Thank you for praying with us as Brad was with Matt Macy and Burundi and Rwanda Friends leaders. We had wonderful meetings talking with them about the next steps towards our Evangelical Friends in Africa sending their own missionaries. It was exciting to dream together about what God is going to do as we partner together for the Kingdom.

Monday, March 4 through Friday, March 8, Pastors Augustin, Gerard, Tertullien, and Brad will meet with key leaders from Burundi and Congo that we are mentoring in Discipling for Development. Please pray with us for:

• Safety in travel and while we are together.
• Wisdom as we mentor and coach our friends toward having what they need to help each Burundi D for D leader to successfully move their groups through the Mobilization phase of the D for D process and into the Empowerment Phase.
• Our families back home, for safety and blessing on each of them.

Love,
Brad & Chelsea
Sarai, Gideon, and Ian

The post Join the Carpenters in Prayer This Week! first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

I’m in Musanze, Rwanda with my Discipling for Development team. We have two days of coaching together this Wednesday and Thursday in this first week of January. I made a short video to introduce them and invite you to pray with us for these special days of coaching.

• Pray I will listen well to Holy Spirit and to what Brad, Augustin, Gerard and Tertullien have to say.
• Pray I will have the wisdom and insight needed to respond with excellent coaching questions to the priority issues my team chooses.
• Pray that our being together will be a synergistic boost of encouragement and Holy Spirit insight for future direction.
• Pray that I will hear what Holy Spirit wants to say! Growing in my sensitivity to Holy Spirit and to quickly obey is my priority.
• Pray that my Kinyarwanda language ability will rise back up to a strong level quickly!
• I preach on Sunday, pray I’ll discern and put together the message Holy Spirit wants me to bring.

Thank you so much for supporting me in prayer! Your prayers make a difference!

May you be blessed in every way in this new year!

David Thomas
Planting whole-life, disciple-making movements
303-717-4519

“May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” Psalm 67:1-2

The post David Thomas January 2024 Prayer Assignment first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

Thank you so much for praying with us. It is hard to believe that there are only two months left in 2023!

Luke 10 Update:

Since we last wrote, Brad has been a part of two, second Luke 10 Exploration Trips to explore and discern if God might be calling Evangelical Friends Church (EFC) to start a mission in South Sudan and/or Tanzania. Hopefully, you have seen general emails from EFM about these trips as well as reports. But we will summarize here:

The trip to South Sudan took place September 10-17. Our group consisted of three Rwandan pastors and key church leaders, three who came from the US, and Brad on behalf of EFM.

On September 18th we visited a missionary training school in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Then from September 19 to the 24th, four Burundi pastors and church leaders and four from the US (including Brad) visited an area in eastern Tanzania.

On these trips, we visited with Christians and non-Christians in various communities attempting to see what God was doing in each of those areas and to see if he is asking us to join him there! It is so exciting to see the Lord increasing the passion and commitment of our EFC-Africa leaders to send their own missionaries out to unreached / under-reached people groups. In both South Sudan and Tanzania, we saw that the Lord is working and our African Friends sense that God is calling them to join him. As EFM we are still discerning what God wants us to do. In the next few weeks, EFM will have several meetings to discern the next steps in the decision-making process. Regardless of whether the Lord leads EFM to send missionaries to South Sudan and/or Tanzania, we look forward to finding appropriate ways to partner with our EFC-Africa Friends as they work to develop their own vision, strategies, principles, and practices for mission work. Brad has been asked to walk alongside them as they work on these things. This is an exciting time! But we also realize that we need the Lord to give lots of wisdom and courage throughout this whole process.

Would you please pray with us for EFC-Rwanda, EFC-Burundi, and EFM as each group works to be faithful to God and his calling for us as Evangelical Friends?

Family Update:

We praise the Lord for how he is taking care of us as a family. Though we go through some difficulties and times of travel and exhaustion, the Lord is faithful to fill us back up, renew us, and keep taking care of us!  We recently had the privilege to go and visit Chelsea’s aunt and uncle, who live in the south of Rwanda, over a long weekend, so we had some beautiful family time. The children are all healthy and doing well in school. Gideon continues to love soccer and plays every chance he gets whether at school or home with neighbor friends! Ian is sleeping better these days than he has in a long time and is usually pretty cheerful at school and at home. He tends to keep us laughing with the cute and/or smart things he says! Sarai has been enjoying some reading and writing projects at school and recently participated (and did really well!) in a skit project for her Kinyarwanda class.

