More Important than Grades; Surgery & Prayers Needed
December 10, 2024
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ,
I’m trying to get this newsletter out at the latest possible date. I usually do get my newsletters out late but this month I have a legitimate excuse. Last Wednesday evening Julie became very sick. I ended up taking her to the emergency room where we spent the night. By the next morning, she was admitted to the hospital with suspicions about her gall bladder. After extensive tests and a couple of days in the hospital the doctors decided it was indeed her gall bladder and that it needed to be removed.
She underwent some kind of surgery, the technical/medical name of which I cannot remember. The bottom line is that she had her gall bladder removed and spent the next couple of days in the hospital. When the doctors saw her gall bladder they knew they had made the right decision to remove it. It was severely inflamed, contained many stones, and was fraying/flaying/fileting (I can’t remember what the doctor said or how he pronounced it but the bottom line was that the tissue was very soft and beginning to come apart). It definitely needed to come out before it became very dangerous. I was able to bring Julie back home from the hospital yesterday and she is now home slowly recovering. Four nights in hospital in Kenya is no fun, let me tell you. Hopefully removing her gall bladder will help with some stomach issues she has been having lately. We shall see. Please pray for a full recovery and a future better health condition for my wife. Julie’s surgery occurred during term break, which I suppose is a blessing.
This past term I began to learn something very important about my students. I learned that to many of them, the grade they will get in my class is too important. For many of them, getting a good grade is of utmost importance. To me, however, the grade is just an assessment of whether they are possibly learning the material or not. Many of my students become obsessed with grades. I suppose that is typical among students worldwide. I tell them that the grade is important, but not all important. I have been telling them that the learning of the Bible is important. I stress that their learning of how to minister to God’s people and God’s churches and God’s Kingdom is really what is important. That is what they are here at this school to learn and the grade is more my way of telling whether they are importing and processing the information in the best possible way. I want them all to get a good grade. However, more than that, I want them to learn how to minister the message of the Bible, the gospel, and the love of Jesus to God’s people. I tell them that when they are done and “out there” ministering the gospel to God’s people that nobody is going to ask them what grade they received in Mr. Tate’s hermeneutics and interpretation class. It will be important, however, for them to interpret and teach the Bible correctly, which Mr. Tate’s hermeneutics and interpretation class will help them do. Nobody is going to care if they got an “A” in Mr. Tate’s General Epistles class. However, they will care that these students and future pastors can help them in their suffering the way Peter teaches in his letters, or help them work out their faith in action the way James teaches in his epistle, or help them love one another in word and in deed the way John teaches in his letters. My beloved students, keep your eyes on the prize – not a grade, but the ability to minister to God’s people and glorify God in doing so.
Please pray for me, beloved. I am really struggling with Chloe right now. Her whining, screaming, and throwing things is really starting to wear me down and I feel anger rising up within me that I need God’s help to control. Even in the middle of writing this newsletter I had to stop because Chloe was mad and threw a big container of powdered, pink paint on the dining room floor. I don’t know where she got it, but it exploded and powdered, pink paint was everywhere. To add to the problem, before she threw the paint, she threw a full bottle of shampoo, which also exploded. The powdered, pink paint mixed with the shampoo to make an extremely hard to clean, pink sloppy mess. I spent the next hour on my hands and knees trying to clean it up (all while fuming in my heart and muttering under my breath). God, please help Roger to have patience and to care more about Chloe than he does about himself.
Blessings to all,
Roger, Julie & Chloe
CONTACT INFO
Roger & Julie Tate
Moffat Bible College
P.O. Box 70
Kijabe, Kenya 00220
rojuta@gmail.com
For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
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Teaching Future Ministers, Caring for Tina
The Tate Family has served the Lord in Kitale, Kenya since January 2008. Their main ministry is indigenous church planting.
May 23, 2017
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
If you read my report from last month (and I certainly hope you did), then you know that I gave you a little teaser at the end about what I wanted to write about in this month’s report. This teaser concerned some of my future plans that I feel God leading me to do. Now, I know it’s not “right” to give a teaser and get your readership all excited and anticipating what you will write about (if indeed you read last month’s newsletter and care about what I teased you about) and then NOT write about it. I know that’s not decent and decorous. However, that’s what I’m going to have to do. The reason for this is because I wanted to use this past month to solidify some of my thoughts and plans and have something more concrete to present to you. However, this month ended up being so busy for me that I had little time left for thinking about future planning. So, instead of laying out future plans, I will have to content myself (and you) with relating my busyness of the past month.
I guess I should have known this month would be busy as most, although not all, of what I did was pre-planned. I had two classes scheduled to teach at the local Bible college I teach at on a fairly regular basis—one in May and one in June. The class in May was Hermeneutics and the class in June is Old Testament Prophetic Literature. The Hermeneutics class I have taught before but having taught it before I recognized that my notes and class material needed to be revamped to better address the level of my students at the college. The OT Prophetic Literature class is a new class for me and has to be prepared from scratch. That being said, I have been working feverishly to prepare for these two classes. Then, last week I taught the Hermeneutics class to a new, fresh group of young, future pastors and ministers. Teaching future ministers proper Bible interpretation methods and principles is a great joy and worth all the time and effort it requires. It is, however, quite exhausting, especially for an introverted person like me who would prefer not to have to talk. Talking is exhausting, especially when you are not used to talking for an extra 40 hours a week. My throat is always raw and sore by the end of the week. But believe me, if these future ministers can learn to properly interpret and teach God’s Word then it is worth any effort and sacrifice. Oh, and before I started the class I took a long trip to Rift Valley Academy to spend the weekend with my kids at school.
