St Andrew's United Reformed Church - Our missionary partners

St Andrew’s supports four missionary partners in prayer and through regular financial support through the Mission Fund. Please remember then in your own prayers, and if you would like to contribute to supporting their work, Alastair Cameron will be happy to hear from you.

News from Bibi Nédellec - June 2010

News from Martin and Marion Cooper - May 2010

Family News

>> STOP PRESS!

In October we hinted that our son Nick might imminently be made redundant. This duly happened at the end of that month, as the entire design team, which he led, was laid off by the company for which he had worked for ten years. However, after six long months of unsettling unemployment, on 30 April he began a new post as Creative Director for another design company. Praise God!

>> Bev, our daughter, and her family moved to Tolworth, nr. Kingston. in October, where her husband Bait took up his new post as vicar of Emmanuel Church. Adjusting to new friendships, new schools, nurseries & creches for Ollie (6), Ella (4) and Toby (nearly 2) and exchanging the seaside of Hove for the suburbs of London, as well as the new demands of home & ministry, took a significant pre-Christrnas toll on them all as a family. Praise God that they are now experiencing a sense of stability and encouraging fruitfulness in ministry.

>> We are looking forward to celebrating our Ruby Wedding anniversary in August, with a great sense of gratitude to God for 40 years of his faithfulness to us.

It is such a privilege for us to know you as partners in our disciple-making work for the Lord. Like the apostle Paul with his Philippian brothers and sisters in the first century, we want to thank you so much for your faithful involvement with us in prayer and financial support.

In our last letter we spoke about the ‘Cord of Three Strands’ that seems to describe so well the various ministry opportunities that we are currently enjoying.

Second Half Living

We have been able to hold workshops in ten churches so far, and we are encouraged that they seem to have been very well received. Some of these have been full sessions, with others as ‘tasters’. Please pray that God will continuc to open new doors to us, and that wc may be able to build solidly on ground already explored.

Church Ministry

It is a great joy to come alongside a few church leaders individually, two of whom you may remember found Christ in our student ministry here 30 years ago, to encourage them and ‘help them find strength in God’, as Jonathan did with King David. Our primary desire in these relationships is to help them keep the priority task of making disciples in the centre of their vision, amidst the many demands and potential distractions of full-time ministry. And what a privilege as well to be ‘mutually strengthened by each other’s faith’. Wow — this is great!

International Church Discipleship Ministry

This is still very much in its infancy, following a good first meeting before Christmas with two international colleagues, but we have enjoyed making initial contact by phone & email with leaders in several countries where The Navigators are seeking to serve local churches. In this connection, Martin has been invited to an important meeting in Amsterdam at the end of this month with the European Navigator leaders whose ministry focus is to help church-based individuals grow as disciples and disciple—makers. He has also accepted an invitation to serve as a group leader at the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town this October. Thank you again for standing with us in these thrilling gospel initiatives. We appreciate it very greatly.

News from Cathy and Charles Asiki - October 2009

Cathy Finn (as she then was) attended St Andrew’s until she graduated as a maths teacher in 1987. After university, she went to Uganda with the Church Missionary Society. There she met and married Charles Asiki, and they now have three children. Since 1997, they have been involved in establishing and teaching in the Ushindi Christian primary and secondary schools where they live in Arua in North West Uganda. Substantial contributions from members of St Andrew’s in the last couple of years have helped towards the purchase of land and setting up of a sixth form at the school. Cathy’s latest message notes that the sixth form is now up and running with the teaching of humanities subjects with teachers qualified to teach up to A level. The next requirement is for a laboratory so that science subjects can be taught. This will require a Ministry of Education licence so we can be assued that it will be on a proper footing.

Cathy writes: Term began this week for both schools and we opened well. This is the final term of the year so the top classes are busy preparing for the national exams in November and December.

Secondary school

We are still hoping that we will start A level next year. The dormitory should be usable and we will need to use the library as a classroom as we only have four classrooms at present. That will be the next big project. We hope to get permission to start in a small way without the A level classrooms. The school is planning to have a fundraising day with parents and other local interested people in October to try and raise some funds here for the A level project. We recently received a donation though the AIM teachers who were with us for a year and this has been used to buy shelves for the library and some books for the shelves.

Primary school

The land issue is still not resolved as the family members who took action against the school and against their brother who sold the land to us have not dropped the case as we hoped. The court hearing has already been postponed twice and we are expecting another date for the hearing to be set before the end of the year. These things can drag on a long time here and although everyone we have consulted says that the school has not done anything wrong we would like to see it resolved so that we can continue developing the land freely.

On a personal note

We are all well. I travelled to Kampala at the start of the week to take Hannah back to school. She is now boarding at a Secondary school near Kampala. There have been a lot of riots in Kampala and surrounding areas for the last three days. I am not sure if they have made the international news. We are fine in Arua as the issue sparking the riots is a conflict between the Government and the cultural King of the Buganda which does not effect us at all here as we are not in Buganda. However, it has meant that it was difficult to travel to and from Kampala as the main road North was closed by the police during the riots. Fortunately, I came back on Wednesday before the trouble began and the trouble has also not been anywhere near Hannah’s school. We pray that it will not continue and that the situation will calm now.

We are also having a lot of power problems in Arua and have been without electricity for two weeks now. I am not sure also why there has been no internet connection for a week but this is frustrating when we are used to being able to keep in touch easily. Fortunately the water company now have their own generator so we still get water during these long blackouts. In the past no power also meant no water supply. We are also glad of our small solar system at home which can enable us to have lights at night and to use the computer a little during the day.

News of Pedro and Stella Arias

Pedro is a journalist and broadcaster with HCJB Global Voice, the Christian radio station which broadcasts to the world from Quito, Ecuador. Pedro has particular concerns for providing support for persecuted Christians, especially in his home country of Colombia which is now one of the worst places in the world for the disappearance and killing of Christians. We pray for his safety and well-being when he visits Colombia.

Pedro was at the World Cup in Johannesburg in 2010 and was involved in two radio series – one a series of 20 short programmes exploring moral, ethical and spiritual issues in football and the other a series of 12 short radio items with top players and officials talking about their careers and faith in Christ. He tells us that these programmes go to 1000 radio stations in Latin America, Spain and the Spanish speaking population in the USA.

Pedro is also the Pastor of the Spanish-speaking Iglesia Cristiana de Newham (Newham Christian Church) in east London which worships in the premises of the River Christian Centre in Canning Town and ministers to the Latin American community across a wide area of London.

Pedro is assisted by his wife, Stella, who is also the founder of the Colombian Children’s Association, a body committed to helping children affected by the earthquake of January 1999 in the Colombian coffee-growing region.