Current Burundi Trip:

Brad and Simparinka are traveling to Burundi from October 31-November 3 to help mentor the D for D groups there.

Please pray that what God wants is able to happen, even though the trip is only a few days long. Please also pray for travel safety for the group, and for Chelsea and the kids at home.  

Thank you, again, for your partnership with us!

In Him,

Brad & Chelsea

Sarai, Gideon, and Ian

The post Carpenter Family: Update on Luke 10 and Burundi Trip Happening Now first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

It has been a while since we’ve written. We want to apologize for how infrequently we have written in this past season. We believe that you are an essential part of our mission team and we have not been keeping you up-to-date so you can “be with us” in prayer! So, here is a longer update to catch you up on what God is doing among and through us.

Below you will see:

• Grieving due to loss
• Central Africa missions sending conference
• D for D update
• Upcoming Luke 10 Exploration Trips
• Ministering to the Missionary Community
• Family

Grieving

This past season has been a good season of life in many ways. It has also been challenging for several reasons. God has given us MANY wonderful mentors in our lives and ministry. One of the painful parts of the last few years has been that Jesus has taken four key mentors in relation to being missionaries of ours to heaven (they are David Kellum, Gene Pickard, Ron Stansell, and Willard Ferguson). It would take too long to write about all of the ways that God used these men to prepare and mentor us to be on mission with him. They loved and served God with much wisdom and humility, they modeled life with God and shared many important insights with us that continue to shape many aspects of how we serve as missionaries.

Central Africa Missions Sending Conference

At the end of April, we had a week-long conference in Burundi in which we learned with Friends Church leaders from Burundi, Congo, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and the United States. The Lord blessed our time together! One of many highlights was hearing from our Central American Friends and Kenyan Friends share about how they have sent their own missionaries out among the nations. Burundi and Rwanda Friends are preparing to send their own missionaries out in the next year or two. I have been taking some courses on missions through Fuller Theological Seminary and am really thankful for the ways that God is teaching me and giving me new insights that will help us in the time ahead.

D for D 

Our D for D team is working with groups in Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo, helping them finish a phase called Mobilization with members of their local churches and surrounding communities. We continue to hear testimonies of transformation! There are several other churches and church leaders who are asking for us to mentor them in the D for D process. We are praying that God will give us the wisdom to know how to help them in ways that fit in our current capacity. As we write this, Pastors Augustin, Gerard, and Tertullien are in Burundi visiting the homes of those we are discipling to learn about what God is doing in them and through them in mentoring their local church teams.

Upcoming Luke 10 Exploration Trips

We will give more details in a few days, but in the next month, Brad will be a part of a second Luke 10 Exploration Trip to South Sudan with EFC-Rwanda and EFM leaders and a second Luke 10 Exploration Trip to Tanzania with EFC-Burundi and EFM leaders. Both trips will be for the purpose of discerning where God is calling our African Friends to begin mission work and how God is calling EFM to be a part of what God is doing in those places.

Ministering to the Missionary Community

We were so blessed to have a team come from Northridge Friends Church (Wichita, KS) to help us put on a missionary conference in July. We worked hard, and so did they, to love and serve around 85 missionaries from this region of Africa. Shane Shetley (pastor at Northridge) led us in some great teachings from 1 Peter, Eli Copas (youth pastor at Northridge), and a team of around ten led VBS and youth group for all the kids present from 0-18 years old. We were also blessed to have Alex Grier (Friends University student) lead us in worship in song. Missionary families walked away from the conference feeling more refreshed from our time together.  Also, we were so thankful to show the team members a little bit of our town and our lives and ministry. We had sweet times sharing our hearts and hearing from theirs, playing with each other’s kids, and feeling connected to each other in light of God’s worldwide mission.

Family

We had a busy summer, hosting family in June and the Northridge team in July, as well as other various tasks and travels. We all had a lot of fun, and we are also really tired now! Our kids just started school again at Virunga Valley Academy (an American international school in our town) and it is a blessing to be starting to get settled back into school year rhythms a bit.

