April 17,2016
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| Water Tower |
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| Front of our home here |
We wish you were here and could see the transformation which
is occurring around us-everything is turning green. We had been looking for the
rains, they were longer than usual in coming, but now we can hear the distant
roaring of the stream which normally supplies irrigation for this zone of
dryness around the mountain perimeter. Our village would be very dry also if we
did not have a 300 ft. deep well which feeds a 30,000-gallon tank raised about
60 ft. off the ground. Even though at this season there is such an abundance of
rain it only lasts about 3 months and the drip system keeps everything green
and growing around our house. There is no struggle here about growing things,
it is just what to grow. School is back in session after a three week break and
the gardens which the children cultivate under the supervision of their
assigned mothers are doing very well. We have some early crops and they are
being sold to the kitchen or in the market. Some are also taken to church as an
offering.
The rains have been so abundant in the last few days that the mothers decided
the children should stay home today because of the mud but we are going to have
church at 3:00 PM with me giving a simple sermon on Jesus as the bread of life.
This has been chosen because the place where we are in our Rafiki Bible study
is John 6. As you know we had about a month ago finished a special study for
our resident children in the Gospel of John for those children over ten years
of age. Today we are going to announce the beginning of a new study which will
again focus on John but serve the purpose of teaching the older children how to
begin doing homiletics (this is the analysis of a passage for doing sermons and
teaching). It will be strictly voluntary and will require home work. For those
who volunteer we hope it will be added preparation for the future. We have one
older girl who already says she wants to be a pastor. This is not uncommon
around here and there are some churches who have 600 people as members who have
women pastors who sometimes are married to a pastor who has a church himself at
another location. Churches are organized into parishes so that everyone will
have a church within walking distance of their homes.
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| Back of our home |
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| Beautiful clouds replace the mountain view |
Our teacher’s training institute has the same schedule as
our school (about 180 students) and we are just finishing the first week. Some
of the courses have been updated and are more difficult. I have five training
levels so far out of 10 possible ones. This week we had the pleasure of meeting
the director of one English medium school who came asking where he could find a
teacher trained by us to work at the pre-primary level. He is concerned because
the students are not learning English and our trainees are especially prepared
with this in mind. The added advantage of taking a teacher trained by us is the
practical experience of teaching the Bible to children which we arrange through
a 10-week practicum in our village school. I have about 20 teachers who are in
various levels of training and every morning we start off with a Bible study. The
pictures show our current location for training but within 6 months we should
move into the building under construction which will include 6 very large class
rooms and even a gymnasium. Most of the trainees which we get are the
equivalent of finishing high school sophomores but older.
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| Construction on new RICE building |
I have made a wonderful discovery this week adding to the
hymns which I know by heart and can very much commend it to our readers. Thomas
Ken was an English clergyman who died in 1711 and had been among other things
attending at the deathbed of the English king Charles II. He was the author of
“the Doxology” often sang at public functions and other occasions appropriate
for spontaneous expressions of praise. I have heard it so many times from my
youth and initially before becoming a believer that I thought it must be
something which high society and respectable people did at their meetings. You
know,”…praise God from whom all blessings flow…”. There are five stanzas of
which the Doxology is the
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| Current RICE building |
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| Chameleon ..one of God's wonders. |
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| Construction on RICE building |
last. It was called then “Morning Hymn” and it was sung at sunrise by his
request when he was buried on March 19. The first stanza goes, “Awake, my soul,
and with the sun thy daily stage of duty run; shake off dull sloth, and joyful
rise to pay thy morning sacrifice.” Our morning sacrifice is our expression of
worship which we offer at the beginning of our quiet time in the morning often
way before the sun comes up with our thanks and supplications. The world does not
understand this and would regard it as a waste of time; carnal Christians
little appreciate its value. But we know that it is the source of our daily
strength. The manna from heaven supplied during the Exodus was to be gathered
as a “day’s portion every day” (Exod 16:4). There are three kinds of people in
the world: the natural man, the carnal man and the spiritual man. The natural
man is spiritually dead, having little idea of the things of God and is like a
blind critic of Raphael. The carnal man is the Christian who possesses divine
life but does little to nurture it. The spiritual man knows his life is in
Christ, makes his morning sacrifice and gathers a day’s portion every day. Let
us in doing this possess the promise of having the mind of Christ (1 COR
2:14-16).
