A Break in Egypt

After my bout of malaria, it took me quite a long time to recover. As I wasn't doing very much work during this time, we thought it might be good to take a break and use the time for our annual holiday. Actually we didn't get one at all last year and we were both feeling the strain of this.
We were hoping to go to Malaysia as we had tickets for Singapore and should have gone to Indonesia during this time. However for various reasons this didn't work out.
On a Wednesday evening we decided to go to Egypt and on the Saturday afterwards we were on our way!
We had a week on the beach at the Red Sea and another week cruising on the River Nile looking at some of the graves and temples of the old Pharaohs. This was very interesting.
The Bible reports that God sent a strong East Wind across the Rea Sea to open it up for the Israelites to cross. Well, this strong East Wind is still there. The sun was shining and the sky was blue. The sea was inviting. It was a really nice colour... turquoise and dark blue and light blue, but it was windy.
The time was very refreshing and now I feel that I am back on my feet and have started working as normal during this week.

Photos from Egypt

Anti-Conversion Bill

The government of Sri Lanka has put their anti-converstion bill to one side for the time being. They feel that there was too much pressure locally and internationally coming on them. This is a victory that has comes from prayer. However we are still not completly through. Probably at a time when the world is busy with some other crisis it was be speedily put to parliament.
We need to continue to pray for the island.

Slow Recovery

I've been out of hospital for nearly two weeks and the malaria has completely gone. However, I am far from recovery. The parasites destroyed so many red blood cells and although I am getting stronger day by day, i am very tired.
I did a bit of shopping yesterday, but by the time I got home, I was exhausted. I lay down on the couch in the living room and slept for about three hours. In the evening I was still tired and slept all night!
My doctor said that I need six weeks to recover properly but others have said that it might take me as much as a year to get back on my feet. i must admit, I am getting a little impatient.

Back from the dead

After arriving back home from Africa, life began its normal routine. However after two days, I began feel ill. I vistied my doctor and we though that I had picked up the influzena that is going around.
However at the weekend, my temperature rose to over 40°C. Not really anyone could help us until we manaaged to see a doctor with tropical training. He had me rushed into the nearest largest hospital. By this time four days had past si.ce the first sysmptoms had been visible.
The doctors had now diagnosed me with malaria tropica. I was very sick. We had left it too last and the hospitial didn't have everything to help the speedist recoverery - except an extremely dedicated staff.
It was discovered that I a second strain and that the medicine wasn't working as well as was hoped.
A second lot was added and I began to doubt that I would make it.
The doctors were doing everything they could, but things were getting worse. In the meanwhile friends started a worldwide prayer chain and people were praying all over the world.
Praise the Lord!
Slowly the turnaround came. I thought, I wasn't going to make it. But God had other plans.
On Friday morning the doctor came to tell me that I was nearly through.
Finally, today, Monday morning the doctor allowed me as healed to go home.
I am still very weak and cannot write very much more. I did however really experienced God during my last night in the hospital.

Update: Sri Lanka

The military in Sri Lanka are celebrating a victory over the Tamil Tigers (LTTE). While I don't have any kind of sympathy for the Tigers - they have been employing terrorist methods, child soldier, enslaved the population etc, I think their reasons for fighting, their grievances are justified. If the government, from a position of military power is benign and gives the Tamils freedom and equality, there is a chance of peace. If they come down on them as Singalese superiors, then the war will be prolonged, and that perhaps in a very bloody guerilla and city terrorist kind of war.

If these things were not enough, parliament is considering a bill, that will make conversion illegal. It is a bill against unethical conversion. This really means that people who are being converted by promises of financial gain will become illegal. However the Christians are so poor generally, that this is not a reality. In actual fact the bill will turn out to make evangelism of any kind illegal.
Everything in Sri Lanka society is geared to the Buddhist prejudice. This makes things very difficult for the Christians.
On 22nd January they had a day of fasting and held an open prayer meeting to pray that the bill would not become law.

The Miwani Center

I just found this video in MySpace. I don't know the author but the center is from Nehemiah International!

