News from Pastor Francis Ngugi (Kenya)

Greetings in the precious name of our Lord Jesus.

I trust all is well with you my be4loved in the lord. Here in Kenya all is well except that our army is in a war with a neighboring Somali in an effort to flush out Al Shabab militants who have been kidnapping Kenyans & tourists. Everybody is in high alert because their sympathizers are retaliating by suicide bombs inside Kenya. But my family is fine as well as the church ministry. I have sent you the most recent pictures of our church. I have continued preaching my heart out, on Sundays doing an exposition on the Sermon on the mount. On the last three sermon series I have preached from Mathew 6:22-24. The first sermon I preached on THE GOOD AND THE EVIL HEART. The activities of the body are directed according to the light which is received through the eye: When the eye is sound and functioning properly & perceiving objects as they really are, the whole body is illumined: But if the eye be blind, or it's vision faulty, then we perceive objects confusedly & without distinction: As a result we stumble as if in the dark & cannot perform our task or journey properly: we are liable to run into danger. In describing the eye as the lamp of the body, Christ used a most apt symbol, since the eye has no light within itself: He used the eye to symbolize the spiritual understanding of the heart: If the heart be well illumined by Gospel truth and the Holy Spirit, it will be inclined to goodness: It will then direct man's life to godly actions: Then the whole of man's conduct & behavior will be pure & undefiled before God. But if the heart is not well illumined, its tendencies are evil & it remains hard, envious, covetous and full of vices of darkness: The whole of man's conduct will be heathenish & ungodly. What a man believes in his heart is what largely determines how he lives . On the second sermon series I preached on HOW SPIRITUAL BLINDNESS LEADS TO DISORDERLY LIFE. Jesus used the word "Single Eye" as a symbol of an understanding & illumined heart: it was the most suitable word pathologically, for a good or sound vision is a Single one: To see double or to look at different objects or different parts of an object with each eye is proof that our vision organs are defective, & a sign of approaching blindness. At Regeneration, the heart is renewed & the eyes of the soul has their vision rectified: The eye of faith is opened: The understanding of the heart is divinely enlightened: God becomes the heart's all-absorbing object & His glory becomes the chief concern of the regenerated believer. In consequence, the whole of life comes under Godly influences: The conscience become well informed: The affections are warmed up towards God, and the will is moved to act in the right direction. This enlightened understanding & divinely instructed conscience are now able to distinguish between things that differ, good & evil, & things heavenly and earthly. This miracle of Grace must happen if the man has judge rightly the the things that matters most to God and to himself: Without that, his vitiated mind produces nothing but disorderly life.His brutish lusts and evil desires eventually plunge his life into destruction. The third sermon in this series was MAN'S INABILITY TO SERVE TWO MASTERS. Christ had earlier diffrencitated between the Two Treasures...earthly & heavenly & between Two Eyes or understandings...single or evil. Now He opposes the Two Masters - stting God over against material riches which is symbolised by mammon or money. Christ's audience were the Jews who entwertained vague notions of happiness & whose minds were engrossed with dreams of carnal prosperity.

They supposed that their expectations of worldly aggrandizement & spiritual happiness were quite consistent. Christ informs them of their delusion & mistake: He asserted that he who has his heart partly on God & partly on self, who desires to grasp of both worlds, deceives his own soul: Such a one is in danger of losing both. Our minds and heart must be supremely fixed upon God: A man's affections cannot be equally divided: Man has no capacity to love the things of this world and love God at the same time with equal effort: If he dare do so, he will certainly fail to love one and love the other more: A man can only serve two masters UNEQUALLY whereby he occasionally do an act of service to one master, while he habitually serves the other whom he love most.

The influence which earthly riches exert upon men's minds, hearts and affections is a danger that Christ would not like us to ignore: In seeking happiness in earthly riches, men are moved to devote their time & energies to acquire them in detriment to the welfare of their souls. These and more were the highlights of the three sermon series. I sincerely thank you for your continued prayers, support, love and encouragement as I preach the glorious Gospel of Christ. My prayers are with you all the time.

