2020 Pittsley Post 1

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Classes Begin

Today we held our customary EABST family get-together at the beginning of the semester. I was so excited to meet a student who started with us last semester while I was in the States. He attended the luncheon with his wife and four children. He shared with me about how our Interpreting class, an introduction to hermeneutics, is affecting his life. His new skills in grasping the main idea and the big picture of the passages he studies is opening new vistas of understanding of the Scriptures. He and his wife shared how they are both benefiting in that he is sharing what he is learning with her. In turn, they are helping their children grow in their skill in reading the Scripture well. She is sharing with her ladies' Bible study at church, and he is teaching the youth group passage-by-passage using his new skills. It's thrilling to be part of what the Lord is doing for his people here in Nairobi!
This semester, I am teaching three classes. Interpreting 2 follows up on the class the student was discussing. This is where I get to introduce students to the original languages. They're already hard at work learning the Greek alphabet. I am also teaching Theology 1 where we piece together what God's Word says about itself, about God, and about Christ's person and work. Finally I'm teaching a class on the Latter Prophets, which includes Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets. We'll be busy this semester! Keep us in prayer as we seek to teach God's Word and equip God's servants for his harvest fields.
Also pray that the Lord would continue to use our ministry to Emmanuel Baptist Church. Tomorrow we're starting a new series in the adult Bible study time on congregational counseling. Each one of us as church members is called to serve the body, to be "full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another" (Rom 15:14). May God grant grace that we may match that description for his glory.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2020 from the Pittsleys!

Resettling

We did catch a little bit of snow in MI.

 After leaving Bakersfield a few weeks back, we spent a little time off together as a family in SoCal before taking very different paths back to Michigan where we would be catching our flight back to Nairobi. Jenny and the boys went immediately from LAX to Detroit where they stayed with our sending church, Inter-City Baptist of Allen Park, MI.

I took a more circuitous route, stopping along the way at the ETS conference in San Diego. From there I drove our van to El Paso where I said goodbye to my parents and then up to Albuquerque where we had originally rented our vehicle. The final tally ran up to something like 14,500 miles (23,300 km) of travel in that vehicle; God kept us safe the whole way.

Some tired boys got some
heiße Schokolade (hot chocolate) in Frankfurt.

A couple of cross-country flights reunited me with Jenny and the boys, and that week we enjoyed Thanksgiving with Jen’s parents and brother. Our last Sunday in country we split our time between the first church to support us, Inter-City Baptist, and a church we’d never visited before, Resurrection Church, Lincoln Park.

Later that week, we flew to Nairobi via Frankfurt. The Lord was kind to grant an exceptionally uneventful pair of flights.

I believe the family is resettling into our regular routine again and beginning to emerge from jet lag. As we begin our third term, please pray for us that the Lord would grant us grace not to serve as though we were sufficient in ourselves, but only "with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever" (1 Peter 4:11).