Out of Africa

I'm sitting in a hotel room waiting to either be picked up or my credit for the internet runs out.
Probably nothing happened as I expected and I hope still that I was of use and was able to help some people.
The last day always seems to take a long time. I am looking forward to getting home but am a bit sad to be leaving Kenya. It is really a spectacular country and the people are wonderful. Many are suffering.
A lady asked me yesterday, if we have famine in our country. When I said no, she said that we are truely blessed.
Yes, we are truely blessed and what a blessing it is to beable to help that a few of the people have a better futute.

Africa Impressions

Africa

I arrived in Africa about ten days ago. After spending about a week in Uganda, I came by bus from Kampala to Kisumu, Kenya. The journey took me about 6 1/2 hours. It quite good because the roads have been repaired.
It took us some time to clear the border, but that's life and after travelling into Kenya the police stopped the bus and we all had to show our passports.
So now I am about 12km outside of Kisumu, Kenya in a place called Miwani.
One of the oganizations I work with, Nehemia-Team, has a farm here.
We are about 10km south of the equator. It is very hot and dry and the ground is very hard.
To the northern side of the farm are some mountains about 2-3km from here. They suddenly shoot up to a height of around 700-800m (I guess). We are already more than 1000m above sea level.
Kisumu touches the banks of Lake Victoria, the source of the river Nile. That finds its way down hill through the Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterrainan Sea.
They tell me that on the other side of the mountains is a high plain which is part of the Rift Valley.
The strip of land between the mountains to the north of here and I suppose about 5km to the south, was given to the Indians after Independance. It was supposed to separate the Luo tribe from another tribe as they were always fighting with one another.
Most of the Indian families are still bere. They grow and process sugar cane.

2009

So the new year has arrived.
It seems that this year it has come with such force. I spent New Year's Eve in bed with flu and since recovering have been working on my office. Actually although we have worked very fast, time has been lost on other things.
Tomorrow I am leaving for Africa and have not yet really had time to prepare myself.
Among the other things that I have to do today, I'll have to take care of that.

What's on this year?
I'm flying to Uganda tomorrow and will do some ministry in a network of churches there. With help from Germany, they have build a clinic in Kigali, Ruanda. A clinic? Well, a building, but during the next couple of weeks the clinic will get its inventory and soon it will be able to start. It will serve around 30,000 people in an area where there is no free medicine.
We also support a Street Children's Ministry "Chosen Generation" in Kampala and I will be paying that insttition a visit too.
I'll be visiting a farm in Kisumu, Kenya, that a ministry I am involoved in runs. I will also be going to see friends in Meru, near Mt Kenya. We have helped these people numerous times as they reach out to Kenyans. There last time was a year ago after the riots in Kenya that cause so many deaths and destruction.

We continue to work in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Nepal and the Philippines.
This year will be very full.

The Global Village?

This is a very interesting clip that helps us to get things into perspective.

During 2009 let us hope for a more just distribution of wealth.



My New Year's resolution would be to live more simply and to be content with what I have.

Church History

Why do we learn church history?

1. Church history shows us that God is working in the world to bring salvation to mankind.
2. It gives us an answer to many questions that concern our day to day practical living.
3. We can learn from the mistakes that others have made.
4. We can see good things that happened, analyse what made them good and pursue them.
5. Our consciousness for the body of Christ will be extended and we have good examples.
6. It is inspiring to learn about the great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) that surround us.
7. Church history gives us a sense of destiny.
When we look at church history, we should be encouraged because we see God working out his purposes with imperfect people, like us and Luther, Carey, Wesley and Billy Graham.


What is church history?

1. Church History is the story of Jesus Christ here on earth. The church is His body.
2. It is the story of the Holy Spirit. 2. Corinthians 3:17 teaches us that “the Lord is the Spirit”. Therefore the history of the Holy Spirit is the history of Jesus and is our history, because we are His body.
3. It would be better to call the subject “the History of the Church of Jesus Christ on earth”! The beginning is in the Acts of the Apostles. Acts doesn’t finish with an “Amen” but continues to this day and will only finish when Jesus returns.
Studying church history helps us not to regard our experience as the “norm”. Many people have had many experiences with God before us. These experiences are often different than ours!
Living as a Christian is a process of “taking off” and “putting on”. We take off the old man and put on the new man. This is the process of discipleship.

