Dear praying friends,

Greetings to you in the name of our gracious and patient Lord and Saviour. Even after our Lord had been with His disciples for three years and had taught them many truths, they revealed a slowness in understanding. But the most encouraging thing is that He was understanding and patient with them. He still genuinely counted them as His friends and His very own whom He had chosen.

We are grateful for your continued prayers. The Lord continues to lead us as a church though, as we have mentioned in the past, a number of our members have left Eldoret. While their moving is a great loss to us, a few things are true and for which we thank the Lord. By their testimonies, we know they belong to the Lord. From what they have been taught, we trust they will be able to uphold truth and resist falsehood.

Saturday children's activities have been hampered a lot due to rain. It has been raining a lot, especially in Eldoret. It has also been rather cold.

Our son Tim has settled back at Atlantic College for his second and final year for an International Baccalaureate (IB). The next challenge will be a university placement. The first year students arrived in the college a couple of weeks ago and he tells us it has been his privilege to extend to them a warm welcome. He hopes to encourage some of them to accompany him to Freeschool Court Evangelical Church in Bridgend for Sunday worship. Liz has enjoyed her holidays and is now back to school in a new class (year 10). Helida has well recovered from her cough which lingered for a long while. My August inter-term college studies went well. Systematic theology went very well. N.T. Greek is a challenge, particularly Greek participles! The new and tough course has been Semantics. I now have a load of assignments with deadlines fast approaching. The aim of these studies is twofold. First, it is to gain more knowledge of God's word for my on going pastoral work. Second, it is to prepare to train other locals who the Lord may call to the ministry.

After over two decades of struggle for a new constitution, Kenyans are all so excited that at last it is done! It was like the excitement of a new born baby. The excitement of the day, however, was tainted by the presence of Al Bashir of Sudan who is indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against the people of South Sudan. There is just too much politics around this matter. Implementing the new constitution is now the big challenge as 'old habits die hard'. This will be felt mostly in the area of the Bill of Rights and the Leadership & Integrity.

Is it really true that there is always strength in numbers? The latest national census, which was done one year ago, (but announced this week) reveals that the population was 38.2 Million. But the worrying thing is the revelation that there are one million babies being born every year! To put it very mildly, Kenya is in for very challenging times ahead.

As mentioned above, we are having a lot of rain. This is welcome so that there can be reasonable harvest expectation; North Rift Region is Kenya's bread basket in maize which is the staple food.

We stand persuaded that the gospel is the only true answer to all our personal and national challenges. Therefore, we plead with you to continue praying with us for the advancement of the gospel.

Yours in Christ,
Naphtally & Helida