Seeking a Place to Meet; Update on Josiah
The Tates have served the Lord in Kitale, Kenya since January 2008. Their main ministry is church planting.
July 20, 2020
Greetings in the Name of Jesus Christ,
As you read through my newsletter for this month you will probably say to yourself “haven’t I heard this before”? Well, even to me some of the things I will write about in this newsletter sound like a broken record – skip, skip, skip. I definitely feel like we have been through this newsletter before.
The reason for the broken record this month is because, once again, we are definitely looking for a new location to worship in for Upper Room Baptist Chapel. We started the Chapel in 2018, meeting in a room on the top floor (the “Upper Room”) of a building in town. In August 2019, while I was in the States taking Amy to college, we encountered problems with another church that had moved in across the hall and greatly disturbed our services with their amplifiers and speakers and loud music and screeching preaching. Not being able to resolve the problems with this other church we decided to move out. In September of 2019 we moved into a house, sub-renting the place from a school that also met there. It was an excellent venue for the Chapel, and we all enjoyed meeting and worshiping there. The Chapel began to grow numerically and spiritually. Then, in March of 2020 the big boom hit – Covid19. The Kenyan government shut down everything as I mentioned in previous newsletters – schools, churches, government offices, etc. This shutdown ultimately caused the school from whom we were sub-renting to financially implode and subsequently go belly-up and shut its doors for good.The shutting down of the school left URBC in a quandary. Now we again needed a place to worship. Because we liked the location so much, we considered taking over the entire rent of the premises and just using it entirely for the Chapel. We approached the landlady proposing the idea. It would cost us a lot more money, but it would cause the least disruption to the Chapel and since the Lord’s work is more important than money, we thought it was a deal worth pursuing. It turns out, however, that the owner of the building is a Somali lady. Now, I am not disparaging Somalis or putting them down at all, but the end result was not surprising. Somalia is 99% Muslim and the Somali owner is a Muslim. She was not mean about her decision and she was not discriminating against us because we are Christians but she felt like renting her place to a “Jesus church” was against her Muslim beliefs. She thought that her Somali community here in Kitale would persecute her if they found out she was renting her property to a church and decided not to rent it to us. That is her prerogative. But this did leave us in a familiar position – once again looking for a place to worship.
Since then I have been looking for a new place to worship but the available places are severely limited and expensive. I just looked at a place today that could meet our needs and be an OK place to meet but I feel like the property is overpriced. I hope to look at another place tomorrow but I’m not sure how that will turn out either. Please be in earnest prayer that God would lead us to the right place, a place that would meet our needs at the right price and that could be used to glorify His Name, spread His kingdom here on earth, and provide spiritual and physical growth for the Chapel.
In other news, we were able to get Josiah on an evacuation flight out of Kenya and to the States. He needed to get back to the States in time to quarantine for 14 days before school starts but there have been no international flights out of Kenya since March, and none scheduled until sometime in August. This didn’t give Josiah enough time to make it to school. Then on Friday, July 10th, we received an email from the embassy about the evacuation flight leaving on Monday, July 13th. Julie and I thought about it for two minutes and decided to get him on the flight. We booked the flight that day, Friday. Saturday, we spent getting everything ready for him to leave Kenya and get back to the States. Sunday, Josiah and I drove to Nairobi. Monday afternoon I put him on a plane leaving Kenya forever. This all happened very, very quickly, much too quickly for his mama and me. One day he was here at home with no idea of when he would be leaving and the next day, literally, he was gone – Flying from Nairobi to Qatar to the United States, flying for the first time by himself, and heading to America to start his new life without the help of mom or dad. Very hard for Josiah. Very hard for mom and dad. Please pray that God would be with him in a very special way, strengthening him, giving him courage, and filling him with His Holy Spirit. Pray for mom and dad too.
Blessings to you all,
Roger, Julie, Amy, Josiah & Chloe
Contact Info:
Roger & Julie Tate
P.O. Box 96
Kitale, Kenya 30200
rojuta@gmail.com
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.
