Kings Family CMS Link Letter 9, July 1988
by Graham Kings
Date added: 29/12/2023
Boniface Ntunene, from Marsabit, is one of our first year students and is the first we have had from the Rendille people. This tribe comes from the dry area of Northern Kenya. In 1988 our Assistant Bishop, Bob Beak (of BCMS, another Anglican missionary society) preached the new news of the gospel with Rendille evangelists at Kargi.
Last month, 23 people were baptised there. Women had responded first but baptism had been delayed till the elders of the community had thought through the implications of commitment. Some time ago, they had prayed to the Lord for water. After the evangelist had gone, they had dug deep into a dried-up river bed, near the three where they had been praying – and they found water. That tree is now their church and the people were baptised with the water which had answered their prayers.
The Vicar of Marsabit, Alexander Cendi, and his Deaconess wife, Joyce, are from the Kikuyu tribe around Kabare. They graduated from St Andrew’s Institute six months after we arrived in 1985 and have adapted well to the challenges of cross-cultural mission. We would value your prayers as we cross back into English culture for six months.
We have given up calling it ‘leave’ and now refer to our six months in England, from August 1988 to January 1989, as a ‘missionary tour’.
We feel very much that we shall be mission partners sent out by the Bishop from this diocese back to our own country to share in God’s mission there. It will be great to be with our family and friends again - and that is a priority – but we shall also be visiting our 10 link churches and trying to pass on the exciting joy of the African gospel.
In the Institute this term, I have been using role play for teaching biblical studies. Hans Reudi Weber’s scripts in his Experiments with Bible Study (SCM Press, 1983) are brilliant. This has been very exciting as the students begin to feel and experience some of the emotions of the biblical passages. In discovering together the different Jewish parties of Jesus’ day, the students were divided into four groups: Sadducees (conservative establishment priests); Pharisees (pietistic lay people); Zealots (violent freedom fighters); and Essenes (monastic pacifists).
They spent some time getting into their roles, with the help of notes, really becoming Sadducees etc and then discussed whether Jesus could join their group. Later, they all came together in a square, with the Sadducees seated opposite the Pharisees and the Zealots opposite the Essenes. They argued fiercely together whether Jesus could join any particular group. Learning involving emotions, as well as the intellect, seems to go much deeper than mere head knowledge.
Alison has contributed two pages on subsistence farming in Kenya for a new GCSE geography text book by Keith Grimwade, Discover Human Geography (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988). Do rush out and buy it, for Keith is our brother-in-law and besides you will see photos of Faith Wanjiku’s farm – Faith helps us in the house.
Miriam has started nursery school at the bottom of the hill and goes down for an hour after two hours of home school. Katie’s bedroom is at the front of our house, near the hen run. Recently, she has been perfecting a fine imitation of our cockerel.
Gideon Ireri, the former Principal who returned from Yale, USA, with his Master’s degree, has just been inducted as the first Provost of our Cathedral in Embu. Moses Mwangi, at present Director of Academic Studies, will be Acting Principal while we are away and two clergymen, who have recently finished their theological degrees in Kenya, are joining the staff here. So, for the first time, our theological staff will number five. This is very encouraging.
I wrote the following poem during a retreat near the Ngong Hills, south of Nairobi, in a Jesuit retreat house, Mwangaza.
PRAYER STOOL
I leave aside my shoes, my ambitions;
undo my watch, my timetable;
take off my glasses, my views;
unclip my pen, my work;
put down my keys, my security;
to be alone with you, the only true God.
After being with you,
I take up my shoes to walk in your ways;
strap on my watch to live in your time;
put on my glasses to look at your world;
clip on my pen to write up your thoughts;
pick up my keys to open your doors.
May the Lord continue to bless you and your churches. We are looking forward to being with you soon.
