AN ENCOURAGING SUNDAY

Welcome screen displayed at the Children's Day on Sunday morning

These past few weeks have been busy as we have been responsible for sharing in a number of Children's Day Services here in Northern.  On Sunday past we returned to a Church in Londonderry for one of these services.  We had shared here back in November both in the Sunday School and Morning Service.  Throughout the year, the children of the Sunday School have been learning about the work of Feed my Lambs and also what life is like for children in Kenya and Uganda.  They also partnered with a School in Nairobi whereby names were exchanged and the children in both places prayed for each other. On one particular Sunday the children completed some of our Bible Lessons so they could learn first hand just what the children in Africa have to do in order to be presented with a Bible from us. 

The children  worked hard at bringing an offering all year and raised an amazing amount for Bibles.  In fact it was one of the biggest gifts ever received in the history of FML.  William received the cheque and brought a little update from the work and partnering school and I (Pamela) shared a children's story/talk from the Bible using the Kenyan Safari as my theme. 

A big thank you to the Church, Sunday School Teachers, Parents and the children themselves for their interest and dedication throughout the year and for their faithfulness in praying for us all. 

We enjoyed this service and previous children's day services.  We are looking forward to attending (and relaxing while others do the speaking) more children's day services for family and our home Church over the next few weeks.  Pray for the many children who will hear God's Word and indeed family members who perhaps only attend God's house for these special events.

Pray on for Joyce.  When I called her a few days ago she was in our office working away marking lessons.  I could hear her little boy in the background.  She has to mark for many centres and has very little help.  One Pastor who marks in other areas in Uganda has been in hospital for a number of weeks now.  He is now well enough to leave but cannot be discharged due to the fact he does not have enough funds to pay the bill.  Please pray that this need will be met.   We currently have 23 centres in Uganda doing our lessons.  A centre could be a Church, School, Feeding Centre, Children's Home or other group.  Joyce is also responsible for 15 centres in Western Kenya.   Just over 700 Bibles are needed for children in Uganda.

Eunice has continued to be very busy in Nairobi.  Here are some extracts from her report which was sent through for last week:

Received Lesson 6 from Church 1 and gave out lesson 7 to them.

Received Lesson 1 and 3 from Church 2 and marked these.

Gave 20 copies each of Lesson 4,5,6 and 7.

Received application form from Church 3

Marked and recorded lessons for Church 4

She has also been counting lessons and doing a stock take on what we still have available as well as welcoming visitors and communicating with myself.    Some lessons are beginning to run low and we don't anticipate new lessons to arrive for another 5 - 6 months.  This is a matter for prayer.  These are just a few of the centres she has dealt with over the past week and some of them have large numbers of children doing the lessons.   It is a busy office.   She tells me that we currently have 911 centres on our books in Kenya and we need 1170 Bibles in this specific country.

In another area in Kenya we need much wisdom as week to appoint a new representative who can co-ordinate the work there.  The person needs to be saved and called of God to serve with us; committed; with a burden for children; prepared to live largely by faith with minimal support; willing to be trained and to learn and be good at communicating with our head office in Nairobi and also with us here in Northern Ireland.  Pray that we will be very clearly led to the right person.

Pray that the Lord will continue to help us personally.  William is very busy with work at the moment and I will be helping at the Holiday Bible School in our home Church next week.  I also have to prepare a children's talk for a Sunday over the Summer.   My nephew will be finishing school for the Summer too, which means a few weeks of not being in the office but doing some work from the house for FML while he is with me.   This means I have a lot to do this week before this happens.   During the Summer he will go on his family holiday and I will then have longer hours in the office as he won't be in after school.  Then there will be another few weeks of reduced office hours before he goes back to school.  So there's a bit of juggling over the Summer holidays, but it is always lovely to have some time with the children in our own family too!  William and I are also looking forward to a few days completely off work at a couple of different times throughout the summer. 

Finally, just to let you know that our next clothes collection will take place next Wednesday 24th June.  If you are in Northern Ireland and have any unwanted new or used clothes, shoes, bedding, belts, bags, curtains etc. then please do make an effort to send them our way before then or to arrange for us to collect them.  If you miss the deadline, don't worry, we collect on an ongoing basis so please just drop them when you can.

Many thanks for your continued prayers.

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