Thank you so much for all your love and prayers!

Brad and Chelsea

Sarai, Gideon, and Ian

The post Carpenter Family August 2023 Ministry Update first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

Sorry again that it’s been so long since you’ve heard from me. I intended to send out updates to catch you all up month to month with what’s been going on, but with frequent trips within Rwanda and often being sick when I wasn’t traveling, I haven’t been able to do that. At this point, I want to give you an overview of what the past couple of months have looked like for me and tell you about one of the most exciting things that is happening here.

First, the overview. I’ve been very thankful to visit more of our Friends pastors and churches here in Rwanda. I had the privilege of staying with Pastor Silas and his family in southeastern Rwanda and visiting three of the churches in that region. Like the homestays before them, they received me and cared for me with such warmth and generosity even though my visit was shorter than we all would have liked.

Also, over the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of being at three different D4D (Discipling for Development) trainings. The D4D team did training in Musanze (where I live), Kayonza (eastern Rwanda), and Kibogora (western Rwanda). I was grateful to be at each of these trainings and to travel with the D4D team on the last two. I’m also thankful for how I became closer to them during the trips and for how they cared for me on the last trip when I became very sick. (Don’t worry. I’m more than fine now.)

And I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful it was to meet more of the Carpenters’ extended family and Jonathan’s immediate family. I had the privilege of spending a good amount of time with Brad’s parents when they came in the spring and with Brad’s brother and his family when they came this summer. I’m also so thankful for all the time I got to spend with Jonathan’s parents and sister when they visited and stayed at our house. (Jonathan is one of my housemates.) All of these people were so kind and warm, and I’m thankful for each and every one of them.

Now for that exciting thing I mentioned earlier, the missions conference in Burundi. Thank you so much for your prayers for us. God did some incredible things during that time as all of us at the conference had time to fellowship with each other and learn from each other that week. We had people from all over East Africa at the conference (Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, and Kenya), several from the U.S., several from Latin America (Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador), one from Nigeria, and one from Nepal. I don’t know quite how to describe it, but it felt like a historic moment, part of a turning point for our churches here that we’ll look back at years from now.

Let me explain what I mean and give you some context. For many years, Friends missionaries have come to our churches in East Africa, but until fairly recently our Friends here had not considered sending missionaries of their own. Money was always one of the main obstacles. How could they support missionaries to go to another country with the same model they saw Westerners use? It just didn’t seem feasible.

Enter the missions conference in Burundi where Global Disciples taught about business as mission and Friends from Latin America and Kenya shared their paradigms of missions. I saw a lot of the exciting discussions our East African Friends leaders were having in their various groups and had the chance to talk with some of them about their thoughts on the different paradigms they were hearing. God truly used this time to further mobilize all of us, and I’m very excited to see in particular how he uses this to mobilize our Friends in Rwanda and Burundi who are in the beginning stages of missions sending.

As I wrap up this update, here are some of the ways you can be praying for me this month and next.

• Pray for me and the Carpenters as we reflect on my time here; that God will teach us what he wants to through that.
• Pray for sweet times of fellowship as I say goodbye to so many that are dear to me here.
• Pray for the Carpenters as they’re in charge of the logistics for the upcoming Kumbya conference and for me as I help them with that.
• Pray for me as I readjust to life in America at the beginning of next month. I’m looking forward to being back, but I know that there will be much for me to adjust to since I’ve been gone for a year.

Once again, thank you all for your partnership with me in prayer and financial support. None of what I’m doing would be possible without all of you. I’m so excited to see you all again, tell you more about my time here, and talk with you about what’s next. (I’ll also write about some of what’s coming next in my next update after I leave Rwanda.) And for those of you who don’t live in Florida, hopefully, it won’t be too long till I get to see you again.

Thomas

The post Thomas Moore’s Spring and Summer Update first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

The Carpenter Family | Serving in Rwanda

Discipleship

The D for D team is following up with teams from five local churches in Rwanda, ten Burundian team leaders, and three Congolese team leaders. Each of these teams is working to finish the phase of whole-life discipleship called “Mobilization”. We are helping them to lead their communities to catch a vision for whole-life transformation, to recognize with joy the many resources that God has given them and the main barriers that are holding them back as a community, and to catch a passion to use what God has given them to pursue solutions towards wholeness related to each barrier. Please pray for each group to successfully finish this process so that they can enter into the “Empowerment” Phase.

