Merry Christmas!

I'm heading down to Gillian Gillespie's house in Mumias tomorrow -- I'll be spending Christmas down there. The churches here all have services on Christmas Day. I'm to speak to the kids in the service in Mumias so please keep me in prayer for that. Then Noreen will join us in the evening and we'll have our Christmas dinner on Boxing Day. We're planning turkey, ham, cranberry, stuffing, the works! Yum!
I hope you all have a great Christmas, and thank you all again for your prayers and support.

Update

I'm back. The youth camp finished on Saturday -- both camps went well I believe, and please continue to pray that God will bless the Word that was heard. There were about 130 kids at the teens camp -- quite a crowd! They listened well, and from quizzes that were given after the teaching sessions, they must have taken in quite a lot!

We played some games with the teens in the afternoon, including a water relay. I borrowed the idea from memories of the youth camp I used to attend (when I lived in the States). We had to adapt it a bit, but I think the kids enjoyed it once they got their heads round the concept. It was entirely new, even to the teachers and leaders!

We also had a treasure hunt -- Gillian devised this one, and it took Brian and me a while to get OUR heads round it cause it was rather different from how we would do a treasure hunt at home. But again it went over well.

The theme chapter for the youth camp was Philippians 2, especially verse 15 -- "The sons of God . . . shine as lights in the world." Again, the mornings were devoted to teaching, with usually one session in the afternoon as well. The pastors and missionaries who were speaking covered topics like the young Christian's salvation, mind, character, will, actions, and witness. The young people professed at the end of the week that they had really been blessed by the messages. There was also a question and answer session on Friday, which lasted three hours (double the time that was allocated!) I think it was telling that most of the kids (if not all) were happy to hear God's Word and keep asking questions rather than head outside for the games that had been scheduled for after the session.

I was asked to give a presentation on Liberia at the youth camp -- the young folks seemed to be very interested, and several came up afterwards and said that they would pray for the work there.

Please do pray for these young people -- I really enjoyed the fellowship, and it was good to see signs of growth in grace in some of them. Young people in Kenya face a lot of temptation -- not only to things like immorality (which is a BIG problem here and causes a lot of young folks from the churches to fall, never mind outside) but also to more subtle sins like putting their education or their career before God. Kenyans prize education very highly, and parents have been known to say things like "Well, he only got a C- in his exams, so he would do for a pastor." Whereas the kid who has passed his exams well will be expected and required to go on to university and get a good job to support the family. So pray that young folks will hear the call of God and realise that working for God is the highest calling, and pray also that the Lord will touch the hearts of parents and make them willing to give up their dreams for their kids if that's His will. I do believe, from what some of the young people said, that there are a few to whom God has begun speaking about this matter.

Teen Camp

Very sorry for not having written on here for so long -- it's been so busy! I want to ask prayer for the teen's camp which starts this afternoon (Tuesday)and lasts until Saturday morning. It's held down at the school -- the kids stay in the dorms there, and we'll be going down each day for the lessons and activities. The theme this year is "The Word of God" -- and there are teaching sessions each morning and one session in the afternoon on this theme. Then there's an activity period in the afternoon, and a quiz or video or something like that at night. I'm teaching on "The Assembly of the Bible" on Thursday morning - i.e. the Canon of Scripture. I'm enjoying the preparation, but will have to be careful how I present it because the kids are 13-16 yr olds, and not all of them know English. It will be translated, of course, but I still need to try to present it as simply as possible. So pray for wisdom for me! Brian is teaching on "What the Bible is like" on Wednesday afternoon (i.e. like a hammer, a lamp, a sword, bread, etc.). Then other subjects are "The Inspiration of the Bible", "The Interpretation of Scripture", "Why We Use the AV only", "How to Study your Bible", and so on.
Next week there is a youth camp (17 yrs old and up) - Noreen McAfee is organising it (Gillian Gillespie organised the teens camp). The Kenyan pastors and youth leaders of course are running the camps as well. So please pray for everyone involved in these two camps! And pray that the young people will be able to afford to come, and will have a hunger for the Word when they do come.
I have a few photos to put on here, but will have to do that another time. And I'm sure I'll have a lot of pictures from the camps too!