UPDATE

SUNDAY 27th JULY 2008
36 Years ago I arrived with 28 boys at the gate of Testimony House. It was Boxing Day 1972, and the garden was overgrown more than a metre high, and the driveway curb less and untarmaced. But the view of the House was just as it is now. We had travelled uncomfortably in a five ton truck with 28 cowhide and bamboo chairs and 14 steel frame bunk beds with bedding. The 125 kilometres was covered on dirt roads, slow, dusty, and hot. Esther joined me from Nairobi with baby Steven (then about 6 months old) neither of us realising we would live in this house for 28 years as Mum and Dad to the then current 28 plus dozens more. The house was enormous. The sitting room alone measured 900 square feet with more than 7 bedrooms, bathrooms etc. We only had what we brought with us and £800. (enough to re-equip us with crockery, cutlery and provide food for a week! For months the house remained bare and empty and rather unhomely. We sat on boxes or the floor. It was a giant step from where we had begun in Maseno, Western Kenya, in a small 40x40ft mud cottage. TODAY, in Church we remembered a little of our Beginnings, and our Journey into the unknown. It was not such a sensational Exodus as Moses and the People of Israel - but in its own way it was as fraught with risk and danger, and certainly attended with many miracles. The last weekend of July annually is our time to mark the Beginning of Testimony Faith Homes, and the latter addition of the School. Yesterday the School marked its own Day as part of the Weekend - the 27th since it's own inception in 1981.
The weather stayed fine and dry all through until the last visitor left the compound at around 5p.m. the the skies opened to hours of torrential rain! It had been a wonderful day with more than 500 parents and visitors looking round the School and attending an afternoon concert put together by the students (including some of the 140 children from our four Homes who also attend the school). The chief guest this year was an old Christian friend and brother - Professor James Kiyiapi, Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources. NEXT year the occasion will take in the Children's Homes as well and both Saturday AND Sunday will be open to celebrations and so on. We expect many of our Old Boys and Girls to attend.

Right now it is pouring with rain as I write. The end of an eventful week, and the beginning of a new one. Mainly for me this week will be administrative improvements in the keeping of our Records, and getting ready for the 19th Monthly Meeting of the Children's Services Forum which will be focusing on the needs and services to orphaned children suffering from HIV/AIDS, as well as those not affected by the disease but whose lives have been disrupted by it.
We ourselves still have one girl amongst our children who has HIV. She is 16 and in Form 2 of Secondary School. She loves the Lord, and understands fully her condition. Both her parents died of AIDS, but she is the only one of four brothers and sisters who had HIV passed on to her. She is robust and joyful, and loves to sing God's Praises. During the School Day she was hosting parents in the Home Science Room, showing them round and discussing what goes on there. She is very outgoing and coping well with life. We are still believing that the Lord will heal her completely. Her name is Jesse Ronata.

Our first two children were brothers of 8 and 12 years respectively. Zacaria, the youngest was a very attractive child, though a cripple. The Lord healed him of his trouble so that from almost total immobility he was able to walk again, and even run and jump. But regretfully he did not choose to run to Jesus, and ran instead to theft and immorality. He died of AIDS just a few weeks ago at the age of 45. It is sometimes very difficult to accept that after so much opportunity a life can end like this. We shed few tears. His brother is alive and well, married with two children, and in fact working for us in our Maintenance Department as a worker of metal. He also made a lot of wrong decisions, but by the Grace of God turned to Christ and was rescued from his own errors to be established and saved. For him his brother's death has been a heartbreak and a blow. We were glad to be able to mourn with him, and share his grief.

We remain at rest, though STUDENT unrest continues all over the State. It is the work of Satan, and yet another sample of the Last Days. What are we to do? How are we to be?
What are the priorities?

1. John 3 seems to minimise the necessities. Reading once again v.10 one is struck by the shear force of words used.

In this the children of God are manifest,
and the children of the devil:
whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God;
neither he that loveth not his brother.

WHOEVER DOES NOT DO RIGHTEOUSNESS.
WHOEVER DOES NOT LOVE HIS BROTHER.

Not much space to manoeuvre is there? What IS required of us? In the Old Testament it is written -

MICAH 6v8
What doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy god?

We are all heading for confrontation on a grand scale with the perpetrator of all Evil.
It is not a time for compromise, or for half hearted commitment.
When we have done ALL that we can to maintain our Testimony
we are simply to STAND
To stand and not yield or retract an inch.
Simply a question of WHO is on the Lord's side?
let him/her come and stand by me.

We have need to demonstrate the ungodliness of sin; we need to let Christ LIVE and destroy the works of the devil in ourselves, and in the world around us. This world is condemned; love of it and it's lusts puts us against God. The world will crumble around us, and we have to see and understand that we are not part of it - we are not of this world, we are only passing through, having no true home here at all in reality......no we look ahead to our true home, and to a city not made with hands. We need to reprogram our way of seeing ourselves and the world in which we live. The King is Coming. A new World is coming. All things will become NEW

May His Spirit be very present with you in the days ahead.


John and Esther