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 good news – the Kenyan government is encouraging me to take my children back! 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.
Most Amazing – children back home!
Those who have followed my news shots, beginning with my mid-April 2025 news (posted here: jim-mission.org.uk), will know that I have been under criminal investigation, on suspicion that I have been abusing, trafficking, and/or grooming children. This investigation was launched from the UK. It was passed on to a specialized division of the Kenyan police, who showed up in force at my rural Kenyan home on 26th March this year. The investigation has produced considerable disruption in my life and ministry, especially in its sending children who I had been looking after for many years, away to relatives.
It is my understanding that the investigation was considered justified because I appeared to be breaking UK safeguarding regulations, that I am subject to even while living here in Africa. I was not able to keep those regulations, as the UK instituted them while I was already looking after children in my home. Chasing away or running away from children, many of whom I had looked after for 10 years plus, was beyond me. There was no provision (known to me) in the regulations for someone in my position. I could not find anyone to even talk to me about my predicament.
I have not been able to just forget the children who I had been rearing. Particular ones are very much in my mind, such as an 18-year-old full-orphan lad who is ‘unstable’ … I consistently had a home for him since he was a boy. This helped him. But now, the investigation happened, and the government itself chased him away from the family he had known. There was nothing I could do, that would not implicate me in contravening government laws. Then there was a girl, aged 16 ½, false-name Clarice, full orphan, who had stayed with me for 11 years. She also was told she must leave, when her final secondary school exams were just 18 months away.
It was ‘now or never’. My other children were pleading – ‘take Clarice back’! We discussed it. ‘I can’t,’ I said ‘I am not allowed to look after children under 18 years old!’
Meanwhile I was corresponding with my UK MP, back and fore. (See some of our discussion at the end of this newsletter.) I told him the problem. Kenyan rules were different from British rules. If Kenyans allowed me to take Clarice back, could I then not do so because of British safeguarding regulations? The contexts, the arrangements, the underlying principles, the rules, the concerns, are SO different between Kenya and UK! ‘You must consult the police in Kenya,’ my MP advised. Ahh! At last, some hope! The Kenyan police had no issue with me. They were primarily concerned to do what Britain told them to, but they also had some independence. I asked the police officer who had led the investigation, ‘can I take a 16 ½ year old girl back? It’s now or never, as she has to register for her final exams at the school near where I now live.’ ‘In the light of that urgency,’ he responded ‘yes, if others are in agreement, take her back!’
Well, others were in agreement. But there was one more person I really had to check with. She had been adamant – that no way could I ever stay with Kenyan children again. (At the time, she had been misinformed, perhaps now she would listen to me?)’ I cycled 10 miles to her office. She wasn’t there. Perhaps in humour over the phone she said ‘cycle another 15 miles to where I am. It’s not far!’ I did! I found her in the county office. Talking to her I detected an appreciation for this white man who had devoted his life to rearing their (African) children. ‘You should take her back,’ she said ‘and you should also take the others back!’ she added. ‘Particularly the [above-mentioned] 18-year-old lad.’
With some urgency, we talked to chiefs, sub-chiefs, village headmen, and police officers! A few days ago, Clarice came home. The next day, we transferred her to a new school. One orphan girl restored to her (adoptive) family!! Give thanks.
There is more to this story. The Kenyan government is trying to have orphan children reared in communities rather than in orphanages. The model they are looking at is fostering. 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 on the phone!’ ‘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 children,’ she was told. So, ironically, while still under criminal investigation because I was looking after children, I am being encouraged to take children back into my home, while having a professional foster parent as part of the household, to formally take on the immediate responsibility. Give thanks to God!
In am making further provision so as to comply with UK safeguarding regulations.
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.
Discussion with UK Member of Parliament
Below is my email to my UK MP, followed by his response.
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Dear Mr. Malthouse,
Thanks for this letter. …
I still of course have not had any response re. the dilemma I was in, namely that I was supposed to take on safeguarding to ensure that I not be alone with children, while I was rearing local orphan children in my home.
I have one outstanding case of a 16 year old child, for whom I had taken full responsibility, full orphan, who is very keen to come back home. Having stayed with her for 11 years, there is some legal backing in Kenya for her being allowed to come back. I don’t know if UK safeguarding law can withstand / permit that? (Of course, I do not live alone, but with the same Kenyan ladies who were with me before, who will take immediate responsibility for the girl.)
Thanks,
Jim
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Here was the response from him:
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Dear Mr Harries
Thank you for your further email.
…
You must consult the police in Kenya.
With best wishes
Kit Malthouse
Member of Parliament for North West Hampshire
House of Commons | Westminster | London SW1A 0AA
Tel 020 7219 4620
www.kitmalthouse.com
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Best wishes to all. Many thanks for all your prayers, right now especially for Mum.
Jim