Let us begin our worship of God
this night with prayer. Almighty God, the creator and
sustainer of heaven and earth, we bow before thee once again
at the throne of grace, thanking thee for this privilege of being
able to gather together to worship Thee and to come unto the throne
of grace and to hear all that Thou hast done and are continuing
to do. We thank Thee, Lord, for the
gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank Thee that it is as living
water flowing into barren land. And we pray that even tonight,
that water, the Holy Spirit may be poured out upon us and in
our hearts that we may grow and bear fruit for thy honour and
for thy glory. Do bless us, then, we pray, as
we read from thy holy word, as we hear of thy work, and as we
sing thy praises, and as we come to thee in prayer. Do grant us,
Lord, that freedom and liberty to come to the throne of grace.
Do forgive us, we pray, of our many sins, and do make up where
we fail, as we ask it in the name of thy beloved Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our opening hymn this evening
is from Hymns to Worship, hymn 109 to the tune 575. The church
is one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. She
is his new creation by water and the word. From heaven he
came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own blood
he brought her and for her life he died. Hymn 109. nature, is Jesus Christ the Lord. Jesus, you creation, thy water
and the world, from heavenly pain and sorrow, ? For every nation, yet one holy
land ? ? God of love, of salvation ? ? One hope, one faith, one
love ? ? One holy land, she passes thro' ten thousand lands ? and to our Lord she presents
with every grace and truth. Thou who ever spoke for wonder,
then see her soul oppressed. And soon the light of freedom
shall be the moral star. In toil and tribulation and tumult
of the war, of peace forevermore. Till then the vision glorious,
her loving eyes are blest, and the great church ? And lift up the free in one ?
? And this day sweet communion ? ? With those whose rest is
won ? ? And happy months of glory ? ? Lord give us grace that we
may be one ? I'd like us to turn together
in God's holy word to the prophecy of Isaiah, reading chapter 44. Isaiah 44. Yet now hear, O Jacob,
my servant, and Israel, whom I have chosen. Thus saith the
Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will
help thee. Fear not, O Jacob, my servant,
for thou, Jezreel, whom I have chosen. For I will pour water
upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground. I
will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine
offspring. And they shall spring up as among
the grass, as willows by the water course. One shall say,
I am the Lord's, and another shall call himself by the name
of Jacob. and another shall subscribe with
his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel. Thus saith the Lord, the King
of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts. I am the first,
and I am the last, and beside me there is no God, and who,
as I shall call and shall declare it, and set in order before me,
since I appointed the ancient people. And the things that are
coming and shall come, let them show unto them. Fear ye not,
neither be afraid. Have I not told thee from that
time? Have I not declared it? Ye are
even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? Yea,
there is no God. I know not any. They that make
a graven image are all of them vanity, and their delectable
things shall not profit, and they are their own witnesses.
They see not, nor know, that they may be ashamed. who hath formed a god, or molten
a graven image, that is profitable for nothing. Behold, all his
fellows shall be ashamed, and the workmen they are of men.
Let them all be gathered together, let them stand up, yet they shall
fear, and they shall be ashamed together. The smith, with the
tongs, both worketh in the coals, and fashioneth it with hammers,
and worketh it with the strength of his arms. Yea, he is hungry,
and his strength faileth. He drinketh no water, and is
faint. The carpenter stretches out his
rule. He marketh it out with a line.
