Dear friends,

We send you greetings in the Name of our Saviour.

Many thanks for your prayers for the teaching at the Irish Baptist College. The semester is over and our next work there is giving lectures on 8-10th May for some students in the master’s programme. Dr David Sills, from the US, will also be teaching on those days. We are to work on essay topics with the students and guide their research in the summer so pray that goes well.

God willing, I will be preaching at Carndaisy Baptist Church twice and taking five mid-week meetings here and there during May. We enjoy these opportunities for ministry from the Word of God. On 22nd April we were at Tobermore Baptist Church speaking on missions at both services.
Debbie is still involved with the work of ACTS (Africa Christian Textbooks Service) and attended an ACTS meeting in Lisburn recently. She is also still working with Tim Jacobson who is the theological education consultant for SIM International. This may lead to some short trips to Africa in connection with theological education in coming years.

Last year we had planned to fly to Kagoro and teach some courses in the Summer Programme there this year but with Debbie’s father’s ill health and passing away we didn’t book a trip. We are hoping we can teach in the Summer Programme in 2019. Thanks again for praying for Debbie’s Mum, Doreen, and the Lyons family circle in this time of grief.

Debbie has one more meeting with her Bible study group in May and then they will take a break for the summer.

Thanks for praying for us (2 Thess 3:1).

In Christ,

David and Debbie

Prayer update for May 2017

Dear Friends,

Debbie and I send you greetings in the Name of our Lord.

May is going to be a month with several farewells in it. The Seminary is planning something on Tuesday 2nd, SIM wants us in Jos on the evening of Friday 5th and Fada Gospel Church, here at Kagoro, is planning an event in the afternoon of Sunday 14th. We had to supply short CVs for the last of these. Pray that in all these meetings our Lord will be honoured. SIM asked us to send some photos and pick some music for the Friday event. We suggested Keith and Kristyn Getty’s ‘My worth is not in what I own.’

Debbie has a couple Africa Christian Textbook Service (ACTS) meetings on 8th and 9th May. After these meetings, Debbie will be handing over her work as secretary of the ACTS Board to another person.

The Jan-May semester is almost over and we would like to complete all our marking before we leave. Please pray this will be possible. We plan to spend the last week in May at the SIM-run conference centre at Miango to finish off the marking. We leave for Abuja on 29th and fly to the UK on 30th (DV).

We have already packed a few suitcases and Paul Todd has kindly offered to take two back to the UK for us. Another family in Jos has offered to take a case or two to Wetheringsett in England in June. We thank the Lord for these people who are willing to help in this way. Our prayers are with Paul and Tricia since Tricia’s Mum passed away recently.

Though we will miss being at Kagoro, SIM has a family and a single man scheduled to come here. The family are Kevin, Alexis and their son Liam Stokes from the US and the single man is Alan Moore from Canada. We have sold and donated some of our things to SIM for Short-Term missionary use and this means Alan will be able to move in here and get set up quickly. Alan will work in the seminary’s library, Kevin will be teaching at the Seminary and Alexis will be teaching at the ECWA College of Health Technology here at Kagoro. Pray for them as they settle into ministries here.

Several of our present and former students have been struggling with chronic illnesses so we are sponsoring a couple of medical trips to Jos for them to get properly checked out. Pray the doctors will be able to diagnose what is wrong in each case and prescribe the right treatment.

Thank you for your prayers and we look forward to seeing many of your later in the year (1 Thess 5:17).

In Christ,

David and Debbie Colvin

Prayer Letter for January 2017

Dear friends,

We send you greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

David here. Many thanks for your prayers.

East Africa trip

Many thanks for praying for our trip to Ethiopia and Kenya in December. The SIMGROUP meeting in Addis Ababa went well and I have been asked to chair a sub-committee to recommend changes to the SIMGORUP constitution. Pray this goes well. Our committee has to complete its proposals by August this year in advance of the next board meeting in October.

While in Addis we visited Niall McCune and saw the SIM-run school where he works. He seems very much at home in Addis and is learning Amharic – the local language. We were surprised at how cold it was in Addis Ababa compared to Kagoro. The altitude makes quite a difference.

We also visited Kevin and Joyce Richardson in Nairobi and it was great to catch up with them and what they have been doing in Kenya. While there, we went to Amboseli game park and that was well worth the visit. It is hard to beat a game park with such a wide variety of wildlife and see Kilimanjaro nearby. I put some photos on Facebook if anyone wants to check them out.