With much love. Pastor Francis Ngugi, Nairobi/Kenya

Short-Term Mission to Nigeria

Dear Church,
I am passing along the updates from Matt Pegram, direct from Nigeria. I'll continue to do so as they come in. Let us bear down in fervent prayer, holding up our brothers and God's mission to these villages. All for His Name. Jen Frye

And in the words of Matt:

"Thursday Update:

Today we began with a lot of driving. Along our route for our second visit to Makoko Mike got quite ill in the car requiring us to turn around and drive him back to the SOS flat. We were about 1 hour into our 1.5 hour journey. The driving is a major part of the mission unfortunately. It is not just the distance but also the traffic and horrible conditions of the roads. There are absolutely no traffic laws enforced. Beyond Thunder dome without the spikes and guns comes to mind. Since we do not have 4 people packed into the back seat of the falling apart SOS Jeep Cherokee I'm able to use this trip to two thumb an update. 100 degrees, no A/C, no emissions inspections, dusty, the air quality is pretty bad. New appreciation for needed SOS vehicle. Gbenga and Paul do our driving. Praise God for locals. Horns are used for their intended purposes here since the highway is ~4.5 lanes (unmarked) all they while they dodge dirt bikes, street vendors and pedestrians often carrying children. Chaos. There is a dead body (adult male) not far from the highway turnaround (by the Muslim training camp) on the side of the road near the SOS flat. Just another reminder of the pressing need for the Gospel.
Arriving in Makoko for our Mike-less visit. At least the canoe will be more stable this time.
Canoe much more stable without Schadt. Spoke to Noah (head of school) about water situation. Flood a month ago destroyed their container, its scaffolding and pump (well itself ok). Also flooded their built up, 20x30' "school yard." Gave $1000 for new water container, new scaffolding and pump + much needed paper for students. On to Mosque......without Mike. Gbanga asks "do you just want to see the outside?" Tempted to say yes.

Mosque anticlimactic. No opportunity to preach. Little time spent. Advised by Gbenga to get out before 4:00 prayer. Both due to Muslim danger and due to getting stuck on Legos Island for the night if we don't get going. Guess I can at least say I'm less intimidated to visit a Mosque in the US. Heading to flat to check on Mike. Will take few hours to get there. Please Pray for Mike. Can't imagine Otere and Akakan without him. Mike has given me the privilege of preaching the Sunday morning worship service in Akakan.


FRIDAY's UPDATE:

Mike was not 100% this morning but well enough to join us in Otere today. Paul want to the doctor today and could not join us. (Nigerian, SOS Paul, not Clearwater Paul). Jacob woke up with a bit of a stomach bug. Ironic since I'm the only one that cleaned my plate of lagoon fish stew in one of our house visits in Lagos. With the city portion of our mission complete, onto the bush.

Otere was amazing. They have erected a shelter with a tin roof on the land they have given to SOS (at least 2 acres). Remember this is a Muslim village! I can't say we packed the 30x20 structure but there were a good 60 people in there and on the outskirts. Included were the chief and village elders. I taught from Luke 15 (through Gbenga interpreting into yoroba), the father and two sons and Mike followed up with further exhortation and Gbenga closed. We met with the chief and elders before hand. Very much like sitting in a North American tepee only without the pipes. The service ended with hallelujah and praise the Lord chants in English. Just after we got there Jacob had a dizzy spell, pray for the health of the team. Many details but this is all my two thumbs can handle for today. Orphanage tomorrow.

Straight Ahead Ministries - September 2011 Update

This month I want to share an incredible story of redemption from one of our newest staff members, Jason Ludwig:

Like a lot of the kids we work with, I come from a home with a very abusive alcoholic and drug-addicted father. This went on until I was eight. Finally when I was eight, my mother had enough of all the beatings and cheating from my father and she kicked him out. Now my mother had to work three jobs to afford the mortgage and all the other bills that came with raising 4 kids. In the end it was too much for her. Our heat, electricity, and water all got shut off. I remember taking shared baths and flushing the toilets with water we had bought from the store with our food stamps. I also remember huddling up together with a ton of blankets to stay warm, doing our homework by candlelight. I was often picked on and teased because of my dirty clothes and the violent incidents my father was still creating in our town. This is where a lot of my issues with insecurities, abandonment and trust stemmed from.

It wasn’t long before I started fighting back. I got into a lot of fights in school and started drinking alcohol to make me feel better. This started in fifth grade. With my father not around I looked up to a lot of my friend’s older brothers who were stealing cars, packing guns and robbing people. I wanted the same respect and fear of people they had, so I started doing things to make a name for myself. I learned how to steal cars and things from the malls to make good money, and sold stuff to mafia guys from Revere, MA.

My drug addiction went from drinking, smoking marijuana and taking pills to eventually main lining cocaine. I went from stealing cars and DVDs to doing masked armed home invasions and robbing drug dealers. I served time in juvenile detention and that’s where I met Straight Ahead Ministries.