He fitteth it with planes. and he marketh it out with the
compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man, according
to the beauty of a man, that it may remain in the house. He heweth him down cedars, he
taketh the cypress and oak, which he strengtheneth for himself
among the trees of the forest. He planteth an ash, and the rain
doth nourish it, Then shall it be for a man to burn, for he
will take thereof, and warm himself. Yea, he kindleth it, and baketh
bread. Yea, he maketh a god, and worshipeth
it. He maketh it a graven image,
and falleth down thereto. He burneth part thereof in the
fire, And part thereof he eateth flesh, he roasteth roast, and
is satisfied. Yea, he warmeth himself, and
saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire. And the residue
thereof he maketh a God, even his graven image. He falleth
down unto it, and worshipeth it, and prayeth unto it, and
says, Deliver me, for thou art my God. They have not known nor
understood, for he has shut their eyes that they cannot see, and
their hearts that they cannot understand. Yea, none considereth
it in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to
say, I have burnt part of it in the fire. Yea, also I have
baked bread upon the coals thereof. I have roasted flesh and eaten
it. and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall
I fall down to the stalk of a tree? He feedeth on ashes, and a deceived
heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul,
nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand? Remember these, O Jacob and Israel,
for thou art my servant, I have formed thee. Thou art my servant,
O Israel. Thou shalt not be forgotten of
me. I have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and
as a cloud thy sins return unto me. for I have redeemed thee. Sing, O ye heavens, for the Lord
hath done it. Shout, ye lower parts of the
earth. Break forth into singing, ye
mountains, O forests and every tree therein, for the Lord hath
redeemed Jacob and glorified himself in Israel. Thus saith
the Lord, thy Redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb,
I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth
the heavens alone, that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself, that
frustrateth to the tokens of the liars, that maketh diviners
mad, that turneth wise men backward, that maketh their knowledge foolish,
that confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel
of his messengers, That saith to Jerusalem, thou shalt be inhabited,
and to the cities of Judah ye shall be built, and I will raise
up the decayed places thereof. That saith to the deep, be dry,
and I will blow upon thy rivers. That saith of Cyrus, he is my
shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem,
thou shalt be built and to the temple thy foundation that shall
be laid. May the Lord add his blessing
to the reading of his word. Reading Isaiah 44, really what
brought me to it was verse 3. I will pour out waters upon him
that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground. I will pour my
spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine offspring. As we will
look, God willing, at the pictures of the mission, naturally speaking
it was a dry ground physically. was not much there attractive. It was a barren place, especially
in the dry season, but also spiritually it was a spiritually dead place. There were literally those involved
in witchcraft and making of idols, making of other gods and it was
a physically barren place and a spiritually barren place but
the Lord has promised that he will pour out his spirit upon
the dry ground and the Lord Jesus Christ promised that he is the
living water and that he gave his Holy Spirit to his people,
and out of their belly shall flow rivers of living water.
And we know that the Gospel, wherever it goes, is as living
water flowing into a barren land. It can flow into people's barren
hearts. He can flow into people's barren
hearts and he can change the barren heart and make it a place
of beauty, make it a place where it can flourish and bear fruit
to the honour and glory of God and what you would see as many
of you know is that the Lord has taken us on a long journey
and he has done great things and we see in that reading that
it is the Lord, the Lord builds up, the Lord pulls down, the
Lord stops and the Lord allows to go and And so we are very
privileged as a church to be part of what the Lord has done
and is continuing to do in Kenya, in Karanzi, at the mission there.
So I'll begin. Do the lights, John. So many of you are fully aware
of where Kenya is. There on the east coast of Africa. There's
Kenya itself with the mission right down here in the corner,
right on the border of Tanzania. We can see the mountains from
the mission, the Tanzanian mountains, and within a 45-minute drive
we can get to the border itself. It is a very remote and rural
area. It's almost like the Kenyan government
have abandoned this side of Kenya. If you go back, if you go up
from the mission here, it's all wilderness. And then you come
to safari parks. And so there's no other cities
for miles and miles and miles. And so the people are rural people. They still plough with their
oxen. The wealthy ones will use a tractor.
These boys are our neighbours, just off or bringing water back
from the dam. And so it's a hard life from
the day that they are born they begin to begin to work. Some
will go to school, some won't. This is our neighbor Meshaka.
I met him at lunchtime and he is holding a bird, you can't
really see it, but he's holding a bird which he had shot with his catapult
and he said he needed three others would be enough for for lunch. So it's a hard manual way of
life. They're very reliant on the weather.
