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

October prayer update

Dear Friends,

We send you greetings in the Name of our Lord.

David here. Many thanks for your prayers for us. We are enjoying teaching at the Seminary and are almost half way through the semester. We have some assignments written by the students that we still need to mark. Hopefully, we can do that during the mid-semester break. Most of the courses we teach are accredited by the University of Jos so we have to submit end-of-semester exams and marking schemes to the University for approval. Pray that process goes well.

I have had a few opportunities to preach since returning. The most recent one was at a Boys' Brigade service at the Seminary. The BB used to be very popular in this region but declined somewhat in recent years. Several people are trying to revive this youth work and one of our students has taken it upon herself to get a Girls' Brigade company going at the Seminary Church. We believe the BB and the GB still have important roles to play here.

Last month Debbie mentioned a conference on Expository Preaching being run by Langham Partnership which will actually take place in early October it seems. We expect many of our students will attend the conference.

Though I am no longer the registrar, I am helping the Seminary in terms of administration with some computer support. Several of the computers at the Seminary have viruses on them and I am trying to disinfect them. Clearly our office staff need to be made aware of the importance of keeping the anti-virus software up-to-date.

A couple of our fellow missionaries have had their email accounts hacked recently so just in case someone breaks into one of our email accounts, please note we do not send out emails with attachments or requests for funds to our prayer supporters. Email messages will be text like this one or text with a few embedded pictures. Treat anything else with suspicion.

We have had a series of messages on Colossians at the Seminary and ask you to pray Col 1:9-10 for us. Thanks again for your prayers.

In Christ,

David and Debbie