end-month news March 2026

Dear Friends,
Please find various news items below.

Luo Teaching
Here is the small crowd I was with on 2nd to 5th March for a Wednesday evening meal. Alex is my student who is learning the Luo language, first on the left. His wife is taking the picture.

Back in Kenya
After 20 days in Tanzania, I arrived back to a physically transformed Kenya, on 5th March. 3 weeks earlier the river had been low, and everything dry. When I got back, the river was high, and everything wet! Give thanks that this has enabled farmers to plant their crops earlier than usual. Pray that the rains continue sufficiently for the crops to mature. We are having a lot of rain to date.

A Day in the Life of …
Here’s an example of what is in some ways a ‘typical’ day for me in Kenya …
My ‘research project’ at the moment is Biblical Interpretation, which I am to teach using Swahili in Tanzania in two months’ time. I spent some of my early morning reading up for this. I then determined to visit two church members. The man of the first family had been attacked by a crowbar and beaten over the head by a hammer 2.5 years ago. He is still in pain in different parts of his head, he tells me. I prayed for him and his family. One son has apparently already committed suicide, and a remaining son is in deep economic straits at his university, two day’s travel from here. I then went to visit the family of a lady from Eastern Kenya. I had not been able to see her since she lost her mother back in December. Today I was able to share a Gospel message with her (she is a member of my home church) and a daughter and a daughter-in-law. (The husband and son were around, but didn’t join us.)
I then had more opportunity to do reading back at home, before going to my local town of Yala and continuing my research having ordered a light lunch. I set off for a fellowship, near Yala, about 2.45pm, arriving just as the heavens opened. I got wet, but not enough to deter me from sharing a message rooted in Leviticus 18 and 19. 6 people came forward for prayer. The lady of the home, who lost her husband a month ago, had prepared a large meal for many more people than showed up. (The rain stopped many from coming.) I cycled for home, reaching home at about 17.30hours, to do more research for my teaching, and in order to write this account.

‘Jim the Evangelist’
A few months ago, a British pastor asked me what my work actually is. I said a part of it is ‘evangelism’. Then I reflected ‘am I really an evangelist?’ Very recently a bishop said to me ‘you are not an evangelist’. In a way, I agree with him, in a way not. Discussing a recent church experience I’ve had with a colleague, my (American) colleague said ‘that’s a unique opportunity for evangelism’!
Some of my opportunities for evangelism arise, because I go where others would not dare to tread! Some gatherings I attend are, on British-Christian reckoning, way beyond the pale. That is, for example, in ways in which they consult with ancestors. Or, in the ways in which they do healing, by hitting people with sticks, making them dizzy so that they fall down, telling them to run around the building, etc. The very non-orthodoxy of these contexts means that opportunities I get to share God’s Word with these people, are of the very nature of evangelism. So, I am often an ‘evangelist’, more because of my positioning, than because of my charisma.

Podcast
This podcast, produced as a you tube video by myself, is of Jim being interviewed on questions related to the need for theological education in the Majority World today. The last 20 minutes are a discussion of the interview by Dave Datema and Andy Bettencourt of the Missions Drop podcast of Frontier Ventures.

Jim