If it rains, if they get a good season, then obviously it benefits
them massively. But if they plant too much rain,
crops die if there's no rain the crops fail and so it's very
the crops fail and so it's very they're very dependent upon upon
the weather which make different things that they would do to
try and encourage the rain to come even climb to the top of
one of the mountains nearby in a hard drought and they would
sacrifice animals. When we first got to the mission
There was nothing there. You may recognise this man. It's not David Livingstone. This is David Cottington. And so David has been with us
from the very beginning, been very supportive with the work
of the mission and visited several times. And so this was the first
project that we did was a drilled well. It was 120 meters, we drilled
down, but the water was salty. We have been able to use it,
it hasn't been wasted. We used it, especially when there
was no fresh water for washing our bodies, washing up, and things
like that. And even in the drought season,
the locals will come and use this water here. We've got a
pump on top of it at the moment. Another one of the first things
we did was this mud hut. This is my dad. He helped build
some of it. And it's where I used to stay.
And over time, then we built, began to build the mission compound. And over about seven years, we
just continued adding to the mission. That's Sam and Hannah's
house. We began to put solar on. So
you can see the solar panels. So the mission is completely
off grid. Rainwater harvester systems and solar panels. And so you can see the area.
So see when it has been raining, it's very green, but it's very
flat. And that's the mountain that
they will climb up if there's a really hard drought, the elders
of the villages will go up there and slaughter an animal. So the last building we built
was the chapel. here, but just before we left.
I found this picture on Apple Maps. As you can see, this must
have been maybe seven years ago. The mission there didn't have
a roof on. And there's the first mud hut, then there's the water
tower here. And so the land is approximately
around here. But then this is on Google Maps.
This is the mission now. So down the bottom there is the
20,000 litre water tank. This is the playground that Sam
built. This was our house, Sam and Hannah's
house. The mission compound with a 100,000
litre water tank there. The chapel, the workers hut,
the water tower and the main gates there. So it's really grown
over 10 years since we first went. So everything has grown. This
was the first Sunday school. When we first moved to the mission
compound after about two years, two and a half years, the children
used to come and just do colouring in on a Sunday afternoon. You
can see this is Florence, John, and so you can see how long ago
it was. So that, if you hold that picture
in your mind, as I say, probably eight years ago to what it is today. So Sam has,
Sam and Hannah have a Sunday school of a steady group of people
of 200 that can grow to 350 to 400 children. This was a Bible study which
I used to hold every Thursday. And then we had a church service
on the Lord's Day. And now that's the inside of
the chapel. So you can see that the Lord
has done this and he has built and provided everything that
we have needed to enable this mission to get off the ground
and to be where it is even today. The children are picked up on
the Lord's Day. They go off and are collected
in the minibuses. They go to different villages
and bring them. They have porridge in the morning,
or they call it uji, which looks a bit like wallpaper paste. and it's just got loads of sugar
in it but they love it. This is the youth class and adult
class. So the youth have increased and the adults think they have
about in total together about 120 adults and youth. Sunday school is then split up.
Some of the younger ones do colouring and a bit of a lesson. Some of
the older ones do crosswords and questions. They're also going
through a catechism. So like, what is God? and what
is the scripture, and so they're learning and to recite them.
Their memories are incredible. I think because in our culture
we rely so heavily on other things to help us remember, their brains
are very good at remembering. This is Emily. who is hoping to go there with
her husband. They're just there at the moment.
This is a picture that Sam sent the other day. This is them taking
the Sunday school. So obviously, I was there a few
weeks ago. So I thought I'd make this one
a bit more personal than other talks. So I flew out and was
greeted by Sam and his two children, Josiah and Nathan. And a lot
has changed in Kenya itself. The Chinese have been building
railways and they've been building roads. So from How we used to
get to the airport, we had to drive through Mombasa and go
over across a ferry. That could take five hours. And
so we had to, if we were flying to England, we used to have to
travel into Mombasa the day before, stay overnight to make sure that
we got to the airport on time. But now they've built this new
bypass. So we can get to the mission
from the airport in about two hours. So it's really helped
things. So I went there with a man called
Oliver Winkle. He is the pastor of Bedford Chapel. Those of you who know Graeme
Tewter from the TBS, Graeme Tewter is a member of his chapel. So
here he is having dinner. The locals from the mission,
the cooks from the mission, asked him to try some of the local
food. So this is ugali, which is maize flour, and what they
call small fish. It's really like bits of rubber
that taste of fish. It's not very nice but they love
it. This is Sam and Josiah with Oliver
on the back of the motorbike. and this is Sam and Hannah and
there in the background is Kezia. So normally in the evening as
the temperature cooled to about half five we would go and sit
outside in the cool and have a tea, catch up with each other
and so it's a nice evening thing to do. This is Hannah coming
back from the shops. She still goes on Mondays to
get the supplies for the week. Elsie and Hannah used to go together,
but now Hannah goes on her own, or someone else takes the children.
