April 2007 Prayer Letter

Dear Supporters and Friends, April 2007

Happy Easter from the Shelby Family. It is a great time of the year, and as we remember the Resurrection of our Saviour, it is comforting that no matter how difficult life seems, He is living in us and He will help us face tomorrow.

Since coming back to Kenya from furlough, I have wanted to start a church in our town of Kisii. There are over 85,000 people here, and they need a good church. I had been looking for a place to meet and started doing some general visitation to people that I already had contact with. Recently, another church closed down in the area because of problems that they could not solve between themselves, and the property was given to us to use by their missionary, who lives in another part of the country. The Lord enabled us to do some painting and general clean up and we had our first service as CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH on Easter Sunday with 100 in attendance with 6 adults getting saved. God has blessed during the last month with 24 other adults being saved during soul-winning and market preaching. Praise the Lord!! He is good!!

This property will be our base for this area; and we are already using it for South Nyanza Baptist College, because of the problems that I mentioned in our last letter with other pastors in Rongo. The Lord is blessing and opening so many doors to preach the Gospel in markets, schools, colleges, prisons, supermarkets, and others. We have a big chain of supermarkets here in Kenya known as “Nakumatt.” Our store has devotions every morning for their employees, and they have invited me to come and lead it for them. It is amazing. Please pray that we can get this church on its feet so we can reach this city for Christ.

The property that we have been handed has cost the other missionary $18,000 in buying the land and the buildings. He has given us a year to pay it off. Please consider this as a special offering and put the memo as “Kisii Property.” For the time being we are using this for the college also but we are looking at a Town Youth Hall that just came available and we can do some partitioning of dorms and classrooms, to serve the purpose for the college.

Please continue to pray about our support level. Over the last two months the rate of the dollar has fallen and from our support level we have lost about $500-$600 when we convert it to Kenya Shillings. Please pray about these needs. We love you, and God bless you.

For Souls in Kisii,

Luke and Tonya Shelby
Missionaries in Kenya

The Beginning

We started this new church on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007, with 101 in attendance. We began the church on the property of a previous Baptist Church that had closed down a month before that was started by another missionary. The church agreed to close down and to allow me to use the property to start a new church with the remaining willing members. All members were not willing; but God has enabled us to go through the transition stages of how people see the church publicly, and He has helped us to have many join the church from many other areas of the town.
I am currently the pastor of this church I am currently the pastor of this church, because it is in the biggest city in our region, and we have hopes of starting many ministries out of this church. We are already involved in the Kisii prisons, schools, and other local church ministries. We pray that God will enable this church to send out its own people to the many different villages around Kisii town and start local independent Baptist Churches that will preach that many will be saved and taught the Word of God. We are also planning for this church to be the base for the Bible College and other ministries that we have already started in other villages.