visiting teacher

Hello!

I have had a visitor the past week and a half.  Joshua Barron is a CMF teammate who lives outside Nairobi and partners with the CCC church (mostly churches planted by CMF missionaries, but they are expanding to others as well).  He and his wife, Ruth, primarily work on writing curriculum for Maasai church leaders, but are making the material available to us in Turkana as well.

Joshua came up to Turkana to teach the church history and the mission and evangelism classes at TBTI.  He was a real encouragement for the students.  He taught them about the African roots of Christianity.  They loved hearing the stories of Frumentius the light bringer, Aedesius, Longinus and Julian.

He taught them that the church grew only when it had four characteristics that were based on the foundation of Jesus Christ.  Those four characteristics were prayer, translation of the Bible into the local language, a vision for mission, and local leadership.  Here is a picture of Joshua showing how all four legs of the stool (church) have to be on the foundation(table) of Jesus.  It was very effective when he made one of the legs go over the edge of the table and fell off!  if you don't have one of those legs, the stool (church) does not do as well as it could.

  

 Joshua also taught the evangelism and mission class.  One of the days, he and the students took a ride with Gene Morden out to one of our garden plots.  They discussed how getting a garden ready for planting and tending it is a helpful way to look at evangelism and mission.  This was a wonderful way to plant the image of work and growth into the minds of the students in connection with evangelism and mission.

  

There were a few times in the afternoons Joshua did a few stretching exercises to help the students stay alert.  One day, they had a jumping contest.  Here are few pictures of the jumps that I was able to capture with his camera.  

who says white men can't jump?

this is a second jump

The students left these classes with a lot of knowledge and some practical ways to use it.  My thanks go out to Joshua and Gene for their help in making these classes profitable for the students!