Missions-sending

The Lord continues to stir the hearts and minds of Evangelical Friends church leaders in Rwanda and Burundi toward sending out their own missionaries. When you receive this message, we will have finished a gathering of key Friends leaders from Central and East Africa focusing on God’s heart for the redemption of the nations. We will seek to learn and share from each other and seek God’s direction for the next steps for each of our groups to obey God’s call.  Please pray for the Holy Spirit to remove barriers that might prevent us from reaching God’s plan for this time and pray that the Spirit will illuminate and empower each participant to hear and respond to God’s loving invitation to work with him.

Masters’ Studies

Brad has continued taking courses through Fuller Seminary. The courses have been challenging and enlightening in the areas of interacting with people from other cultural contexts. He has been especially struck by the vision of the Gospel fully taking root and being translated into each culture.  Brad is recognizing that it is very difficult to fully surrender our own cultural biases to be open and ready to learn from our African Friends and their perspectives and insights into the Gospel and Biblical teachings. These insights feel especially important as we look towards Central African Friends and EFM partnering together to start new mission work among other people groups.

Family

It has been a joy to have Brad’s parents here for several weeks; we love anytime family can visit!  We’ve had some wonderful family time, and also times of refreshment when they took care of the children and helped us in different ways. Chelsea is staying busy with home and family tasks, as well as some financial, communication, and administrative work.  Sarai (10), Gideon (7), and Ian (3) are entering their last month of school before summer break.  They like their school but are also looking forward to a fun and busy summer!

Thank you so much for all your prayers and support. We are so thankful you are on our team and that we are all on God’s team!

Download full prayer letter here…

Praise God… That he has been helping Brad to work hard and learn a lot in his classes. He is so thankful for the relevance of all that he is learning. That Brad’s parents were able to come visit. That Chelsea was able to participate in a small women’s retreat with some dear friends in a beautiful place. Please Pray… For the D for D teams moving through the Mobilization phase into community-specific lessons that address their main concerns and for God to help them move forward. For God to raise up people from among our African churches to go as missionaries and others to send them. Pray for Sarai, Gideon, and Ian as they finish up the school year. Every day at school they navigate academics, relationships, spirituality, language, and culture.

The post May 2023 Prayer Letter first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

At the beginning of the month, I had the privilege to stay with Pastor Tertullien and his family for a week in Kayonza, which is in eastern Rwanda. I was grateful again for all the hospitality they showed me, and by how they welcomed me into their lives by talking with me about some of the deep struggles their family has had. I was so honored by how they trusted me with those things. I also learned so much about Rwandan culture with Pastor Tertullien. We had many conversations about differences between American and Rwandan culture, and he would often volunteer things during that week as we went about life. It was such a blessing to get to know him and his family.

And then, in the second half of the month, my mom came to visit me in Rwanda for two weeks. It was such an incredibly special thing! She had the opportunity to meet many people that I know here, and we had the chance to do a number of more touristy things that I had not done here yet. We went kayaking on Lake Kivu, went on a hike to see the golden monkeys, and visited Akagera National Park with Tertullien and his wife where we saw many other wonderful animals. I am also incredibly grateful to the families of Pastor Tertullien and Pastor Simparinka for opening up their homes for us to stay with them during the second half of the trip. They both generously invited us to stay with them when we were in Kayonza and Kigali, respectively.

But I would like to share a specific story with you from my mom’s time in Rwanda although there are many stories I could share. After seeing the golden monkeys, we visited the Ellen Degeneres Campus of the Diane Fossey Gorilla Fund. (I know. It’s a mouthful.) It’s a place dedicated to telling Diane Fossey’s story, a woman who fought for the conservation of gorillas in Rwanda and is dedicated to continuing her work.

At the reception desk, we met and talked with two young women, one who was named Epiphanie. I started speaking to them using the Kinyarwanda I know, and they were shocked that a foreigner was using their language and that they were able to understand me. I told them that I was in their country and felt that I should use their language as much as I was able to, and I told them that their people and their language have value. At this point, Epiphanie started tearing up and had to take a moment to collect herself before we continued the conversation.

