Hello all!
We've been busy living every day life over here! Zeke has started "school"! He's with 3 other kids, and they meet at one of the families' houses. All the parents chipped in to hire a private teacher to teach them for 3 mornings a week (similar to the learning pods that developed through COVID). He's having a blast, and comes home with artwork and singing the songs he's learning! We're grateful he has this chance to interact with others and learn. We also had a visitor- a friend from college came out for a week, so Matt got to show him around Kenya and let him get a taste of life and ministry here.
4:12 News
Simeon (who works with 4:12), recently happened to meet with a pastor that attended our very first conference, which Matt taught more than 10 years ago (see pic above). This pastor said that our conference really helped his church reach young people. Before the conference, they didn’t have a weekly youth ministry. Afterwards, they started ministering to youth weekly, and have maintained a youth ministry since then. These stories are so encouraging to us as reminders that God's principles lead to transformational changes and growth within the church.
Another wonderful story that I heard recently is about an older pastor that came to one of our conferences on youth ministry. He returned to his church and challenged his members to make an emphasis in youth ministry. His church is thriving and has seen an increase of over 100 new adults and youth coming to the church in the last few years.
Kuza News
Kuza has a newly renovated podcast and video studio, created by a local interior designer who did a phenomenal job (see pics above). We’re very grateful to all who have helped support us to build this studio. What was an echo chamber is now a fully-functional, sound-proofed room! Our online ministry continues to grow, and we hope to produce even more quality content with this studio.
We recently had a young lady watch our “Receive Christ” video on KuzaApp.com. She sent us an email afterwards, so we were able to follow up with her on the phone. She has since began attending a local church that Justus, our Kuza staff member, helps pastor.
We posted this “Receive Christ” video on Facebook and paid a bit for it to be advertised. We had over 20,000 people in Kenya watch the entire video from start to finish. We’re not sure how many people received Christ, but we’re excited about the engagement. It only costs $139 to advertise this video, which is less than one cent a view. We plan on doing more Facebook posts like this across the African continent to try and reach as many people as possible. Thank you for empowering us to spread the gospel with this online ministry.
Student Discipleship Ministry (SDM) News
Matt had the privilege to preach to 130 students who were involved in our Student Discipleship Ministry (SDM) retreat in Eldoret, Kenya. He was asked to preach on the sovereignty of God in salvation and man’s response because students had been asking lots of questions on it. during discipleship groups. It was quite the task, but the students were very grateful. Our SDM staff is doing an incredible job running college bible studies on 23 campuses in countries of Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda.
The SDM staff is currently writing their own curriculum for our college bible study ministry. The desire is that we will empower the staff to teach a uniform curriculum that makes sense in a local context. Please pray for wisdom on what to write and how to write it.
Other Pictures
Matt preaching in a high school this past weekend
Matt having fun with kids after preaching
Zeke out with daddy looking at lions
Prayer Requests
Ministry
Pray for the 20,000 people that watched our Receive Christ video to be saved.
Pray for the young lady that received Christ through our website to grow in her faith.
Pray for more churches to make an emphasis on reaching young people after attending our conferences.
Pray for SDM to effectively and passionately write our curriculum in order to equip college students.
Personal
Pray for Matt's wisdom on how to deal with some administrative issues.
Pray for wisdom for us as we parent Zeke.