Friends in Christ,
While I am here in East Africa I have two main objectives. One is to visit the congregations here and encourage them with the Word of God. The second is to meet with the leaders of our churches and study the Word of God with them and help them grow in their knowledge of the great things God has done for them. There are other responsibilities as well, but these two are the most prevalent. So far we have been doing church visiting. But today we had the opportunity to do the study and instruction. This morning we scheduled a seminar for the leaders of the Nairobi district, which stretches from Mombasa on the coast to north of Nyahururu above the equator. These men come a very long distance to meet and study God’s Word.
My faithful sidekicks - Larry Hansen (standing) and Russ Schmitt (seated).Twelve men from the Nairobi district came to meet with us in a conference room not far from our hotel. We began at about 10:30am and continued until about 2:00 in the afternoon. As much as we would have liked to have gone longer, many of these men had long distances to travel, and had busses they had to catch.
For our meeting, I explained the Church Year, and the value of following a pericope which can assist pastors to preach "the whole counsel of God." Russ had prepared a study on the Second Article on the Apostles’ Creed and went through that with our men as well. We gave each of the men who came an English Bible, and small booklet on the chief parts of the Catechism, and one of the 2010 CLC Mission Calendars put together by the Mission Board. They were quite excited about the calendars since many of these men and their congregations were pictured on the November page!
After the meeting we met individually with some of the men, and then had the rest of the afternoon to catch up on reports and make preparations for coming seminars and conferences. This short break was greatly needed. I had gone to the Cyber café (there is no coffee at this café!) in the morning and had only enough time to print off sheets for our conference and read a couple of e-mails. The computers here are generally very old, and the connections are very slow as well. So I went back in the afternoon, and it took me about an hour and a half to put a bit of information on the blog and read important e-mails. The Internet here is nothing to write home about!
Tomorrow we will be visiting a couple of congregations and make bus reservations for going to Arusha, Tanzania on the following day. Our work continues...
It is such a joy and privilege to have the opportunity to be a part of the Lord’s work in this way! May the Lord be with these men in their work of ministry and bless the proclamation of His Word through them!
In His service,
Nathanael Mayhew
"Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3).
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