It's about an hour and 15 minutes drive. The roads now are good.
A tarmac from the mission all the way to Ucunda, so that has
helped out. So every time people go, there
is always gifts that are sent to us. So the children have great
fun. It's like Christmas whenever
anyone turns up unloading all the different things. Mums and
aunties and uncles send presents for birthdays and so it's a nice
time to see what's in the suitcases. This is Hannah and this is Kezia. Lovely little girl. Growing up
very fast. Loves being outside. Always trying to get to the door.
And those of you who like dogs, this is Max. Max is a South African
Mastiff. He's enormous. He drools. And he can be quite annoying,
but he's intimidating. He's got a very deep bark. And
so for security purposes, that's why they have him. Josiah with
some of his friends or their friends, some of the Sunday school
children, some of the neighbors who live at the mission. Josiah's
Swahili is coming well. He greeted me when I got there
in Swahili. He says, oh, do you have Swahili?
He says, oh, have you remembered Swahili? And I said, oh, yeah,
a little bit. And so he's really becoming quite
confident in the language. When I arrived these were the
workers that worked permanently at the mission. Mangali, Mangongo. Mze Masudi and Mzungu. So these four are there every
single day doing maintenance work, grass cutting. Mzungu is
now able to do electrical work. So he, any electrical problems,
solar problems, he deals with all that. Car problems, he deals
with all of those things and they're making benches for the
Sunday school. So this man, Muzammil Soudi,
has been with us from the beginning, 10 years. He was there when I
was there, and he's never been to school. He didn't even know
that the earth was round. And so it's quite interesting
meeting somebody that's never, ever been to school. He can't
read, can't write, and now he can tell the time. So before
if you speak to a local person from Kiranzi and you ask them,
what is the time? They don't look at their wrist. They look
at the sun. They say, oh, it's about 6 o'clock,
about 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock. But the sun is how they tell
the time. And so he has learnt now to tell
the time by his watch or by someone else's watch. So one of the reasons that I
went there was to begin setting up the concreting of the road. So the mission is here and then
we have a road, what we call the mission road, it's about
a kilometre long. Now when we were there we dug
it all out and laid rocks and covered it with smaller stone. But in the rainy season, some
of it is sloped, so the stones get taken away. So we decided
to concrete this part here. This is a seasonal river that
comes from the dam up there. So we concreted from that river
crossing up to these houses here. It's about 120 meters long. So we're thankful that there
was money had been given, sufficient money in the mission to be able
to do that. And so when I arrived, the locals
knew that there was work coming, so they began to gather every
morning. So when we were there, we created
a system where we which we felt was fair to get people to have
work. There was the core workers but
then there were the manual workers that would come day by day and
sometimes you could have 100 people at the gate in the morning.
So we would take all of their names down, we would number them
and then we'd put all of the numbers into a hat and shake
them about and then every person would pull out a number. And
so team 1 to 15 would work, then from 16 to 30, and so on. They would have their days in
which they would come. And so that works really well. There's
no arguing. There's no accusations of favoritism, which is the news
that we got back was that We didn't favoritize Christians
over Muslims. With the general workers we were
able to work in a way that allowed each person to have something
to take home for their families. You can see here is where the
rain digs away at the at the road. And so we found the edges
of where the roads were, where the road was, and then got it
all leveled out. Everything again is done manually. Everyone is paid by the day. So I would measure a section
of road and say, you finish this, I'll give you such amount of
money, normally about seven pounds, something like that. Everyone
is very pleased always with work. So there they're digging the
entrance from the main road coming off into the mission. We used to have our own lorry
but when we left we sold it as we thought it wouldn't be used
so much anymore. So we used the local lorries to bring in sand
and rocks. we were here this just as we
were leaving really 42 years before they began doing this
road that is it used to be a dirt track in the rainy season you'd
get stuck the be the rain would wash it wash out sections of
it but now it's been tarmac And it's beginning to fall apart
already two years or three years. It's just corruption. Kenya is
completely corrupt. So someone, a contractor may
be given a sufficient money to build a good road, but then they
just buy substandard products or they cut corners. So nothing
lasts. So this road was laid on soil,
compacted soil mixed with cement. was then had these small stones
put on it and then tar rolled in so there's no there's no sub
base to it whatsoever so any heavy vehicles parts of the road
have dented and got potholes in already so how long it will
last I don't know That's the problem that you're dealing with
all the time. Corruption. There's corruption in the school,
corruption in the hospitals, corruption in the customs officers,
the government, in the police. It's very difficult. In our culture,
we trust everybody. We don't like liars and we don't
hear really of anybody who's corrupt. But here there's open
corruption and we concrete it. The ladies got involved as well,
collecting the water. They walked to the dam and they
were paid by the day. That's 20 litres, 20 kg, on their
head. And even the younger ones got
involved. This is Gracie, Daisy's friend. And this is one of the
little ones, that's a 10 litre, who's at the dam. The stones
that were used for the concrete are broken normally by ladies.
