The Tate Family has served the Lord in Kitale, Kenya since January 2008. Their main ministry is church planting.

August 27, 2019

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I am again sitting in Emily’s living room while I write this update. However, I am now at the end of my Stateside trip to take Amy to school. I fly back to Kenya tomorrow afternoon, beginning my long journey back to Julie and back to Kitale. I have been a month in the States now, getting done the things I came to do and enjoying time with my family and church.

Amy is now at Cedarville University. I am thankful to the University for the International / Missionary Kid orientation they provided for Amy. Amy and I were able to spend a few days on campus getting familiar with everything before the rest of the incoming freshman arrived. This helped Amy and the other third culture kids acclimate much easier and helped them start making friends earlier as well. I will be sad tomorrow when I leave as I will now be leaving both Emily and Amy on this side of the world.

I will be returning to some trouble on the Kenyan side of the world. In my absence some troubles have arisen at the Upper Room Baptist Chapel. The problem isn’t with any of my people. All my people have stayed and continued worshiping together in my absence. The problem comes from other Christians who are not acting too much like Jesus. The situation is thus: Another church moved into our building directly across the hall from the door to our Chapel. That means their door is no more than 4 feet away from our door. On top of this they have installed large speakers and amplifiers in their room and pointed them at the door and towards our chapel. When my people arrived at the Chapel on that first Sunday the music from the other church was already booming so loudly that the Chapel was vibrating. My people could not hear each other no matter how loudly they spoke or yelled at each other. They went to speak to the pastor of the other church and see if anything could be done about the noise. The other pastor and church refused to do anything about the music and continued to blast my people out of the building. My Chapel people did not want a confrontation with the other church and wanted to be Christ-like. They decided to take chairs outside and they met under a Mango tree for which I strongly commend them. We were hoping the problem would correct itself, but the problem has actually continued as is for the past three weeks. My landlord is aware of the problem but has not taken action yet to correct it. As a result, this will be one of the first items I will have to address as soon as I return. Since the first moment I heard that this was going on I truly believed it was an attack from Satan. I have not become discouraged about it at all yet and truly feel that it is a little test to see how we will handle the difficulty and whether we will trust God with the problem or not. We will be praying for a quick and amicable resolution and one in which God will receive all the glory.

Next newsletter will be from Kenya once again.

Until next month, beloved.
May God’s peace and joy be with you.
For the glory of God in Kenya,
Roger & Julie Tate (and Amy, Josiah & Chloe)

rojuta[at]gmail.com
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For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.