The Bible study leaders would come in with a guitar and play songs and talk about God. They also brought in a kid with a similar background as me and he was serving the Lord. I remember seeing the peace in his life as well as the other men that were coming in. I said a prayer and gave my life to the Lord back then. I recall having an actual encounter with the Lord and I remember how they used to take us to a local church on Sundays. It was awesome and I always said to myself that one day I would live like those Christians do. They had a peace about them that I always wanted!

After I was released though, I didn’t have any support back in my home community. I picked up where I had left off, and ended up serving a total of 6 years in and out of the adult prison system between age 17 and 25. But God had begun a real work in me, and I could never go completely back to the old me. Finally, in 2003 I completely surrendered my life to God.

I have been out since 2004, serving in my church as a leader in many different ministries. I met my wife Dené there and we married 6 years ago. We have 2 beautiful boys Jason 5 and Josiah 3. I was a master barber for six years, and now with Straight Ahead one of the things we want to open in our new building in Lynn is a barbershop to employ guys coming out of jail.

I’m so thankful for those two Bible study leaders who sacrificed their time to come in and love on me way back in detention. I’m so excited to give back to kids who are in the same place I was in!

By God’s grace, Jason has come full circle. He’s now back in lock-up but this time as a minister, not an inmate. God is in the business of transforming lives and He continues to do so, bringing new life to many of the troubled young people we serve.

Worcester Lighthouse Mission - Coat Drive

The Missions Committee of Heritage Bible Chapel is offering another opportunity for you to serve the community of Pleasant Street, Worcester!

We will have a work day on Saturday October 1st from 9am-12 noon at Pleasant Street Baptist to organize a move of the free clothes "closet". If you'd like to come and need a ride there, contact Jennifer Frye to make arrangements. It will be fun work, especially for those of you born organized :-). Come use your gifts.

Warm winter coats (etc) needed! To help keep Worcester warm (or anyone else in need) we are having a coat drive. There will be a Coat Give-Away to be held at PSBC on October 15th 10am-noon. Coats of all sizes, hats, gloves, scarves, and boots will be collected up until October 14th (collection bin in the connector). If you don't need it, pass it along! If you'd like to join in on sharing Christ the day of the coat drive, let me know or just come on down.

Pray for the to Lord bless these ministries to the materially poor in our communities. May His name be glorified, and His people restored.

Literacy Class, Day of the Child (Bulgaria)

The 1st of June is celebrated as the ‘Day of the Child’ in Bulgaria. Parents and grandparents take their children out for treats and plan special events. They go to parks, cinemas, concerts, picnics, shops, buy presents, or just spend time together, congratulate the children and tell them how much they love and appreciate them.

Even children who are brought up in orphanages are taken out for a treat by their carers. There is however, a particular type - the very poor Roma kids - who almost never receive any praise, appreciation or treats, let alone on this occasion. As many of you know we work with some of these neglected boys and girls and we decided that for the 1st of June we will plan a special event for them.

So, we took them up to Vitosha Mountain which is a beautiful place only 30 min away from the centre of Sofia. We found a nice green area for picnic and games, arranged for 2 minibuses and 2 cars and went. The children loved it, although it was a bit of a job to teach them how to behave in such places, it was wonderful and it is all part of supporting, caring and loving them.

Update from Pastor Ngugi, Sword of the Spirit

Greetings in the precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I trust that all is well with your soul. Myself, family and church are doing fine.

On preaching ministry, I continue wholeheartedly to tend the flock of the Lord by feeding them with unadulterated, fundamental Gospel of Jesus Christ. On my exposition of the sermon on the mount, three Sundays at a raw I have expounded Mathew 5:38-42 which focuses on Law and Retaliation.

The First Sermon I preached on: BEING IN-CHARGE OF THE SELF. The verses echoes a call on us to rule our own spirits and exercise a self government on our passions: Conquest of our own unruly feelings and emotions requires a more regular and persevering self-management: Withholding ourselves from revenge is a spiritual victory over our anger: By nature, there is a spirit in us which is turbulent, revengeful, and desirous of returning evil for evil: But when we are able to deny corrupt human nature its thirst for retaliation, this gives man a victory over himself: The spiritual result is that God's Grace triumphs and we manifest a noble, brave and strong spiritual character that invites God's blessings: God blesses our exemplifications of His grace when provoked to retaliate: This is because it is often His way to shame the party that did the wrong by overcoming the wrongdoer with believer's love, meekness and generosity: A Christian is not to be satisfied because he has won in a strife but in endeavoring to end conflict by mollifying the matter.

