Winter Mission 2024

Sunday December 8, 2024
We concluded our 5th annual Pastors and Church Leaders conference in Matete on Friday with around 150 pastors and church leaders from western Kenya. I had intended to keep you all updated as we went through the week, but the local network once again proved unreliable. I'm writing from Eldoret as I wait to fly up to Lodwar to meet with my API team there over the next two days. I was supposed to fly this afternoon, but I got a call from the airline this morning that my flight had been changed from the afternoon to the morning. Unfortunately this was about 20 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave and I am about 30 minutes from the airport. Only in Kenya!

Most of the attendees have been part of our ongoing trainings held monthly in different locations, taught by our API team of trainers and they were excited to be altogether in once place at last, as we walked through chapters 6,7,8, 9 and 10 of Paul's letter to the Romans. 

Our host again this year was Pastor Moses Biketi (in the red shirt) and we were joined by our API teaching team of Pastor Shadrack Murimi, Pastor Reuben Luvanga, and Bishop Fredick Ndondo.  These men have been training and equipping these pastors throughout the year in monthly trainings held in 8 towns throughout western Kenya. More and more pastors are requesting this training and the pastors now attending have been lobbying for twice a month training sessions. We would love to keep expanding the reach of solid biblical training in more and more places and so I am asking you to participate in the gospel with us by donating to our 'Pastoral Development' fund. You can donate online by clicking here.

We also had pastors from the DNC (Democratic Republic of Congo) who have been students via Zoom of our Biblical Counseling training led by our Director, Jay McBee. They were greatly encouraged to be together with other like-minded brothers and sisters and were effusively thankful for the training they are receiving from API. 

Our kitchen staff outdid themselves in providing breakfast, lunch and dinner for the attendees. I don't know how they do it without modern kitchen appliances! All the wood in the foreground is for the cooking fire and you can see the smoke drifting out between the top of the kitchen wall and the roof. Chimneys are not a thing in Kenya. I don't know how these cooks can even see what they are doing in the kitchen with all the smoke in the room!





As we do at all our conferences, we handed out book resources at the end.  This year we gave out a commentary on Romans, thanks to the generosity of Evangelical Reformed Church in Tacoma. We also gave out copies of R.C. Sproul's Saved from What, donated by Ekklesia Afrika. This year we printed and distributed copies of a catechism written by Pastor Tim Bourgeois of Tree of Life Church. Tim has been a long-time friend and teaching associate of API and he wrote an excellent catechism that can be used for the whole church. We translated it into Kiswahili as many of the churches here don't do as well in English. 

We continued with our clean water initiative by giving out some bucket water filters donated by Surfing Servants

I also want to give a shout out to my media and logistics team of Frank Maina and John Kamau who are so instrumental in our success. These guys always go above and beyond on every mission!



Hopefully I will be on a plane tomorrow morning for Lodwar where I'll be meeting with our Turkana team in preparation for our summer mission conferences. Thanks for your faithful support and prayers for us!