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H.H. Overbey Scholarship Recipients
Josiah Tate 
Amy Tate
Josiah Tate is our latest recipient of the H. H. Overbey Scholarship for the upcoming 2019-20 academic year. Josiah is the son of our missionaries, Roger and Julie Tate. He has served with his family in Kenya since his childhood and will be entering Cedarville University in August … as God makes the way for him to travel from there to here.
Also, we have granted Amy Tate another $1000 toward her upcoming 2020-21 academic year. We are so proud of and thankful for them both – and we urge you to pray for them both and consider contributing to the H. H. Overbey Scholarship Fund.
The H. H. Overbey Scholarship awards each recipient $1000 per academic year to continue their post-secondary education in a field that will further train and develop them for Christian service.
The H. H. Overbey Scholarship is named in the memory and honor of H. H. Overbey. Brother Overbey loved the children of our missionaries and contributed personally and generously to many of them for their Christian education and training – as well as others who are still today faithfully serving Jesus Christ. This is just one more way we can carry on his legacy of generosity.
We encourage you to pray for Josiah and also for his parents and family as they are separated from one another.
And, if you wish to contribute to the H. H. Overbey Scholarship Fund to assist Josiah and others of our missionaries’ children in future academic years, designate your contributions for “H. H. Overbey Scholarship Fund.” These funds are supplied only through your designated offerings.
You may read Josiah’s personal salvation and service testimony here:
Career Goals and Professional Aspirations
My name is Josiah Tate, and I’m not quite sure exactly what career I want to go into. I’ve always had carpentry, civil engineering, and youth ministry on the list of ideas. Career choosing has never been set in stone for me, and I’ve never really felt like God has revealed that to me yet. What I do know is that no matter what career I find myself in 10 years from now I have only one main goal: to praise God through it all. No matter what we choose to go into in this life, everything should point to God and His love for us. I don’t just want to be able to succeed in whatever career I end up choosing, but I also want to do it whole heartily. God tells us that whatever we do, we need to do with our whole hearts and with all our effort. It’s not just about excelling at what you do that counts, but about working hard and giving God the glory that really matters. I want to make sure that I am worshiping God through my career, showing His love, grace, and mercy in all that I do. Spreading his good news to workers and others around me should be my main priority, for that is the main goal.
Many feel that the only way to worship God in their jobs is to become a missionary or a pastor, or something to do with the church in some sort of fashion, but that is not what I have found. If I do choose to go into carpentry for example, I could create things that have biblical messages in them; things that tell a story, that can lift others up. I can worship God in engineering as well; it could be as simple as talking to workers around you about your faith and your story. That can have the same effect as being a missionary somewhere far away in a remote place. No matter where I go or what I do, there will always be people around me to talk to and get to know. Many will not be Christian, and that is the perfect opportunity to spread the love of Christ to those around me. Being a Christian leader doesn’t always mean that you are in a leadership position. You can be a good Christian leader by leading by example: living your life in a way that is pleasing to God. If you do this, it cannot go unnoticed. People will start to get curious and ask questions providing the perfect opportunity to share your faith with non-believers around you. You can also help lift up other believers as well. You can become friends with those who are struggling with their faith and together become stronger and closer to God through all the hardships this world likes to throw at us. So, no matter what career you choose to go into, you can find people to share God’s love with, and that is what I want to be known for.
Most people do want to get wealthy through their job/career. I am no different, though my desire of what to do with that money may differ from some. I do know that all the wealth I attain in my lifetime is not mine but God’s who has given it to me to use in His name, and I should treat it as such. I want all that I make to be used for God’s glory ether funding hospitals, children homes, or supporting missionaries. Money and wealth is not to be worshiped, it is just a thing that we use to measure power, and I know that it can be used for bad, but it can also be used for good. God could even call me to sell everything and become a missionary myself; but, whatever money I obtain, I want it to be used in a way that is worthy of God’s love and approval.
Click here to make a donation to the HHO Scholarship Fund now.
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