The end

That concludes the trip reports and reflections. Thank you for reading these posts, and for your prayers.

If anyone is still reading, I’ll briefly mention my movements over the next few weeks. I’m just about to leave for Manchester to spend a week with my aunt, and after that I will be at a Pathfinder venture in Oswestry from 2nd-9th August. I would appreciate prayer for that – I have been asked to be what is called an “Overall dorm leader” with the responsibility to lead a group of leaders and teenagers. This is quite a daunting prospect and I feel quite young to be doing it, but please pray that God will provide the strength and wisdom to deal with the issues that will come up. We’ll be leading bible studies in Mark’s gospel – pray that these would be well-prepared and would help the teenagers to understand more about Jesus and how to live their whole lives following His footsteps.

And after that, I start work! More specifically I’m moving to Guildford to work for an IT consultancy. I’d appreciate prayer for meeting new people, getting adjusted to a full-time job and settling into a new town, church and lifestyle.

Thanks again for following this blog, and please do keep me updated on how you are getting on and how I can be praying for you this summer.

Greg

Coming to the end…

We have now finished all the pastors training, and today’s session went well. It is hard to measure progress in only three days, so please pray that the fruit will be shown in future sermons and bible studies.

Tomorrow the girls will be doing the Biblical Womanhood course. Please pray for them to be able to overcome literacy barriers and that the women of Koidu Town would be taught and changed from the Bible.

I’ll post more reflections later, but we please be assured we are having a great time! Life is very different in Africa as I’m sure you can imagine.

Hello from Koidu Town

A more personal post. We arrived safely here on Saturday after a long journey, and have settled in well. Koidu Town is very different to Kabala – it is much bigger for starters and it was affected greatly by the civil war, being in a diamond area.

Sunday was a very strange day. We got up at 6.00 to arrive at a radio studio for 7. We introduced ourselves on-air before John have an evangelistic talk from Acts 10. We then went back to our guest house briefly before going to church. The previous night we had been told that there were no sermons prepared at two churches, and therefore John spoke at one and I spoke at the other. Nothing had been prepared so I gave a sermon on Hosea 1 that I did in October. Standing in front of a large church of 250+ people in a very different country and culture was very wierd indeed, but wonderful to think that these are our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

We leave Koidu Town on Friday for Freetown where we stay until Monday evening. Please pray for a safe journey and a good time in Freetown to debrief and relax. Thanks for your prayers!

Update from Kabala

A very quick update from Kabala. Pastors training has gone well, but please pray for them that they would improve at their bible study skills. Some have been very promising and gave a great 5 min exposition on 2 Timothy. Others have been slow to pick up the skills and didn’t communicate their text well.

Biblical womanhood went well too. Please pray that the women will have understood and will take on board what they learned, especially thinking about equal dignity and worth of women in a society where women are often seen as inferior.

Thanks!

Map

Here is a map showing where we are staying at the moment. As you can see it is quite far out of Freetown and the journey in every morning is over an hour!

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