The greatest need is to
train local leaders

How did we come to be in Kenya? God led us through many years. Liz had come out here firstly 10 years before, as a student and fallen in love with the country. Subsequently to that, her home church began to take a deep interest in the progress of the gospel here.

The first major step was whilst we were courting. I needed to have a fulfil a placement for my training course. Liz and her father both wanted to visit Kenya - and I hadn't yet met her father. So spending more time with Liz, meeting him and doing the placement killed a few birds at once! We got engaged a month later.

After visiting, I took a closer interest in the prayer letters of the missionaries in Kenya that we knew. For just over 3 years I was a trainee in a church in Derbyshire. Towards the end of that time we began to think seriously about the needs in Kenya, and paid another visit together with our young family. Eventually we decided that there was a work to be done and that God was opening the way for us. We were invited by a church in Nairobi to join them, and arrived in November 2007.

Our present ministry is in Eldoret in the Rift Valley - the major town of the Kalenjin tribe and therefore home to scores of world-class runners, and also a trouble hot-spot after the controversial 2007 elections. The population is about 500,000. There are 3 major planks to my work. I am one of two elders in a young Baptist church alongside an African colleague who I met on that first visit a few years earlier.

Secondly I teach trainee pastors at a nearby Bible college. Thirdly I am working with a small group of others to develop ways to spread sound Biblical teaching and influence nationally; as part of this I have begun editing a magazine whose first issue should soon be published.

Alongside me, Liz home-schools our children and ministers to ladies in our church. Most of the church are poor and live in one-room houses. We have the privilege of having our own gardener and home-help to assist in the daily tasks and our children enjoy a huge garden and constant summer! (Being at high altitude, the climate in Eldoret is fantastic).

The greatest need is to train up local leaders. Corruption, dependency, immorality, false health-and-wealth teaching, personality cults and many other evils are rampant and routine in the Kenyan "church"; very few Kenyan churchgoers have ever heard the Biblical gospel. Moreover, some remote parts have tribes who have never received any kind of Christianity at all. True Biblical Christianity is a novelty and the work to be done is immense. Pray that the Lord will raise up faithful local leaders and fill them with his Spirit and enable them to work strategically across the nation.

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