Making the most of every opportunity
After unexpectedly spending most of 2020 in the UK, Graham and Sally Jones are back in Kisumu. Few of the rural pastors and churches there can access the online opportunities that are now so familiar to Western churches. Yet, as Graham shares, many of them have been ‘making the most of every opportunity’ (Colossians 4:5) in their situation
Preaching opportunities
Two new preaching opportunities opened up for Pastor Moses from Othoo church. When Kenyan churches were closed for three months during the first lockdown, several folks living nearby asked him to hold Sunday meetings outside under the trees. Local people from different churches attended and they kept coming throughout lockdown. When the churches were allowed to re-open, the group wanted the Bible teaching to continue. So it does! – but now on a Sunday afternoon, after people have attended their own church services.
Pastor Moses has also been busy handing out tracts in Ahero town (they had been written by Sukesh Pabari during his time in Kenya with GBM). He met a businessman who liked the message in the tracts so much that he gathered some people in town, and invited Moses to go and preach to them. Since then he has brought a group from town to Moses’ church to hear the Bible teaching on a Sunday, and has set up a regular meeting in Ahero for Moses to teach God’s word.
Caring opportunities
Pastor P has seen new opportunities open up as he has cared for those in need. During the first wave of Covid-19, he and a friend took a very sick man to Kisumu hospital. The man had coronavirus and nobody else was willing to help. (He has now recovered.)
Since they had been in contact with a Covid patient, Pastor P and his friend had to stay at a government quarantine facility for fourteen days. Inside the facility Pastor P met another pastor, and they began running Bible studies and preaching meetings for others in quarantine with them. When the fourteen days were over, they were asked to pay their quarantine fees. The other pastor’s fees were paid by a friend, but Pastor P didn’t have any money. When the friend heard Pastor P’s testimony and what he had done, he paid his quarantine fees as well, and even drove Pastor P home in his car!
Life during the pandemic has been especially hard for people who earn their living in Kisumu’s informal sector (the Kenyan equivalent of the ‘gig economy’). Many have not been able to make ends meet. Several have not been able to pay their rent, and have relocated back to their rural or ancestral homes. Pastor P’s church has lost about half of the membership, and half their income, as a result. The church has struggled to support others, but the Lord has been gracious to them.
One of Pastor P’s relatives and family lost their business and became homeless, so Pastor P and his wife invited the family to stay with them in their home. The husband had married a Muslim woman a number of years ago, and now they practise Islam as a family. They still have their Islamic prayer times but they also join Pastor P and his family for their daily devotions. The Muslim children have been attending Sunday School at the church and their mother has been to the women’s meeting several times. The extended family have complained that Pastor P is proselytising, perhaps because several Muslims have been converted and added to the church over the years. This has not been easy for Pastor P and his family, but they continue to take opportunities to share the gospel. Please pray that this family will all come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Training opportunities
In January 2020 fourteen pastors from the Bondo area were making good progress on the Explore courses from a South African Bible College. At the end of February, two pastors re-took their ‘Explore the Books of Moses’ course, and in mid-March the results came out and showed that they had passed. All fourteen had started the ‘Explore the Prophets’ course, and were working towards the exam in May 2020. There had been two study days and then the pandemic struck.
The college in South Africa announced that they were postponing the courses. Eventually they restarted their online courses, but not the book courses. When we returned to Kisumu last December the news from the college was more encouraging. Although the college staff were still working from home, they were allowing in-person courses to restart in other countries if it was safe and within the local guidelines.
In February the pastors confirmed that they would like to start again, so we ran a study day later that month with Covid-safe measures. Explore is back up and running and they are working towards the exam in May.
Church planting opportunities
Pastor Fred had already started a Bible study in Migori town before Covid-19 came. During the pandemic he found many people were sitting around in the market with nothing to occupy them. He intensified his evangelism and found many opportunities to share the gospel. Then he started a Sunday service. People came and a regular congregation developed. Some people came from a church that had closed and left an empty building, so they invited Fred to run the services there. This January a larger launch meeting was held, with other Grace Baptist churches supporting it. At the mid-week Bible study Fred is leading studies from ‘God’s People: the doctrine of the local church’, which he had seen used at the pastors’ fraternal in Kisumu in February 2020, a month before the pandemic came to Kenya.
Making the most of every God-given opportunity
Maranda Church in Bondo started a building project in 2018. The new building had foundations and walls but no roof. It is much larger than their original meeting place. When churches were allowed to re-open they raised extra money and put a roof on the new building because it was big enough for them to meet and socially distance.
During the pandemic there have been fewer visitors coming to western Kenya, and so fewer Christian conferences. Bethsaida Church in Kisumu saw this as the opportunity to launch their own conference. They arranged for a speaker from the Reformed Church in Nakuru and invited a number of leaders they knew from a variety of Kisumu churches. About thirty pastors and other church leaders came (both men and women). They heard excellent Bible teaching on the importance of the Bible and its role in our lives. All the participants received some books and resources. Many said that they had never heard things like that before, and are hoping for another conference later in the year.
We expect that the Covid-19 restrictions will remain for a long while in Africa. But while they do, we thank the Lord for those who are ‘making the most’ of their many opportunities.