Mid-month news February 2026
jimoharries@gmail.com
Myself and fellow missionary, Gord Sawatsky, took three days to cycle to and on islands in lake Victoria, Feb. 2026.
Cycling to and Around Islands in Lake Victoria
Gord Sawatzky and myself took a ‘cycling holiday’ 2nd to 5th Feb. 2026. On our first day, we cycled about 87 km from my home, to a ferry that could take us across the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria to its south side. The distance was one thing. The last leg being in an increasingly hot sun, was another. We set off at 6.10am, and arrived at the lakeside at 11.30am, having over-stretched ourselves a little.
There are two islands off Mbita, on the south of the Gulf. We spent the first night on Rusinga Island. The following morning, we cycled around the perimeter road. We got wise to the hot sun – and spent it on a ferry to Mfangano island, and then in having a siesta! At 3 pm we set off on the 25 or so km around Mfangano island. Much of this was rocky and steep ups and downs. Both these islands to an extent, but especially Mfangano, came across as being places of much poverty.
4th February, it took us till 10.30 am to get back to the north of the Winam Gulf using two ferries. This time we split the journey from the lakeside-to home over two days. About 9.45 am on the 5th Feb., we arrived back at my home.
It was great to have had a travel companion. I found my match when it comes to long-distance cycling! This was a great experience, as all too often it’s hard to do things with visitors unless they are pretty bold and capable on bicycles. Gord is a missionary. The next time we get together, we may do some ministry and visiting of churches.
Mfangano and Rusinga islands in the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria.
1½ year old baby girl, offers to carry 10-month baby boy on her back!
We were all intrigued, but I guess I more than most, when in front of me (and others), a 1½ year old African girl indicated that she should be given a 10 month old baby, being carried by his mother, to carry on her back! You might wonder, how did she indicate that? By body movements including pointing to her back, bending, and gesticulating!
Theological Education that Makes Sense Locally in Africa
Things are picking up globally, in terms of recognition of the need for theological education in Africa to be locally relevant. This is a drum that I have been beating for a long time. This year I am getting invitations to help to inform people on the contingencies of theological education in Africa. I can build insights on over 30 years of theological teaching in indigenous languages. That’s rare. Pray for me to be able to speak into this debate, in conferences, podcasts, articles and so on. Pray for scholars, mission and church leaders to realise the urgency of the situation and the parameters of understanding that are needed. (11th February, a Podcast. March 24th, a wide-reaching discussion organized by the World Evangelical Alliance, and so on.)
Mum
Mum is now back in a home. She spends many awake hours walking around, sitting in one chair after another. She continues to need one on one care.
Health
Please pray for me to have a full recovery from a bout of diarrhea that’s been troubling me for almost a week now.
Trust and Vulnerability in Taking in Orphans
(A description of the way in which Jim, with the help of a Kenyan housemother, looked after a total of about 30 orphan children, over a period of about 30 years.)
The foundation on which I have looked after orphan children, has from the beginning been one of trust and vulnerability. This includes, my own vulnerability to the children. In short, as soon as a child was accepted to join my home, they would very quickly realise, that they had the power to damage what we were doing. They could destroy my reputation, and that of the housemother. This immediately required a child to be responsible. In every case, once given the option of being responsible, a child would choose the responsible option. That is, no child has ever (to my knowledge) gone out of their way to seek to undermine those of us looking after him or her, by telling tales on myself or the housemother.
This way of looking after children, I consider to be a profound blessing. Even very young children who have come to stay in my home, have very soon realized that they are members of a caring family. In a sense, this was a way of giving every child the ‘leadership’ of the home; They could build, or they could destroy. Immediately children felt trusted. Very quickly, they felt at home. They liked to be with us. They chose to build rather than to destroy.
The above way of looking after children, required being trustworthy. Mechanisms of accountability were very finely tuned. If I, for example, as father of the home, were to have undermined the trust put in me by abusing a child in some way, then I would have been empowering the child to bring me to wreck and ruin. I thus put myself into a system in which I needed to respond to children with love and accountability. The same for the housemother. This worked wonderfully for 28 full years.
I am not claiming that we did not have issues. Many issues no doubt simmered, some that I knew about, others that I did not know about. In a few cases, a child would get in touch with a relative and convince the relative to take them away again from my home. That was also a part of our ‘vulnerability’. We (myself and the housemother) had no legal or other hold on a child. The only way to convince a child to stay on an ongoing basis, was to do things in such a way that a child would want to stay. As soon as a child’s relative got involved on behalf of a child, in other words, we were powerless against that relative.
All the above mechanisms served us very well for, as I say, well over two decades. I think my reader will appreciate the difficulty I immediately had when ‘safeguarding policies’ from the UK were legally mandated to all Brits globally. In short, I did not know how to transform my home from one of trust and vulnerability, into one of never being vulnerable to any accusations a child might want to make. Now that is not to deny, that not to trust someone, and not to make oneself vulnerable to them, has its own logic. This logic can seem especially advisable, when taking in unknown foreign (to me) children. Many of the children I took in, had already gone through rough experiences. Some had learned to fight for their corner. Does one really want to stake one’s whole missionary career on the whim of such a child? Yes, was my answer.
Indeed, other people can ruin us. I cannot deny that. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the best way to live with other people is by putting up shields. By making yourself invulnerable to their attacks. People are more complicated than that. Making yourself vulnerable to people’s attacks can be a way of deterring them from attacking. In short – people love to be trusted, and it is very healthy to have to trust people. An orphan child, in my mind, ought to be brought into such a relationship of trust and vulnerability. That is true family. It is the true family of God. It is the way that follows the grace that Jesus showed to us.
Just to add, part of fulfilling the above, was for our home language to be local and African. I could not make my home into a means for convincing children that Europeans and their ways and their languages were better than the ways of their parents and grandparents. Neither could I afford to make out that I had a lot of time or money with which to look after children. The latter I believe would also have caused our way of life to falter and fall. What we could do, was to make it very clear, that myself and the housemother, were people under authority. The authority of Christ. We did things as far as we could in a Christian way.
The Days Ahead
Please pray for my anticipated trip, to arrive in Tanzania on 14th February. I am to teach a course on the Holy Spirit there, at a Mennonite Bible college, for two weeks. Before that, today 10th February, I have two meetings connected to the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission (over zoom). Tomorrow, God willing, I am to record a podcast.
Jim