January to May 2017 semester

The new semester has started. This time we have two courses each to teach and quite a number of theses to supervise. As the acting Graduate Dean I have some extra meetings to attend but the workload is manageable. The pressure is on, however, to complete the marking and such on time. I am also to hand over this role to another faculty member in the near future so pray that goes well also.

Staffing at the Seminary

We thank the Lord three new faculty members have been recruited this semester. This is an answer to prayer since three lecturers left at the end of last year. Two of the latter, Momolu and Layahn Massaquoi are back in their home country of Liberia to work at a seminary there. Our loss is Liberia’s gain.

BB Event

Every now and then I get to speak at a Boys’ Brigade event here. This time it was a BB camp being held on the Seminary grounds in December and they asked me to speak on the topic of using the BB as a means of evangelism. The early SIM missionaries at Kagoro, Thomas and Grace Archibald, started a BB company here in the 1930s and it was very effective in spreading the gospel among the boys and young men of the region.

Moving to the UK

I suppose the main news this time is our decision to move back to the UK. There are several reasons for this which we would like to explain to our prayer supporters in person rather than by this medium. We believe this is what our Lord would have us do and it is a major change for us both. We have been working at Kagoro for eighteen years and I was based in Jos, Nigeria, for the previous eighteen years. The plan is to sell, give away, or take some of our things back to the UK with us and be based in Moneymore from mid-June 2017.

Initially we will have a short ‘home assignment’ during which we hope to see as many supporters in Northern Ireland as we can. We do not intend to leave SIM and plan on returning to Africa each summer to teach in the Seminary’s Summer Programmes, for example (D.V.).

Going forward

One of the ministries we have lined up in Northern Ireland is to jointly teach some missions courses at the Irish Baptist College starting in September. This is not a full-time position and I will probably do most of the teaching. As many of you know both Debbie and I studied at the Irish Baptist College and are pleased this opportunity for teaching ministry has opened up (Eph 2:10).

Debbie has been asked to help SIM with its management of Theological Education. She will focus on supporting this ministry in English-speaking countries in West Africa. This is a new position set up by SIM International. This means Debbie can bring her training, skills and experience to bear in defining this new role. We praise our Lord that SIM has seen the need to network those engaged in this important ministry and request prayer for Debbie as she works on this new task.

While we are in the UK we will still be available to help the Seminary at Kagoro and SIM Ireland in several ways but we ask you to pray other doors for ministry will open up for us. During 2017 I will still be involved in SIMGROUP and Debbie will still be involved with ACTS (Africa Christian Textbooks Service).

As always, thanks for your prayerful support.

In Christ,

David and Debbie

December Update

Dear friends,

We send you greetings in the Name of our Lord.

Some semesters seem busier than others and this has been one of them. Thank you for praying we would get through November. Both preaching engagements at the seminary went well. One Sunday sermon was from Revelation 17 and the other chapter 18. I have never preached from those chapters before so I learned something and hope people in the congregation gained something also. Next week is exam week after which we will not be teaching but need to mark the exams and written assignments.

Graduation

One hundred and twenty students graduated on 27th November. About one half of these were at the B.A. level but we had our first seven master’s graduates this time. The service was well attended and surprisingly short at less than three hours. Pray for the graduates as they plan what to do next. Many of them are already pastors, missionaries, or teach the Bible in schools, but some will be looking for their first work assignment.

ACTS board

Debbie is on the African Christian Textbooks (ACTS) board. She has a meeting on Monday 6th which prepares for the board meeting on 13th December. The director of ACTS is Dr Sid Garland of Mission Africa. ACTS has been very helpful by importing theological books for sale here and also publishing and printing books written by mainly local authors. Many of the books in our seminary library have been purchased through ACTS.

Outreach teams

As usual, a number of our students will be away over the holiday to preach the gospel. Some are going to Chad, others to Cameroun and some will work in this country. Pray for safe travel and fruitful ministry (Col. 1:6).

Christmas

This year we will spend Christmas at Kagoro. Cheryl and Donna Pridham will join us for the main meal on Christmas Day. Our neighbours, Dennis and Coletta Shelly, are still in the US and will be spending the season with their son and daughter. Dennis and Coletta are booked to return in early January 2011 so we look forward to having them back at Kagoro.

Thank you again for your prayers and we pray you will enjoy the Christmas season.

Yours in Christ,

David and Debbie