And these little girls, they were guarding their mother's
pile. But there's children everywhere.
It's a very friendly and family-orientated culture. Wherever you go, children
come and watch. The ladies have an arrest. It
was extremely hot, about 35 degrees. There's Oliver. So one benefit
you see from giving people work and then paying them at the end
of the day is that they can then buy something different from
the normal food that they would normally have. So here, the man
on the motorbike has come from the ocean and he's brought fish. And so the boy there has got
some fish. You might be able to see it there.
You see the fish in the bottom of the basket. So they come from
there and then the locals buy it. This was the last bit that I
did. That was the river crossing. Finished quite late that day.
And then Sam and the workers have continued now to concrete
all the way up to the man's house. Remember Mushaka that I showed
you at the beginning? All the way up to his house. So hopefully
when the rains do come, and it shouldn't be a problem. So we have the work at the mission.
The mission village is called Kidanzi. One of the men who has
been converted and called into the ministry is Michael, this
man here. And this man is called Raphael.
Now Michael had a burden for a village called Mbita. Mbita
is probably two hours drive further west inland and into a very remote
and dry and difficult place but he felt that the Lord was calling
him there. And so over time he began doing evangelism. He gathered
a group of people together and they formed a fellowship and
they began meeting under a tree week by week and then over time
the mission provided them with some land and built a church.
It's not unusual to meet camels on the way. So these camels belong
to Somalians. They have traveled the the width
of Kenya from Somalia on foot because of drought. And they've
come to the other side of Kenya. And so they have hundreds of
camels. You can pass them, just keep passing and then feed off
these bushes. It's a very remote place. This
is the chapel. This is inside. So I held a a
service there on a Tuesday, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday,
and I spoke to them on prayer. And they were really struggling
at that time because of water. The dams dry up. So another problem
you may have heard that the elephants come from the safari parks, they
drink the water from the dams, which leaves the locals with
nothing. And so then the locals have to buy water from other
places. So life is very difficult. And so we picked up these women
and we were taking them back to the mission for the conference
which was to be had. So we held a service. I spoke
to them on prayer and regarding that the Lord knows the things
that we have need of and if we have a need and the Lord will
supply that. And so I obviously used it regarding
the rain and that they can call unto the Lord in their trouble,
in their distress and the Lord can hear and he's able to provide. This is just on the way back
a typical market scene. Always bright colours and always
very interesting. There's a lot going on. So Michael
messaged me on Sunday. He says I've gone to Mbita and
I can't get home because of rain. I hope this will work. They're helping each other across
the river. They're not speaking Swedish,
they're speaking their own language, the Druma language. It's not uncommon in the rainy
season to hear of people getting swept away, especially if you
see that's how they cross the rivers. So life is very different from
here. You don't, especially in the
rainy season, you never know what is going to happen on your journey.
