June 2015
Raburns’ Departure
We started the month with saying good-bye to
Lynn and Brenda Raburn. They were with us for two months. Brother Lynn worked
very hard while he was with us preaching, teaching, and encouraging the
churches. We are very thankful to be partnering with Lynn and Brenda with World
Missions Ministry and for their partnership here with East Kenya Missions. The
classes that Brother Lynn recorded on video in the past and continues to do in
Swahili are awesome. Through the videos, he and Brenda continue to be a part of
EKM even when they are on the other side of the world. Please pray for the
Raburns as they continue to labor for missionaries and missions globally. Also,
don’t forget that the World Missions Seminar dates have changed for 2016. The
seminar will be held April 11-22 at Faith BC, North Little Rock.
516 Missions Preparations
John, Clayton, and I have been
investing a lot of time on planning and preparing for the 516 Missions team that
will be with us in July. The team will be working with the new church in
Midiani and missionary pastor, Elly. We will be doing a sports camp at the
school that is a quarter of a mile walk from the church, putting in a
baptistery, and building a roof for the church. We have been working with Elly
on plans and communicating with Brother Mike Vickers, who will be coming on the
team, about supplies for building the roof.
Ben Higginbotham will be leading the team this year and has prepared the
team on the U.S. side.
We
are very excited to come alongside Grace BC, Midiani and Pastor Elly. Elly has
done a great work in Midiani, and it has truly been awesome to see the
Indigenous principle in action through Elly. He and the church in Miritini, and
now in Midiani, have a vision and a heart for the gospel being preached. We are
hopeful that the 516 team and EKM team partnering with them to do this camp
will encourage and energize them.
Furlough Preparations
We have spent much of this month
making preparations for furlough. There is a lot that goes into shutting things
down here and getting things ready on the U.S. side. We are blessed to have a
team of support both on the ground here and at our sending church Pauline BC to
help us. We will be departing July 23 right after the 516 Missions Team leaves.
We will be in the States for almost a full year for our furlough. During our
furlough, we will be seeing family and visiting supporting churches. I will be
attending the Missionary Baptist Seminary working on my Masters Degree, and our
children will be attending school in Monticello.
Ben Higginbotham has been working
with several others in our church to get us set up in Monticello, AR. He has
also been communicating with folks in the school system to help us know what we
need to do to register the kids. Mrs. Paula Gathings from our sending church is
providing our family with a place to call home while on furlough, and we cannot
say thank you enough! Our church has also bought us a vehicle to use while we
are in the states. We are so blessed to have Pauline BC as our sending church
and friends who believe in what God is doing through this ministry, helping us
and sacrificing to see it succeed.
The
team here on the ground has also been helping us prepare
for furlough. I am so thankful to Brother John Strader for his hard work, many
hours, and patience to help us put together a presentation that we can use in the
churches to show all that God has done the past three years. Also I am grateful
for our Missionary Helper, Ashley Johnston, and all the hours of work she has
put into making picture books that we can put on display as we visit churches.
We appreciate Clayton connecting us with his mother-in-law, Tammy, to help with
our prayer cards and magnets. We praise God for everyone on the team here and how
they have come together to help us with presentation preparation and even
packing up our house.
PO
Box 299 Monticello, AR 71657
James Taylor PO Box 811 Malindi,
Kenya 80200
Phone
011-254-713289014 missionarytaylor@gmail.com
Taylor Tribe
We said goodbye to old friends and hello to new
friends at the beginning of this month.
Lynn and Brenda left at the beginning of the month and then we enjoyed
hosting our new friends from Garissa.
The guys met the Witt family while they surveyed the North and invited
them to come for a visit. They have four
very sweet little girls who played till they were exhausted with our
kiddos. We had such a wonderful
time. Jason is quite the chef. He cooked several excellent meals for us; and
Rebekah his wife was so kind and easy going, we hit it off first thing. We spent a full week with them enjoying
fellowship, some worship time, and even picking their brains about reaching the
unreached in their area. My only regret
is that we won’t be here this next year to get to know them better. We do, however, look forward to the next year
when we will be able to meet up again with them as we look to our future
ministry in the North.
We had lots of birthday cake and ice cream this
month. James celebrated his birthday on
June 7. We had cake and ice cream that
evening after fixing him some barbecue ribs.
Josiah’s birthday was on June 8, so we had a sort of retro Super Mario
Bros. video game party. I made his cake
to look like an old Nintendo game controller.
Our whole team dressed up like characters from the video game. I love that our team gets together to do
silly things like dress up and be creative.
It’s a fun way to step out of work mode and just enjoy our
fellowship. Next we celebrated Ashley’s
birthday. Ashley has actually celebrated
3 birthdays in Kenya. Ashley loves
anything nerdy, so we made that the theme of the party. It was very fitting for the teacher. We all dressed like nerds and I spent the
whole day making a cake that was the periodic table. It was a lot of work, but it’s something I
really enjoy and so it was a labor of love.
Everyone had a great time.
Needless to say we may have all gained a few pounds this month from all
the yummy sweets, but we’ll just stay off the scales for a while.
We are still in furlough mode, but mostly done
with all the packing and sorting. We
knew we were hosting the 4th of July cookout with all of our friends
from Mombasa so we spent the end of the month making sure we had most of the
work out of the way. Our goal is to be
able to just enjoy the last couple weeks here without of the stress of packing,
especially since we are leaving just two days after the 516 team leaves. I admit to having very mixed emotions about
this furlough. It feels like our EKM
team is just getting settled and starting to work and it’s time for us to
leave. Although we need furlough and the
time to see family and supporting churches, it feels like we are just
beginning. We are, though, looking
forward to this next year of refreshment as well as the direction God is going
to give as we look to the future.
My sister received the results from her scan,
she is leukemia free once again. I thank
the Lord for giving her strength through her chemo. This round, although stronger, seemed a bit
less hard on her. I am really looking
forward to being within driving distance of her this next year.
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