Matt with some students from Ethiopia
Happy Belated New Year!
Here in Kenya, if you haven’t seen or spoken to someone since before New Year’s, you greet them with “Happy New Year!”… even if it’s February!
We had a great holiday break. Kelly’s mom came to visit just before Christmas, so it was nice to see her and receive a few gifts she brought with her! A fun note- you never know who’s going to show up to Christmas dinner. We had a leopard tortoise wander through our back door while we were eating!
Matt was able to preach at 3 different youth camps throughout the holidays. Several churches that we helped start youth ministries in were putting on their very first youth camps, but weren’t really sure what exactly to do. Our ministry has been able to come alongside them to help with logistics and material, and we’ve been able to see the fruit of them. We also had 12 successful conferences throughout December. We were able to teach a few hundred church leaders for the very first time on what youth ministry is and how to get one started. As you can, December is a very busy month! Most students and others are on holiday, so there’s lots of opportunities for conferences and meetings.
At the beginning of the new year, Matt brought together all of his ministry partners to create a vision for this year. A main theme was to make sure the ministry thrives on the grace and strength of God and not on our own. They also set several goals for the year:
- To teach over 100 conferences through Kenya and East Africa
- To write 4 devotional books for youth, to develop an app for these, and to sell the books to county governments for distribution in high schools
- To seek out new seminaries to teach in East Africa. We have a potential partnership with one in Ethiopia and possibilities in Rwanda and Tanzania.
In relation to the third goal, Matt will be traveling in February to Ethiopia for the first time. He will be teaching at the Evangelical Theological College. They are very interested in teaching youth ministry, but do not currently have a program and have met some resistance from the local evangelical churches.
We appreciate you all, and pray for a renewing and joy-filled new year!
Matt and Kelly Elmore