There was a conference when I was there, which was on the person
and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is a a very needed
subject because Christ is very misunderstood. Their Christ is
someone who helps them with physical illness and poverty. And obviously many of you know
that these health and wealth preachers then prey on these
third world countries, even in India and all over Africa. pilfering off the money from
these already poor people and then getting extremely wealthy
themselves. And so it's very needed to show people who Jesus
really is. And so this is Oliver. Oliver
spoke in the afternoon to a congregation of probably about 400 people. It was nice to see the chapel
full. When Sam and I were discussing
how big we should do it, we worked out that the other building that
we were using held at a squeeze about 200 people. So we thought,
well, maybe we should do it like double so we can have room for
four to five hundred so it's quite amazing that after two
years that that chapel is actually being used through its capacity. So these are two other men that
were speaking at the mission One man here is known by Stephen
Hyde, Michael Moorer. He studied with the Met Tab. He knew Oliver as well. And he
preaches in Nairobi. Some of you may know a man called
Keith Underhill. He started a church called Trinity Baptist in Nairobi.
And so he is one of the students. He worked with Keith. And the
other man is Barnabas. Barnabas was a charismatic Pentecostal. He would call himself an extreme
charismatic. speaking in tongues, falling
on the floor, being taken over by the Holy Spirit, having a
real warped understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit. But by the grace of God, him
and his brother have been brought out of that movement and are
now scriptural, we say reformed. And he also comes and works with
Sam. He is in Mombasa. which is not
far from where he's called Barnabas. There is a video on YouTube actually
of his testimony. So while the morning conference
was going on, there was some legal work that I had to do.
And so I went to visit my old landlord. So in Kenya, a foreigner cannot buy land by
themselves they have to buy it together with a local so one
of the other reasons that I had to go there was to sort out to
sort out this legal stuff that we've got to do for the mission
as the mission that moves into the next stage so this is where
we used to live we lived here for about two and a half years
and And we lived there with this old man, Samuel Mburu, and his
wife, who the children would call grandmother. They were a
lovely couple, and I was really pleased to see them again. And
this is a lady who used to help Elsie after she had had Florence.
She used to help Elsie with cooking and washing. Her name is Mama
Joy. It was nice to see them. On the Lord's Day, I was involved in transport,
collecting the children with Mangali. So the men who work
full-time at the mission, those four men, the three of them,
the younger ones, all help with collecting and organizing of
children. And they do that voluntarily. They haven't been asked to do
it. They don't get any extra money for doing it. They just
like going out, collecting the children, being the conductor
of the minibus. And so this is Mangali who came
out with out with me. It can take between two hours
for two vans, so two hours for one, two hours for another going
to collect children, and then two hours taking them all home. So it's quite a logistical, tiring
work. So when Sam has visitors, Henry
at the moment was doing it the other day, so it's quite a work
for Sam as he has to do the vehicle and then preach in the They do
the Bible study for the adults and the youth and then to take
the service. It's quite a long day for him,
sometimes not stopping until four o'clock. So starting at
seven o'clock in the morning, going out in the vans, collecting
the children, Bible study, preaching, organizing everything, then going
out again and then not finishing without any lunch till about
four o'clock. It's quite a work. All the children
have their names taken in the register. Some of them are sponsored
for school. The mission pays for that. And it's always nice seeing the
children coming. These are some of the children's
friends. Always very bright colours, very
happy faces coming to Sunday school. These are some of the
boys. They get a cup of porridge in
the morning and then they get a cup of tea afterwards and some
biscuits. As I said, it's nice seeing the
chapel so full. There's another video here. Safe in the arms of Jesus in
Swahili. Oh, I love you and me. I think you will know that one.
So hymns is something that they didn't really know. They would
sing culturally, they would sing choruses. You hear them in the
evenings. traditional songs that they sing
and there are Christian choruses that they sing. But they didn't
really because probably of the ability to read is quite low.
