Update June 19

Hello dear friends!

It has now been 2 weeks since we launched our new website with the presentation video of our vision. Thank you for the positive feedback we received from many of you, this has been a big encouragement for us.

Looking back:
During the last weeks, the main focus of your work was oriented to teaching our students. Among other things we took the time with each student to discover their talents and together to find a way how theses talents can be put to use in their personal lives and in the lives of the people around them.

Since we began teaching in the Foxfires program in May last year, this year was the first time that we were able to accompany the same group of students from beginning to end. It has been wonderful to see how our students have changed since the beginning of the year. To give an example, at first, one young man stuck out mainly because of his language and inattentiveness. Now however, he is very determined and active in class.

The changes in another student are almost even more encouraging for us. In the beginning this student was very shy, she would hardly speak and participated very little in class. During an exercise we did in class, she began to realize that she also had a very active side but that she was constantly suppressing this part of her. Through personal discussions with this young woman, we encouraged her to allow herself to give more space to this active side. Meanwhile, she has begun a completely different person, she is open, speaks her mind and engages with other people. As she would like to become a teacher at Foxfires, this development is certainly very precious for her. We are so grateful to be able to witness such changes, as this is one of the main reasons we do what we do.

Last Friday we had our students over at our house, and according to their wish we prepared some German food together .Fortunately everyone enjoyed the food and it was a lovely day for us and the Foxfires students.

Some of our students cooking at our house.

We have also been quite active beyond the Foxfires program as we have invested in our relationship with “Foursquare Kenya”. “Foursquare” is the umbrella church organisation of our association in Germany which is also active in Kenya in many communities and projects. In the last weeks we have met up several times with the national leader for Kenya who would like to help us in order for Marco to finally receive his work permit. There seems to be progress in this domain and we hope to receive a positive answer soon. We also visited Foursquare church in Nairobi where we were invited last Sunday to preach. We agreed with the pastor to keep in touch to see how we can collaborate in the future.

In addition, we have also been looking into buying a piece of land where we would like to build an orphanage, a school, a training centre and facilities of the sort. We will see if there is a breakthrough in the following days, but in any case we now have contacts which will allow us to buy a piece of land in the near future.

Looking forward:

The biggest novelty is that we will be flying to Germany in the next few weeks. Due to organisational reasons, we will be leaving two weeks earlier than planned, but we are looking forward.

We would like to use our time in Germany to network and present our work and vision in different churches. We will also be able to preach on several of these occasions.

Here is our schedule up till now:

23.06.: ICF Dresden, 14.07.: Christusgemeinde Gau-Algesheim,
21.07.: enChristo Gemeinde Mainz, 25.08. Gemeinde in der Konkordia, Bühl.

If you live anywhere nearby you are very welcome to join us!

More about our project and life in Kenya:
If you would like to learn more about our project and what we are doing, visit us at www.tumainiministries.com. Under the “Blog” rubric Marco tells about life in Kenya and has written a new entry on “rain” and what happens in its absence.

Thanks:
A big thank you to all who support us trough prayer, financially or practically. We are so glad and thankful for your participation in our project.

If you have any questions or comments or if you would like to support us in any way, we would love to hear from you!

Yours truly,

Marco & Joy