JESUS CHRISTIANS NEWSLETTER #94, NOVEMBER, 2007
ENGLISH READING PROGRAM
We are reaching the end of the reading program at the schools where
we have been working for the past six months. There will be a
special ceremony at each school, at which students who have completed
the first ten books in the series will receive a special prize. For
those schools where 10% or more of the students have won a prize,
every student in the school will receive a new book as well. It has
been a pleasure to work at these schools this year and to get to know
the kids at each of them.
After a long wait, we have finally taken delivery of some new Easy
English titles. They include "Travel The Planet", which is an easy
reader story about two Kenyan women who travel the world; "The
Merchant of Venice", including both the original Shakespearean text
and the translation into Easy English; the Easy English version of
"Survivors"; and a new enlarged edition of the Big Easy English
Dictionary which includes pronunciation guides and examples of usage
for most of the words.
Boni and Andrew, two friends who distribute books to schools outside
of our area, have had a very successful run in the neighbouring
province of Nyanza. Due to the high demand for books, we have
actually run out of junior novels, and are now just offering the Easy
Reader sets for beginners and the Senior Sets, which include novels
such as Uncle Tom's Cabin and Tom Sawyer.
We were shocked to hear a nursery teacher at one of the schools teach
the children to recite the following corruption of a saying from the
"Easy English Book of Good Sayings": God made man; man made money;
and money made man happy! The original saying ends with 'money made
man mad'. It seems this has been changed on purpose to instill a
desire for material wealth in the children, and it is a sad
reflection on the world in which we live. We have written a letter
to the school asking them to consider the implications of such a
teaching.
BASKETBALL TEAMS
With the help of a few volunteers, Joe has started teaching
basketball classes at two different schools. The classes are going
very well with keen interest from the students. Although most of the
students are playing the game for the first time, Joe is enjoying
teaching them the basic skills and watching their progress at each
session. The students themselves are also pretty enthusiastic. We
hope to eventually organize matches between different schools, once
the students are competent enough with the game.
RABBITS
We introduced our female rabbits to the male, and they quickly got to
"know" each other in the biblical sense of the word! Karl has built
another six hutches, which will come in handy once they give birth.
We hope to give rabbits to the older orphans so they can learn to
raise them as a way of providing some meat with their maize and
sukuma wiki.
VISITORS
Last month we had several international as well as local volunteers
participate in our programs. It was inspiring to work with so many
different people from so many different backgrounds.
We also held a special board meeting with the overseers of Takatifu
Gardens so that we could discuss various projects planned for the
upcoming December school holidays.
AUSTRALIAN QUAKERS
At a regional meeting of Quakers in Australia, in Dave and Cherry's
absence, yet another attack was made on them by Jenny Madeline. Her
complaint was sent to the Regional Meeting Ministry and Oversight
Committee to take unspecified action. The complaint is understood to
have been in relation to an agreement by Dave and Cherry not to
publish personal emails from Friends on the Jesus Christian website.
Somehow this was taken to mean that they could not include the
transcript of a conversation Christine had with a non-member a few
months ago.
Another shock was an attempt to block Ross and Ash, who are regular
attenders, from being present at the meeting itself, even though
attenders have never been refused permission to attend regional
meetings before, since many attenders have held official positions at
that level, including meeting clerks! It is clear from all of this
that the war on the Jesus Christians is far from over.
We have now compiled a very long list of posts from a Quaker private
detective, who has been stalking Dave and Cherry on the Internet for
that past few months... from the time of the phone conversation
mentioned above. You can read the transcript of the phone
conversation, but what follows it is even more startling, as this
Australian Quaker sets about to methodically destroy the Jesus
Christians, content in the belief that his identity would never be
discovered.
Here is the link:
[
welikejesus.com]
NEW ARTICLE
Visit our web site (www.jesuschristians.com) and see the latest
article, called "Walking in the Dark", which deals with the subject
of publicity and the media.