January 2016 Prayer letter

                                                                                                

MISSIONS GIVING IN AFRICA

We arrived in Kenya on the 1st of January 1998, and later that year God allowed us to begin working with a small group of believers in Nakuru. A year later on the 5th of December 1999, the Grace Bible Baptist Church was organized out of the Cleveland Baptist Church.   After the church was organized we scheduled our first missions conference and introduced to the church the Biblical mandate of giving to missions.  We taught and preached about the Faith Promise plan of missions giving, believing that God could use this young church to give to missions.  Since that time, as the church’s burden grew, other ways of giving to missions have also been introduced. We just concluded our 16th year of missions giving and by the grace of God the church gave an all time high of 1,949,329 Kenyan Shillings to missions, which is nearly $20,000.  The average income of people in the church is about $150 per month.  Many in the church have made a real sacrifice to give to missions and God is using that sacrifice to allow the church to reach into the Regions Beyond with the Gospel. It is both a blessing and humbling to be involved with a church who has learned to give sacrificially to missions, even amongst their poverty. 

RESOURCE CENTER

One of the difficulties faced by Kenyan churches is access to resources that we often take for granted in the Western World.   Most often this is the result of a lack of finances or a lack of things not being available.  We have wanted for some time to start a ministry that would help provide some needed items to churches in order for them to more effectively reach people.  This last month we were able to officially open the “GRACE TO THE REGIONS BEYOND” resource center.   At this time we are able to provide, Bibles, Tracts, Discipleship material and Sunday School lessons to about forty churches who are affiliated with us through the Bible College.  We plan to add more items that can be provided to churches as the Lord enables.  We want to thank the Fellowship Baptist Church of Idamay, WV, for the burden to help with this project . Also, we want to thank Beams Bibles and Fellowship Tract League for the generous donation that has allowed us to begin this ministry.

YOUTH CONFERENCE

During the month of December we started the Rift Valley Baptist Youth Conference with nearly one hundred youth from five different churches in attendance.   We had several days of great fun and great preaching and we were very pleased with the results.  We plan to make the conference an annual event as we try to do more to strengthen the youth of our churches.  We would like to thank Brother Jerome Pittman, missionary to Sweden, for preaching the conference .

BLOG

As a reminder we have a blog where we publish different news items and updates.  Please take some time to visit the blog as a way to stay better updated on the ministry in Kenya and in the Regions Beyond.  The blog address is mickeystokenya.blogspot.com .