It's GOOD to be home..

I got back from Africa yesterday. I had a wonderful team with me this year, and we had an incredible time. We did evangelistic meetings for two weeks near Dar Es Salaam and then on the third week I spoke at a conference in Nairobi and then we ended by visiting a church I had been a part of the organizing of in 1999.

While we were there this year, 454 people responded to the call to believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and a new church was started. We had an incredible children's ministry led by Pauline Wood (from Scotland). Lana Wood (from the US), Mark Redwine (from the US) and Hazel Bech (from Scotland) helped me with the teaching of pastors and leaders and did a wonderful job. We also had great input from Ernie Bayton (from Scotland), who led our team devotional times and also offered great encouragement to the people we were ministering to. It was great to have such a wonderful team and to see how God used each one in such a wonderful way. We led a group of pastors and leaders through Phase Two of the East Africa version of New Church Specialties, and it went well especially as a group of 7 pastors who had gone through Phase One a year ago had successfully applied the principles they learned last year to start 9 new churches.

I think the part of this trip that encouraged me the most was the reminders I got that the work we do there has a lasting value. Our second week of evangelistic meetings was in an area we had worked in a year ago, and a lot of people came to me for prayer who said they had become Christians a year ago when I was there. It's always encouraging to see the evidence of changed lives! Also, on our last Sunday we visited the church in Kiatine, Kenya that we had been involved in organizing in 1999, and what we saw was incredibly exciting. Five years ago we had organized the church with 58 adults and 32 children meeting in a flimsy temporary structure. Now as Pauline taught the kids and I preached, we had the privilege of ministering in a nice big building filled with worshipers. The church now has at least 600 members, and they have successfully planted another church this year in a nearby village. God is good!

We all had good health while we were there too. Nobody got sick until we got home. Unfortunately, I got really sick on my first night back home and am still not doing well today, but I'm thankful that I could at least wait until I was home to get sick. Now I'm back at my place here in Scotland for a week before I leave again next Tuesday to go to Mexico. Things are really busy right now, but I'm very excited about all the things God is doing!