Mid-month news September 2025
Dear Friends,
My UK phone number: +447495098609
News updates below.
Some very difficult news. My mother has had a very serious stroke, that has left her very confused. Some pictures illustrating some of my church-leader-colleagues in Yala, Kenya. My act of folly, trying to solve the situation of weeds growing in the gutter of my home church in Kenya. I am already in UK to be with mum. My furlough in UK and Germany begins officially on 2nd October 2025.
Mum
Mum had a serious stroke about 3 weeks ago. This is an unusual kind of stroke. Instead of affecting one half of her body, it has affected her mind. It’s like a chunk of her mind has been seriously damaged. Mum doesn’t recognize people (she is beginning to recognize some family members). She is only slowly learning to feed herself. She can talk, but what she says often doesn’t make sense. She talks mostly in German. For a while, they tell me, she was quite aggressive. She seems to have calmed down. She is in Winchester hospital being treated for the stroke.
Realizing Mum’ predicament, it seemed right to come back to UK to spend some time with her. Hence I arrived in UK from Kenya on 5th September. I visited mum that very evening and have spent time with her every day since then. She is being well looked after. But this is certainly not the mum I knew. There seems to be still some hope that if lovingly cared for, she can come through and regain more of her memory and understanding. I am committed for this month, to spend a lot of time with mum encouraging her, chatting with her, sharing God’s word by means of encouragement with her. I am very grateful to Andrew and Janet Fairhead for hosting me here in Winchester for this time, just 10-minutes-walk from mum’s hospital.
Foster Care
The Kenyan government is promoting foster caring. From hereon, children in my home will be kept by a Kenyan government registered foster care! (Foster caring in Kenya does not attract any government money. To be a foster carer one has to pay the government.) This is in its early days for Kenya. They ‘looked at’ the 28-year-old girl staying with us, who I had reared from birth, and who was taking responsibility for children in my home, and for running the household. ‘You must register to be a foster parent’, said the children’s officer to her one day!’ ‘Yes, OK,’ she responded. ‘Wonderful!’ I thought. Knowing her background, in helping with looking after adopted orphan boys and girls for years and years, there was no question; ‘you can go through the registration processes later. We will consider you to be already a qualified foster carer. You can take in 3, 4, or more (under 18 year old) children (to whom you are not related),’ she was told.
Weeds in the Gutter and Jim the not-Hero
Standing in my new front door, I see the roof of a second story part of the nearby church building. Living and thriving in the gutter, were a bunch of weeds. ‘They should be removed!’ I say to myself every day. No one was removing them.
One day, the presence of a visitor to me made me more perky than usual. I realized that if I clambered up the inside of the grating of the window under the offending gutter, I could reach the weeds by hand, and with a stick! Boldly, if foolishly, I showed my visitor what a competent, capable, hard working and conscientious person I was, by dragging pieces of dirt from under the weeds and discarding them. Then I used a metal bar. ‘So, this problem is resolvable’! I said to myself!
Using the bar to get rid of the soil that had gathered in the gutter, revealed just how rusty had become the bottom of the gutter. My metal bar made short-shrift of it. There was no longer a bottom to the gutter. I had a lad continue the job … before I realized what I had done!
Water used to trickle through the soil that had formed in the gutter. Now it poured through! Now, thankfully, it won’t do significant damage. Yet, people might notice, and ask ‘who did this’? Well, Jim did! I thought I’d be able to replace the missing piece of gutter. ‘That will require a new piece of gutter, then walking on top of the church roof, which will require ladders that we don’t have,’ said a better-informed person.
I was trapped! My foolish heroism now could make the whole church discuss my folly. And I was about to leave Kenya for the UK!! I sat with a builder, a friend of mine. His voice was quiet and unassuming. His eyes were probing. ‘What’ve you done Jim, and why?’ ‘We need two pieces of ladder to reach the top. We don’t have such ladders.’ (Hint – buy us a ladder!) My prior folly, now obliged me to be a donor! ‘You are making me into your servant / junior, because you have money, Jim,’ his eyes told me. ‘You are grabbing for power! You will be the one who has solved the problem that defeated the rest of us! Are you wanting to use your money? Yes, you could buy a ladder. The rest of us have no money, as our money goes on funerals and weddings. Are you wanting to be the church-boss? No one actually told you to repair the gutter,’ said his eyes!
Wanting to be the hero, can be a disease! The problem needed solving, indeed. But there was no way locals could solve it. The church was always short of money … they generally waited for white people to solve such problems and build and repair buildings. I was obliging. Yet I did not want to be … a White Saviour. But I became one. The church had been built using British money (not through me!) ‘Renovate and repair it’, often don’t seem known activities in this African community. To me it was horrific – negligence was ruining the building. But what was I to do? Perhaps those who built the church ‘for’ the Africans, made the error, but I was forced to see their folly every day, as the weeds thrived up there in the gutter.
I believe I was wrong to have intervened as I did. (And no – I don’t believe I could have convinced them to use their money to rectify the gutter problem.) Apologies to those who are conscientious about maintaining buildings. But I think the correct course of action on my part would have been to allow the building to fall into disrepair.
Furlough, 2025
I am to begin my official furlough on 2nd October 2025. I am to be in Andover, then Norwich, Birmingham, York, Derby. Then around 24th October I am to be back in Andover, including visiting Wantage, before God willing leaving for Germany on 17th November or earlier. I am to return to Kenya on 28th November.
Best wishes to all. Many thanks for all your prayers, right now especially for Mum.
Jim