PROGRESS
- John Kinlaw
- Jan 29
- 4 min read
Happy New Year to Everyone! We are doing well out here in northwest Tanzania :) We are seeing progress in some areas of ministry which has been very encouraging.
Progress is a wonderful thing, especially when things have moved slowly for a long time! We praise the Lord!
In Kizenga we are seeing some "progress" which is really spiritual fruit. This small village assembly is still weak, with one elder, and few adults, but we are seeing some of the saints stepping up in various ways. One young man is opening the church and leading the Sunday School each Sunday. Another is attending Luke Johnson's Bible school in town, and others are cleaning and contributing in other ways. Praise the Lord for this fruit!
Many of the village assemblies are very small, have one or if fortunate two elders, and few have the Lord's Supper. We introduced the Lord's Supper earlier this year, and we are so encouraged at how they have adjusted and are contributing to the worship. After Sunday School, we set up the benches in a circle, prepare the emblems, and have the Lord's Supper. Such a sweet time together each week as we remember the Lord Jesus.
Another area where we are seeing progress is the building of the wall around Camp Nuru! We have over 600 meters of wall to build to get the property closed in and protected from theft. It has been an amazing stretch of progress out there, and we are so thankful to the Lord for this blessing.
"In Africa, if you do not have a wall, you will have nothing at all." ~ John Kinlaw
The red shows the section of wall that is completed, the green shows the section in progress, and the orange is the section not yet started. We are officially over half way done with this enormous wall project! We have had our share of challenges and spiritual warfare out there and have persevered through it all. Spiritual warfare over a block wall? Absolutely! We are in such a spiritually dark area, and we know this Camp will be a tremendous blessing to many who live here. The devil knows it too and is opposing it on every side. Please pray for us as you think about Camp Nuru.
The security guard found this witchcraft on the door of the storage building one morning this week. Things like this, along with false accusations from neighbors, slander, deception in pricing, jealousy of workers etc... are all the ways Satan is working to disrupt the progress of this work that will one day in the near future bring forth MUCH FRUIT.
We are beginning to dig out and chop up this little root ball which happens to be right on the boundary line and where the wall must go through (as colored in on the map). Unfortunately it is not all that "little"! (see below). There are no machines in Kigoma that can help us, so we will do it the old fashioned way with an axe and pick-axe!
Thankfully, the rains have not been destructive since before Christmas, and has allowed us to make much progress!
The Emmaus ministry has grown tremendously over the past year. I introduced these courses as a great discipleship tool to a fellow missionary, and he has been using them also. His ministry has also grown, and I am training a few of his local partners to grade and order courses. Between the courses being taken into the prisons, the courses we are taking down the lake to different villages, and the courses my fellow missionary is taking to the area he is working in, we have had our hands full.
Seeing the fruit on the ministry trips to these areas is amazing, but there is a TON of behind the scenes work like grading, recording, and ordering that goes along with it.
Please pray for the Lord to provide good graders for us! Gerald and I are the only 2, plus the one I am training right now :)
One other area of progress we are seeing is in getting Grace the proper identification and visa to return to the US with us for a furlough. We completed the court process back in December, and now Grace is officially and lawfully our adopted child on the Tanzania side. We applied for and received her new birth certificate. We had to travel to Dar to apply for her Tanzanian passport in person, which was done 2 weeks ago. Progress!
(Below Grace adoring JJ from (while in Dar) :)
The US citizenship process will take between 2-3 years. As we wait, we were planning to apply for a tourist visa for her, but there was a recent VISA BAN on many countries and Tanzania was included. After the ban, there was a freeze on ALL tourist visas of any kind in Tanzania, which made it impossible to even apply. We recently received word that there is now an exception for families involved in adoption! Progress! Once we receive the passport, we will apply for a visa from the US Embassy in Dar Es Salaam.
We are continuing to homeschool 4 children, manage a 2 year old, and Jennifer is working on her Masters in Midwifery! It doesn't always feel like progress, but somehow we continue to get things done :)
John will be speaking at the CMML-26 Below conference in late March, and will either return with Sam and Katie, or we all will go with Grace if she is granted a visa.
We thank you all so much for your prayers and support!
We miss you all so much and look forward to a visit in the near future.
~ The Kinlaws
Prayer Requests:
Please pray for the spiritual growth at the Kizenga chapel.
Please pray for the protection and provision of Camp Nuru.
Please pray for the Emmaus ministry, for more graders, and for the many students studying the Word of God.
Please pray for Grace to be granted a tourist visa to allow us to return for a furlough.
Please pray for Jennifer for her studies and our children for their various schooling needs.
Please pray for John as he manages the Camp construction, Emmaus ministry, Kizenga work, maktabaa, and security guards here on our compound.
Comments