So hymns are something that is quite new. So Sam or when we
were there on Saturdays, we would have singing practice and then
we would sing those hymns on the Sunday. And so it's really
lovely to hear them all singing. So in the Sunday afternoon, I
went to see one of our friends, Mama Mary. I think many of you
would have recognized her name. So all of these children were
friends with our children. They were just next door neighbors. So they would come every day
and they would be with us. So it was nice to go and sit
with them. Food aid, the mission still does
food aid, especially in drought seasons. I think it's about 600
kg per week that they're giving out at the moment, maize. And
so Michael takes that to those who are unable to come to the
mission in these sacks. And then they jug it out, I think
about four to six kg per person, per week or per family. and then
some who are able that come to the mission and to collect theirs. The medical work is ongoing with
Henry at the moment there. I'm not quite sure really if
there's been an influx in that, but he is a doctor and so he
will definitely be able to help out with that. So the boy, his
oxygen, I should imagine something like asthma he's being treated
for. And this is an abscess. So because
of the temperature, the humidity, the dirt, any small cut is able
to go from a boil to an abscess. So Sam is able to drain, but
anything big, broken bones, he will bandage and send to the
hospital. Obviously, you see the way in
which the people live, they have just enough money for for food. So if you get an injury and you've
got to go to the hospital, then you've got to go begging from
other people to help you because you've got to pay when you get
to the hospital. If you haven't got any money, you can't be seen. If
you broke your arm, you go to the hospital, you don't have
any money, then you'll just wait there until one of your friends
sends you some money or comes to assist you. And so things
get left and when so obviously some illnesses cancers get left
They just get worse and worse and worse and you see some hideous
things Things that have just been left that could have been
treated cancers that grow you big Growths on people and it's
a very distressing at times And another hard thing that you have
to or Sam has to deal with is who do you treat and If you've
got someone with cancer, you could pump into that person maybe
5,000 pounds and then they die. Where in England, you don't even
consider the cost. It's just free, you just go there.
And so you have to make these horrible decisions. Do we treat
this person and just prolong their life for a little while
and it's gonna cost you your 5,000 pounds? Or do you just
say, look, I'm really sorry, I can't help you. The decisions
like that, we don't have to make. But there, you have to make choices
like that on a, it can be like a daily basis. We help this one,
we don't help this one. If we don't help that one, they're
going to die. But there's nothing we can do about it. And they're
hard, emotional decisions to make. The Bible, which is the Holy
Bible, the word translation, it is a, a fairly good translation but
there are some errors in it and so the TBS are working on a translation
which amazingly Sam has been able to help with. He has excelled,
I think I've told you many times, he's excelled at language. And
this is a picture he sent me today of a meeting that he had
yesterday in Nairobi with the scholars, the translators of
this new version And so it's really amazing that the mission
is being used by the Lord in such a way to bring an accurate
translation of the Bible in the Swahili language. We're really
thankful for that. These books All of Mr. Ramsbottom's books have now been
translated into Swahili. This one is Sinners in the Hand
of an Angry God, the sermon preached by Jonathan Edwards. This was
translated by Sam and that is being distributed freely. And this book by Karin McKenzie
has also now been finished and is waiting to be published, is
waiting for the details from the publishers in Nairobi to
get all of that sorted. So it's really encouraging now
that we have translators able to translate faithfully and that
Christian literature, faithful Christian literature has been
able to be pushed out into these communities and with the Sunday
school and the assisting in school fees for the children hopefully
that will enable them to to read and be able to read the Word
of God for themselves be able to read good books for themselves
and hopefully we will see a generation grow up to know the Lord. This
is Henry and Millie their little son Albie is not out in but and
their daughter there God willing They are hoping to go to help
Sam and Hannah in the work sometime next year. We've yet to get a
date, but there are obviously some things. Henry has to pass
his doctorate for a GP, and we hope and pray that the Lord in
his time will enable them to go. Thank you very much for your
continued support. I know we as a chapel, have the
box at the back and there's a continued supply of money that comes from
this place of worship and so we're really thankful for you
all and at the prayer meetings often the work is remembered
and even the other week when we prayed regarding rain that
night there was a rainstorm which added half a foot into the rainwater
tank so we can still be part of all that the Lord is doing
there. So thank you all very much. Do
the lights then, John. If anyone has any questions they
want to ask us at this time? What's the situation with the
rain at the moment? The rain, well, as I said, in
Mbita it rained, but at the mission it didn't rain. So the tanks
are Getting lower. I think so when he messaged you
one time there was one and a half foot left in each tank which
is probably 30 40,000 liters then when it rained added another
half a foot so Another 500,000 liters 500 liters or something
like that, so it's not out so but they do need rain desperately
especially for the locals and their crops and As we sing.