Dear Friends of Gord Martin, Chris Atkinson and Doug Loveday,
Over the last eleven years, I and others have committed to helping our brothers and sisters in Kenya become effective in church leadership and planting churches. This has led to the formation of Vision Ministries Kenya, which last year reached the milestone of 10 yrs of impact. For those of you who have helped make this possible, we are extremely grateful and excited to see what God has done in the past and look forward to how our involvement will take shape in the coming years.
We are headed for Kenya on October 5th! I know you've been hearing about me retiring, this is one last big trip to Kenya, it's an ambitious one!
We are planning to have a week of intensive training for 25 to 30 Kenyan church leaders in Nairobi from October 10th to 15th. We have planned 33 classes for that one week. See attachment
Chris Atkinson, Pastor at Pinewoods Chapel in Angus (wife Rowan) is in the process of taking over my role with Vision Ministries Kenya. He and I will be teaching the classes along with one, or hopefully two Kenyan teachers. Chris, Ishmael and I have been doing regular zoom calls since Easter. Doug Loveday is not going this time but will be eagerly listening for all the news!
The weekend prior to the intense week in Nairobi, we will be visiting and preaching in Nairobi churches and are planning to travel to the western side of Kenya to visit and preach in churches there on the second weekend.
The idea of this intensive training came about last October with the Vision Ministries Kenya board. We believed that we could improve our training if we could bring people together in one place for the entire week. That way there is no need for people to travel in the morning and find places to stay at night. The plan is that each of the participants will be staying at the same hotel in Nairobi for the whole week. In addition to that, each attendee will gather four to five other disciples from each region and will teach the content that they have learned in Nairobi after they return to their respective regions. In the end we are training disciples that will make disciples in their own regions.
In preparation for this, we have written a 100-page participants manual that we will work through during the week in Nairobi. See the lesson plan below.
1. Would you earnestly pray for us as we make last minute preparations for our time in Kenya?
2. Would you consider contributing financially to the annual budget for Vision Ministries, Kenya? We hope to raise the annual VMC commitment of $55,000 for VMK within the next two months for:
1. Support for Ishmael who provides leadership for VMK, along with support staff. $20,124
2. Travel and administrative support 2,350
3. Office related costs including rent 9.075
4. Support for regional leaders 9,900
5. Training (includes all costs for this trip) 20,016
Total $61,965
If we were able to raise this full amount now, it would be a great step forward. I know that many of you have supported this ministry in the past. Thank you so much!! We are encouraged with the progress that has been made in Kenya over these past 10 years.
Thanks be to God!
Gord Martin (519-501-5933 and Chris Atkinson (705-424-0382)