Making Sense of Christmas

This is a last Christmas blog this year!


That's Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.

Hallelujah!

Pictures of the Lippstadt barracks

Nostalgia

On Monday, I did a lot of travelling. I drove for just over 1000km. The weather in the morning was terrible. It was raining all the time.
I was collecting some photo-copiers for a project in Sri Lanka.
At lunchtime I was in the city of Bochum, where we used to live (1976-82). Elisabeth, my wife, grew up in that city. An old friend came to help me collect one of the machines in the city and the thing was so heavy, it nearly broke his back!
I went on to collect another and was going to go past Lippstadt. I used to live there too (1971-73). At that time I was still in the Army and lived in Churchill Barracks, Suedstrasse.
Thanks to my navigation-system I managed to find the street and was very surprised at the state of the old barracks.
They were in a magnificent condition. I suppose the British Army must have moved out there around the mid-90s. The buildings had been converted into flats.
The old cinema was a church. An open university is based there and it looks like the old Regimental HQ (which we referred to as the kremlin), was now a music school.
I belonged to 22 Signals Regiment. The place we were worked, garages where we kept our vehicles with equipment, were gone and other houses had taken their places.
At the other side of the camp other regiment was stationed - an artillery regiment (27 Regiment Royal Artillery). They used to have self-propelled guns, I think they were M110 or something like that. If I remember rightly they had 90lbs shells. Well, there a children's playground on the place were they used to be kept.
I walked around the place and memories began to be relived. I found my old room or at least the outside, I could see my old window.
During the two years I was there, I thought the time would never end. But in the meanwhile 35 years have past since I was last there.
As I pondered all the things that had happened over the last 35 years and at the same time the impressions of my time in Lippstadt were so present with me, I realised how quickly everything soon passes.
I wrote to our daughter in the USA, that even though she is so young, she need to make the most of every day.
Happy Christmas

The Suffering of the Brethren

Recently I was in a Muslim country. I was amazed at the freedom the people had. we had public meetings on the streets. What a freedom. They told me that they had recording all my messages. I asked what they would do with them and they told me that they would be broadcast on public radio....

I didn't expect that.

But there is another story. In one place the police searched everyone going to church. Evenso half the men were armed! The police had been looking for bombs! Heavily armed they escourted us out of the town when the meeting was finished.

The pastor told me that 75% of the town belong to a radical islamic group and actually is was fearing for his life. It could no longer sleep in the town and comutes day by day to be with his people.

Last week a friend called me from Andhra Pradesh in India and informed me that five of his tribal pastors had been kidnapped by the Naxlites (Maoists). In the end they managed to be freed, but they had guns pushed into their bellies and put against their heads. Miraculously they were spared. The senior tribal pastor is the son of a martyr.

Friends is Sri Lanka started to extend their church building. People in the village protested first of all saying they were building a shelter for the Tamil Tigers. That brushed aside the local government said that to get building permission, you must obtain the signatures of 66% of the people living within 500 metres of the church. This is impossible as there is much intimidation going on. A deputy mayor, himself a Buddhist, was appauled at the injustice of this situation and he began a campaign to help the Christians. He gave the Christians to personally present their case before the appropriate government minister. They had four interviews with him. In the end the minister has declared the rule to be unlawful and the Christians are allowed to continue building.

Fanatical Buddhists are so enraged by this decision that they are going to hold a demonstation in front of the church this coming Sunday (21st December). The demonstration get out of hand because of agitation and they quite often turn out to be violent.

I wonder if you could prayer for this situation.


I am very moved by our brethren who are prepared to suffer for their faith.

Retooning the nativity

H A P P Y C H R I S T M A S

Picture report of trip to India