You see, very few foreigners learn any Kinyarwanda, including many of those who work in Rwanda for many years, and Epiphanie’s probably mostly used to interacting with tourists who wouldn’t learn any since they’re only here for a week or two. But there’s something powerful about learning someone’s language and culture, even if like me, you still have much to learn. By learning someone’s language and about their culture, you communicate love and value to the person you’re talking to, and it puts you in the posture of a learner rather than an expert. (All too often, it’s easy for us as Americans to come with an attitude that we’re the experts, which can sometimes create barriers to getting to know people.) For more about this, Thomas and Elizabeth Brewster wrote an excellent article in the 80s called “Language Learning is Communication is Ministry.” You’ll see the ideas I’ve mentioned above and others in their article.

If you’ve ever wondered why I write so much about learning Kinyarwanda and Rwandan culture, this is why. Sure, I absolutely have the opportunity to pray with people and to do some preaching and teaching, but the bulk of my work is getting to know the Rwandan people better and communicating Jesus’ love through doing that. And friends, in whatever country God sends me to next, it’ll be the same during my first few years there. The relational work of language and culture learning is vital for long term effectiveness in a culture that’s not our home culture, and it’s an important way of communicating love and value to the people I’ll work with.

As always, friends and family, I’m so thankful for your partnership with me, and I’m looking forward to sharing many more stories when I see you again.

In him,
Thomas

The post Thomas Moore- Ministry Update From February first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

Sorry, it’s been so long since my last update. A lot’s been happening here, so rather than trying to put it all in one update, I’m going to try to write three updates over the next several weeks, one for each month of this year so far.

In my last update, I shared about getting to stay with Pastor Nicodeme and his family and the wonderful hospitality they showed me. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to stay with more of our Friends pastors, and their families. I am incredibly grateful for how each family welcomed me into their home and for all the things I learned with each of them.

In January, I had the opportunity to stay with Pastor Simparinka and his family in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. He and his family are such gentle, peaceful people, and I felt such peace in being with them. During my time with him, I had the opportunity to meet many of our Friends pastors in Kigali to hear about how God has changed their lives through Discipling for Development (D4D), a whole life discipleship model that’s taking off in the Friends churches in East Africa. D4D emphasizes that God cares about every part of our lives. He cares about our relationship with him, our relationships with others, our relationship with the environment/things we have, and our relationship with ourselves. (Think of “relationship with ourselves” as our view of ourselves and how we take care of ourselves). Recently, I’ve been taking a look at my own life and praying and thinking about what I need to bring under Jesus’s lordship in each of those areas. What about you? What parts of these areas is Jesus calling you to follow him deeper in?

The following week I stayed with Pastor Jean Paul and his family who also live in Kigali. He and his family are incredibly funny. In the space of a week, we had developed a whole host of inside jokes that we were still laughing about when I saw them a month later. I had such joy in being with them! During that week I also had the chance to teach a few religion classes at Kagarama Secondary School. (Secondary schools are grades 7-12). I was so honored to be asked to teach. The lesson I was asked to teach most often was on Christian Commitment. Here’s the Cliff Notes version. Jesus has shown us so much love in all that he’s done for us, and our motivation in all that we do for him should be from love for him and others. It was certainly a reminder to me to check my motives and make sure I’m not just going through the motions.

Here’s a lesson plan for another class I taught at Kagarama Secondary School. I really enjoyed helping the students step into the story and imagine that they were these people hearing this news for the first time. All in all, it’s been a blessing to stay with these families and to meet all the people I got to during that time. I look forward to getting to know more of our pastors, their families, and many others during the rest of my time in Rwanda.

As always, dear friends and family, I am so grateful for how you have partnered and continue to partner with me in my work here. I’m already looking at the logistics for my return to the U.S. this summer, and I’m so excited to share with many of you in person about what God’s doing in Rwanda and about what might be next. It’s hard to believe my on-the-field training is ending in four months. I’m thankful for all that God’s done here in the circles I’m part of, and I’m looking forward to what he has next, both while I’m here in Rwanda and afterward.

In him,

Thomas

The post Thomas Moore: Ministry Update from January first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

Did you know that every single donation and prayer makes a difference for our missionaries and those they are helping? Our goal is to ignite hope one relationship at a time.

