Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for praying for us, this past month we feel like we’ve jumped right back in to the deep end and are swimming hard. Here’s a sampling in three emails of some of the neat things we’ve been able to be involved in just in the past 4 weeks, and an update on various outreach areas.

BABY JOSEPH – Margaret’s been overseeing the breastfeeding support for a little baby named Joseph, born to a teenage mother at 2.8 pounds, and then dropped to 1.7 pounds at one month of age (when he presented to the
clinic) because he was too weak to nurse. Praise the Lord, over the last few weeks with expressed breastmilk cup feeds, he’s gained weight and is starting to nurse well on his own. He’s up to 3 and a half pounds now!

WOMEN’S CONFERENCE AND HARAMBEE – A few weeks ago Melissa helped 30 women and children from some of the local churches get to Wairo for a women’s conference that lasted four days (the car was packed!). On the Sunday the conference finished we as a family participated in the worship service and also the harambee to raise some funds for church supplies like cooking pots, water containers, and dishes.

BIRISE OUTREACH – Jon went on the Birise mobile clinic last month and was able to take stock of how things are going there first hand. Certain letters of approval from the village have been given for land for a church plant, but the last letter has not been generated yet. The new evangelist Hobonju in Motto village went along on this month’s clinic and shared the Word with Birise villagers. Please pray for the final letter from a large village meeting to be forthcoming. If the land is given, we can move forward with plans to build an evangelist’s house, and AICT is willing to put an evangelist there to continue outreach.

MSERA OUTREACH – Amazingly, our SIL friends were able to show the Luke film in this village, with lots of Muslims in attendance. Praise the Lord! There is also a bit of a Catholic presence in that village as well. In our eight hour long Health Committee Meeting last Saturday, we decided to invite a couple of the known believers from that village to attend our Community Health Worker Seminars. We hope to equip them with some other tools for reaching out to their neighbors, and hopefully they would serve as an inroad for further investment in the lives of Msera villagers. Pray that hearts would be softened towards the gospel.

BANK ISSUES – Please pray that NBC bank in Dodoma would re-activate a dormant account which has some project money in it from last year.
Jon’s taken multiple steps and trips to town to rectify the situation, but it’s still not open yet, and we’d like to use some of those funds for famine relief.

Thanks for your partnership with us!

In Jesus,

Jon and Melissa