had Ruth on my lap, who was plugging her ears with her fingers. She yelled that she was cold, she had one coat on already, so I told her to go and ask her mother for the other coat. When she came back, she said that mommy has given it to another child who was cold, so we hugged tighter to keep warm. **This is our cold time, the other morning it was 62 degrees in the house.

I do need your prayers for other things.

1. Pray for Friday’s meeting
   • I will get together with other leaders to plan for the meeting on the 11th and also for the elder/leaders meeting on the 12-14th. We will be meeting at the Huruma church where those who come will not be sleeping on mattresses but rather mats put on the floor. And, I am sure the few who bring blankets will share them and body heat with those who didn’t in the night.
   • There is a brother who is to come and repent to several of us on this day as well. He has caused some problems that resulted in several of the leaders to go to the chief’s office two times. This caused several thousand shillings and a lot of travelling for several leaders. Pray John will humble himself and truly repent from his heart.
2. Also pray for Dr. David Lawver who will arrive in Kenya and be traveling to Eldoret on Friday. He will be our guest that night and we will see that he gets to the Ugandan border on Saturday. He will stay at our house again on the 16th and flies out of Kenya on the 18th.
3. Pray for Thomas Kurgat who is doing research for his Ph.D. thesis in Uganda at this time. (see below comments).
4. Pray for Grace and the girls as John Kibusia and I will travel via public transport to Mbale, Uganda, from Monday the 8th until Thursday the 11th. We will attend a meeting to be held there on the 9th and 10th concerning the need for agriculture to be added to the curriculum of the Theological school.

I was told that I did not explain MTI very well in the last prayer letter. So let me try to explain a bit better here. MTI stands for Messiah Theological Institute. The Mbale Church of Christ team purchased an unfinished secondary school a couple of years ago. Which the Lord blessed them to finish and have bed space for 100 people. They now hold classes in that school for Theological training. Christians come from, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan and Tanzania. They also host several extension schools in all four of these countries where they go out to teach the brethren. This is not just American missionaries, also Kenyans and Ugandans are involved in this mission activity. They have the dream of making this into a Theological University. Just a note, in Uganda to the best of my knowledge there are just two universities. One of those is an Islamic university located just outside of Mbale. The other is the government run university.

Thomas Kurgat is a Kenya who is at Texas Tech University working on his Ph.D in Agriculture. Dr. David Lawver is a brother in Christ and his major professor. They are doing research on creating as part of this university in Mbale an agriculture and technology college. This will be the thesis work for Thomas Kurgat. Since the majority of our Christians are involved in agriculture, this seems very important for the church! There is a lot to be done over the next few years. The curriculum has to be developed and a teaching staff recruited and money raised for their employment. Land and other equipment needs to be purchased for a demonstration plot. Books and a library need to be donated and catalogued. We would ask your prayers for all of these plans, that they would be the Lord’s plan to help His people to provide for themselves and to help the church to have money for evangelism.

Pray also for the Gafner’s role in this project, now and in the future.

In Service to Christ,

Keith