The following story is shared by our Friends in Rwanda and shows how a life was impacted by your support!

Pacient is being discipled by a pastor from the Evangelical Friends Church of Burundi. Pacient says that the pastor there has woken up the leaders in the church to have good relationships with God, themselves, others, and creation. Through these lessons, Pacient and his family have been able to grow and develop holistically. Pacient and his family have learned to take charge and improve things by using their own energy, instead of waiting for someone else to come and do it for them.  He has joined savings groups and associations to partner with others, which enabled his family to move out of their rental house and build their own house. They moved in even though it’s not finished in order to save money on rent and continue to work on their house. They also bought animals to have manure for fertilizer, enabling them to improve their farming, especially in family banana plants. Pacient, his wife, and his children are living in peace together. Their neighbors are seeing the changes in their family and livelihood and are beginning to ask what happened. They are starting to learn how to do some of these things from them.

If you would like to help make a difference in the lives of people like Pacient, here’s how:

The post A Story of Transformation from Rwanda first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.

It’s hard to believe I’m halfway through my time in Rwanda! It seems to just have flown by, but I think I always feel that way when viewing something in hindsight. It’s amazing how much has happened in just December. As usual, I’ll give you the overview. I stayed with a Friends pastor and his family for a week, a few weeks later I was extremely sick, and then the Carpenters and I went on vacation in south Rwanda. Boom! Done! Update finished.

Ok, but in all seriousness, here are the details and the rest of the update. During the last few days of November and the first few of January, I stayed with an Evangelical Friends pastor, Nicodeme, and his family. I was (and am) so grateful for all of their hospitality. They were amazing in how they hosted and cared for me. Also, during that time, the Friends church in Rwanda was fasting, and I was able to join them in the fasting and prayer gatherings at Pastor Nicodeme’s church. (It’s kind of a Ramadan-style fast where you don’t eat when it’s light out and only eat one meal at night.) I was so encouraged to see the faithfulness, passion, and joy of the members of his church who were at the daily prayer gatherings, and I’m so thankful for those who translated so I could understand the gist of what was going on.

Towards the end of the month, I became very sick. It was the sickest I’ve been since I’ve been here, and I’m still not sure what caused it. I went to see the doctor on Christmas, he prescribed some medicine, and I was doing much better within a few days. Can I tell you, though, how amazing of a community there is in Musanze? Although I was too sick to go over to the Carpenters on Christmas, they, the Millers, and Amanda Gibson brought me all the things “sick Thomas” needed that day and spent time with me even though I couldn’t go to any of them. I was reminded of Jesus’s words in Matthew 25 where he says, “I was sick, and you visited me” and “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” They were absolutely his hands and feet to me that day.

When I was almost all the way better, the Carpenters and I went to Kibogora (which is in southwest Rwanda on Lake Kivu ) for a week of vacation. It was very peaceful there, and the Carpenter kids were having a blast. It’s a beautiful compound that they can explore and play in. We also managed to get over to the nearby Kumbaya Peninsula on one of our days in the area, and I got to do some kayaking on Lake Kivu which was so restful for me and good for my soul.

Now it’s time for some more broad ideas of what the second half of my time in Rwanda looks like. The first half of my time has been focused primarily on language learning. I still have a long way to go with that, but I’ve also learned a good bit. The second half of my time here will be focused on homestays with Friends pastors so that I can learn from them (like what I did with Pastor Nicodeme and his family). I’ll get to learn more about family life in Rwanda, see how ministry is done here, and see how they do both of these things together. I’ll get to learn more about Discipling for Development (D4D) through their stories about it. I’m excited to learn all these things, but I’m even more excited to go deeper into relationships with those I know here and to meet new people here in our Friends churches. There are so many gracious, loving people here, and it’s an honor to get to spend time with them. In fact, as you read this, I’m in Kigali for two back-to-back home stays with two different pastors and their families, but more on that in the next update.

Thanks again for coming with me on this year of on-the-field training. I’m only able to be here, stay here, and thrive here because of all of you. Also, feel free to shoot me an email back. I would love to hear about what’s going on with you and your part of the world.

In him,

Thomas

The post Thomas Moore’s December Update first appeared on FRIENDSMISSION.COM.