The second sermon I preached on: RESPONDING TO CONFLICTS WITH A SPIRITUAL CONSIDERATION. Jesus is refuting an error from Jewish teachers allowing individuals private revenge: There were statutes in Jewish law for use by their judges which the scribes had permitted to be used privately to settle personal quarrels and injuries, and often in a malicious ways: Christ forbade His followers from resisting attacks by way of private revenge for doing is being overcome by the same evil of his attacker: But public reparation by magistrates in sentencing an evil doer who has injured his fellow however, is not prohibited herein: Its private revenge where a victim take matters into his own hands and retaliate against the one who injured him that Christ forbade: The reason for this prohibition is to give room for the law of love to operate in a believers life: All believers are expected to seize the moment of distress and personal injury to show kindness to him that hates or injures them: However, God's will is not that this principle of grace should override and swallow up all other principles of justice: The requirements of justice and the demands of personal holiness are to be held in a balance by Christians.

Nevertheless, for the fact that they are believers, spiritual considerations should come into play and require Christ's followers to be men of different disposition from the rest of the world: They should be men of peace, meekness, enduring wrong, suffering loss, accepting hardship, full of compassion and operate by simple faith.

The Third Sermon I preached on: WHEN IT IS RIGHT TO CHALLENGE THE WRONG-DOER. In Mathew 18, Christ gave a model of settling offenses among believers: This implies that Christ was not rigidly against pursuit of justice when circumstances warrant so: Under certain circumstances, it would be a Christian bounden duty to seek the protection and help o the officers of the law: Law enforcers are one of God's means for preserving law and order in our communities: God's law given to the Israelites Judges was for the guidance and use designed to protect the weak from the strong: Remitting its demanded penalties was meant to secure justice and to serve as deterrent measures to the evil doers: It also prevented judges from inflicting too severe a punishment upon those guilty of injuring others: As such, we deduce that any law governing the well-being of the community is just, merciful and beneficent.

If inflicting of punishment on those convicted of crimes would make this world a much safer place to live in, then a christian has a duty to contribute to this well-being and safety: There are times when ignoring of wrongs done to us or ignoring injuries inflicted upon those who depend on us for justice would obviously be a failure on our part to perform our social duty towards public safety and justice: We must also not neglect the rights of vulnerable ones who depend on us for justice, by turning loose on society, those who would imperil the security: Even though as Christians we may forgive an offense against ourselves, we have responsibility to our neighbors: But even with these cases where duty requires us Christians to take legal action against one who has injured us or our depend ants, this must be done without any malice and should always come as our last resort: As Christians we mus be aware that it is extremely difficult to handle pitch without the fouling of our garments.

These and more were the highlights of these wonderful 5 verses of the sermon on the mount.

I sincerely thank you for your continued prayers, support, love and encouragement as I preach the Glorious Gospel here in Kenya. My prayers are ever with God for you that all His promises may come to pass in your life for doing what pleases Him.
With much love.

Pastor Francis Ngugi
Nairobi/Kenya

May Report from Straight Ahead Ministries

Dear Family and Friends,

From time to time, Straight Ahead schedules special speakers to share the Good News of Jesus Christ with incarcerated youth. This week we welcome Ryan Morton, from England, who won the Bronze medal for Weightlifting at the 2011 British Masters Championship. Ryan is traveling throughout New England with speaking engagements in thirteen youth lock-up facilities over the course of six days. In addition to demonstrating proper lifting techniques and holding facility-wide Dead Lift competitions, he is also sharing how his faith in Jesus Christ transformed his life, and he offers the teenagers an opportunity to trust Christ for themselves.

I was with Ryan on Monday at a lock-up facility south of Boston. Twelve boys, aged 12-16, and three staff were present. After sharing a bit about how he got involved in competitive weight lifting and his personal achievements in the sport, he changed directions and began to talk about the greatest weightlifter who ever lived. “I can Dead Lift close to 600 pounds and some of my mates can do even more. But none of us can compete with the greatest weightlifter of all time, Jesus Christ. Jesus lifted the weight of the sins of the entire world and placed them on himself. He lifted the weight of the sins of everyone in this room so that by believing in Him you can have your sins forgiven and receive eternal life.”

The Bible says “our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried…He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:4, 12). I will be thankful throughout eternity to Jesus for lifting my sin onto His shoulders and bearing the weight of its penalty so that I might live.

As summer approaches we enter into another season of fundraising. We are honored when anyone gives to the work we are doing for we know that finances are tight for many people. We are so grateful for those who do give and hope that you see the eternal investment your money makes in the lives of juvenile offenders through our direct ministry to the kids and through the ministry of special speakers like Ryan Morton.

- Dan and Jodi Mesher
Straight Ahead Ministries