Jesus Christians Newsletter #116, October 2009THE INTERNET
The biggest news this month is that we have a new forum! Well, it's all the
same old posts, but with a whole new format, and a point system, which can be
used to buy rewards from our reward page. But to get to the forum, you now
have to go to our homepage: [
jesuschristians.com]
and click on the "forum" button at the top of the page.
Please do come, join, and post.
New articles on our web site include ones on Forgiveness, and Non-Violence.
You can see them here:
[
cust.idl.net.au]
[
cust.idl.net.au]
THE U.S.
Things have settled down somewhat on the legal front. A settlement was reached
with Joe's step-brother, John, and a permanent restraining order against him
has been approved by the courts.
Unfortunately, Sheila and Jared both evaded a dozen attempts by sheriffs to
serve them with a notice to appear at the hearing. Sheila is now contacting
relatives of other members, in an attempt to cause further problems for the
community.
The L.A. team had a nice visit from Grace and Eric. Grace showed that she
hasn't lost her touch, getting out more than 50 books in an hour and a half;
several members went on a dumpster dive with the two of them, and they all
enjoyed some nice food and fellowship as well.
We have had a major set-back with a shipment of 50,000 "More Than Just a Band"
DVDs from India. Even though the DVD is our own, we overlooked the fact that
the company producing it probably does pirated DVDs (which are all the rage in
India), and so Customs seized the shipment in California, wanting proof that we
had them printed by a licensed DVD producer. We are now pleading with them to
see if we can keep the DVDs from being destroyed. Please pray that things work
out with that.
Jeremy's twin brother, Jayme, has returned from a prolonged stint working with
a team in the UK and Ireland. The US guys are all excited to have him back.
KENYA
Teaching English resumed in Kenya after the holidays. Two more teachers are
close to winning prizes, but the deadline for achieving their goal is very
close!
Two new volunteers have arrived: a Kenyan man from Karl's area, and a Dutch
woman (who brought us some fabulous Dutch cheese - so of course we made pizza).
We had a one-day work camp with 25 volunteers from a Kenyan organisation. Ten
different nationalities were represented. They worked in the garden, fixed
fences, repaired books for the reading program, organised sets of flash cards,
did some painting and helped care for the animals. It was a great day and a
half. They also enjoyed sleeping on mattresses and Simon's Special Spaghetti!
(No, they didn't sleep on Simon's spaghetti!)
Simon has also been busy preparing artwork for a revamp of some of the early
readers. Christine has worked with Simon to produce some excellent artwork.
Robin and Fran have been putting in long hours on a complete revamp of our web
site, which includes points for various activities on the site, and a "reward
page" where people can "spend" their points to get some interesting JC
memorabilia.
A school in Australia donated $1600 for a water pump and toilet block for a
school in Kenya. Fran has been busy supervising the work, which is now almost
completed.
Giddy has recently enlisted the help of another Kenyan (Tim) to get the books
out in Nairobi, and Casey continues to get out about 800 books a week on top of
all his other commitments. A pinched (sciatic?) nerve in his hip has hampered
his marathon training, although he is still planning to have a go at the
marathon.
Bob, Karl, Fran and Simon went on a successful outreach to Nakuru, which is on
the road to Nairobi. Other weekly distributing forays to Eldoret and Kitale
have also been very succesful for the participating teams.
Karl's ankle is recovering from when he severed his tendon some months ago and
he has recently started running in our phantom race competition again. He is
still not at full strength, but has been able to improve his time each week.
Unfortunately, the heavy rains have turned our track into a steeple-chase,
creating a rather large pool of water on one corner.
We're still getting a bucket of chokos each day from our one choko vine. Kim
has invented a halfway decent 'choko crumble' to use some of it, but we also
share it with neighbours.
We harvested some of our arrowroot plants, and have a few new chicks, with two
dozen more eggs being sat on by a couple of hens! It wasn't really our plan to
have so many chicks but we were a bit late in organising a chicken dinner out
of our young roosters!
Pipes are finally being laid to provide piped water for our village. It will
be a few months before it is up and running, but we ourselves will not be
dependent on it, as we have plenty of rain water tanks at our centre.
Millions of Kenyans are still relying on relief food due to prolonged droughts
in parts of the country, with thousands of head of cattle dying every week due
to lack of available grazing areas. Nevertheless, heavier than usual rains are
expected to hit the country in a few weeks, causing further devastation as it
floods areas and washes away the dusty top soil.
AUSTRALIA
Barry has suffered a relapse of pain due to the slipped disc in his back. He
had to see the doctor for steroid injections and had to go to hospital when the
pain was most severe. He had to spend a lot of time lying flat on his back,
although things have improved over the past week. Please pray for him.
Dave has been working with the Kenya team to re-write some of the Easy English
books to make the transition from the easy readers to the longer books easier.
They hope to have six new books ready by the end of the year.
THE U.K. AND IRELAND
We have just taken delivery of another 50,000 DVDs, printed within the U.K.
This greatly speeds up the turn-around time from order to delivery, and may be
the way to go in future.
Alf and Alan had a pleasant visit with Alan's youngest sister (he has six
sisters) and also with Alf's mother and her partner. Alf went on a 5 mile run
with his mother who was training for a work charity event.
Paul and Ulrike had another nice visit with an Irish couple in their 80s who
have been quite supportive. They have distributed many of our books to their
friends.
In the Republic of Ireland they visited a young father with four children who,
with his wife, is preparing to live more simply. They have been fellowshipping
with Mennonites. He is also going out to meet people on the streets in order
to share his faith.
Paul and Ulrike also had a couple of friendly visits with Dearbhla who met us
on the internet.