On top of all this, Julie and I have another baby in the house again. Tina, whom we have cared for in the past, is back. She was born three months premature, we cared for her for the first two months of her life and she is now six months old. Tina had been in the hospital for a week with pneumonia. When she was discharged from the hospital the director of the children’s home where she lives called to ask us if we could take her in for a while while she recuperated. Julie and I talked about it and came to the conclusion together that we were too busy right now to take her in. We just couldn’t add the full-time care of a sick baby to our plate. I knew immediately in my heart that it was the wrong decision but didn’t admit this to Julie. What?!? Too busy to help one of God’s precious little ones back to health? Too busy to make some small sacrifices for the life of a child? Bad decision. Anyway, I found out a little later that Julie also thought it was a bad decision. When I returned home one night after teaching she said something like this: “I know I shouldn’t have made this decision unilaterally but I told the director we could take Tina in and care for her until she is well”. I responded with the words “OK, Julie, if that’s what you decided” but what I thought in my heart was Good for you Julie! Way to go! That WAS the right decision. Thanks for having the courage to deny yourself and follow God’s leading in this. So, Tina is back with us until she is well, and although unbroken sleep and less work is good and desirable, caring for and loving God’s children is better.
One more thing to add to the list. Tomorrow I am heading to Nairobi for a Bible conference on the local church. I have not been to any kind of Bible conference of any sort since I first left the States to come to Africa nine and a half years ago. I am looking forward to the conference but am already tired just thinking about it.
Until next month, beloved.
May God’s peace and joy be with you.
For the glory of God in East Africa,
Roger & Julie Tate (and Amy, Josiah & Chloe)
rojuta[at]gmail.com
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Missionary Update: The Tates in Kenya [October 2015]
The Tate Family has served the Lord in Kitale, Kenya since January 2008. Their main ministry is indigenous church planting.
September 28, 2015
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Hello Friends. I am in an especially happy mood right now as I sit down to write this update. As you know, we have been wanting to adopt Chloe since she came to live with us last October. We just celebrated Chloe’s first birthday back on September 17th but unfortunately the Kenyan government’s moratorium on foreign adoptions is still in place. Thus, in the meantime, because we are not able to proceed with formal adoption plans, we thought it a good idea to obtain some more legal and permanent recognition of our status with her. So, for the past few months we have been in the courts here in Kitale trying to obtain legal guardianship for Chloe. This isn’t adoption, but it is an extremely important legal proceeding for us. In granting us guardianship the court would in essence be recognizing us as her legal parents and no one would be able to take her from us without a court order from the same court granting us guardianship. In other words, it legally places her in our family and gives us legal parental rights to her. However, up to today we have faced many delays and postponements in this legal process. Countless times we have thought we would receive the ruling only to be delayed again. We’ve jumped through all the hoops only to be postponed again. Today, finally, we have received the ruling from the court – We have been granted legal guardianship of Chloe! We are thanking God for this ruling and for placing Chloe into our family and now pray that the government will open up the adoption process to us as well. She is a precious blessing to us and in light of the recent and horrible discoveries about Planned Parenthood we are blessed and pleased to be able to care for and love one of God’s “little ones”. Lord, help each of us to be as concerned as you are about your “little ones” and all those in this world who are weak and helpless.
In other news, I also just finished teaching a week long class at a local Bible college just outside of town here in Kitale. The class I taught was hermeneutics (or, how to interpret Scripture). The class was all day, every day from Monday to Friday with the final exam on Saturday morning. I was excited about being invited to teach this class at the Bible college because one of the best ways to see the Kingdom of Christ grow and spread here in Kenya is to help, teach and disciple the pastors of the country—and what better topic to teach them but how to properly interpret God’s Word. I found out how important it was to teach my students this topic as throughout the week I found out that their favorite method of interpreting the Scriptures was to allegorize the text (ie, replacing the original, intended meaning of the author with fanciful and imaginative substitute meanings). It was a grueling and tiring week but my eleven students were very bright and I grew to appreciate them all very much.
Finally, I want to give you my latest Pokot news. In my last newsletter update I reported my desire to visit a certain remote village in the bush in Pokot and to take the gospel of Jesus there to those isolated people. Since my last report I was actually able to meet with my contact and we had solidified my plans with actual dates and an itinerary. However, later that very day all my plans came crashing to the ground. I will not go into all the details but let me just say that it was obvious that God himself was closing all the doors for me to make this trip. We can have our own plans but ultimately God is in control and when He shuts the doors it is wise that we not try to force them back open. In fact, it appears that God has completely shut the ministry doors to Pokot to me, at least for the time being. I still desire to minister and share the gospel with these remote people and we will see how God opens things up and allows me to minister there, but for now I have no immediate plans to go. This makes me very sad but I comfort myself with the knowledge that the Apostle Paul also had certain ministry plans and had intentions on going to certain cities when God suddenly directed him to another city and gave him alternative plans. Again, I will try and trust in God and do all that He asks me to do. In the meantime I will pray for an opening up of the ministry back in Pokot.
Until next month, beloved.
May God’s peace and joy be with you.
For the glory of God in East Africa,
Roger & Julie Tate (and Emily, Amy, Josiah & Chloe)
rojuta[at]gmail.com
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