Last week, on April 27th Renee & I landed on Canadian soil after 6 months away in Africa & England. So many amazing things have happened in our lives & in our ministry; life changing stuff!

We were met by our son Brandon at the Vancouver Int. Airport & taken back to his house where there were 4 very excited grandkids [& of course his lovely wife, Alyssa] waiting for us! What a wonderful welcome home.

Since arriving back in Kamloops, we’ve had an onslaught of friends & more family to see us. Sunday, we returned to the Feast, our home church, with our daughter Jennica & 2 of her kids & enjoyed reuniting with many friends.

I know it’s been a while since sending out our last update, but there were a lot of good reasons for that…..where do I begin?

The last couple of months we spent in Kenya, the Lord really spoke to us about our ministry. We’ve been doing a lot of good ministry, traveling around Kenya & Uganda. We’ve been involved in believer’s & leader’s conferences, school camps & meetings, crusades, door to door evangelism, pastoral time in orphanages, street kids’ outreach centre; all the time, going from place to place. Even though what we’ve been involved in has been good, we’ve really heard the Lord saying to us that we need to focus in on the youth more pastorally – meaning, discipling, developing & mentoring individuals.

As we’ve traveled around Africa, what we have not seen is any decent place for teens & twenties to hang out in. As with young people anywhere, without a positive alternative, they get into drinking, drugs & immorality. Our desire is to open a youth outreach centre in the city of Kisumu, Kenya.
It will be a safe & fun Christian environment for young people to congregate - & where we will minister to them spiritually & practically. We will need a substantial building for the centre, so we can have various games, sports & outreach events. It will be called ‘Integrity Center for Youth’ or ICY – [I see why].

Our mission base has been a rental house located in the village of Butere, Kenya for the past couple of years. When we left at the beginning of April, we gave that up & sold the contents of our place to the neighboring American ministry, RCM {Rainbow Christian Missions} who are doing a great work in the village of Butere. We had prayed that if that sale went thru it was confirmation that the Lord wanted us to move to Kisumu.

As a compliment to the youth outreach center, we will also be opening a trendy coffee shop [Zoostah’s Coffee House]. We’ve all seen the popularity of these venues increase over the past few years in the west & Africa is no different. We’ve visited a couple of them in the city of Nairobi, [which is substantially larger than Kisumu], but there has yet to be one opened in Kisumu. We feel it is timely for us to move forward with this. It is our hope this will help sustain our work in Africa, [making us more self sufficient] & also providing much needed employment for the nationals.

In every part of our vision, we intend to raise up others to take over the work & take it to the next level – so we can move on & replicate the success in other areas of Africa.

Since 2007, Renee & I have been spending six months in Africa & the other six in Canada. God has given us the grace to be in Africa, for being away from kids & grandkids & many other things. As I’ve shared our vision, [at least the beginning stages of it], it has become glaringly obvious that our dedication will have to increase in order for us to accomplish our vision. We have made the decision to move to Kenya in a few months.

Over this next while, we are selling our house in Kamloops, researching the necessary information toward our move & making many preparations for this commitment. Before I could share this information, we had to first share it with our children, hence the delay in a ministry update.

Many great things will happen as a result of this decision. For people who are interested in experiencing African missions, now we can offer any time of the year & any amount of time commitment, meaning anywhere from a week to many months. Because of the full time commitment to our vision, we will see greater fruitfulness for the kingdom of God, as we will be focusing more in a concentrated area in western Kenya & do less traveling around. This will allow us to do more < one on one > discipleship, which is so necessary in Africa.

As we have ‘stepped out of the boat’ – and declared we are doing this, we’ve seen the hand of God opening new doors for us & the windows of heaven. In England, Africa & in Canada, so many Christian leaders & friends have passionately expressed great interest in getting behind this vision in a myriad of ways - practically, spiritually & wanting to participate in missions with us. We thank God for His many confirmations that we are on the right track & keeping in step with Him.

We are making this commitment to make Kenya our home, but will be returning as often as the Lord allows us to Canada & the UK to see our family & friends & to network with other ministries.

I got a word the other day from the Lord – as father Abraham took his son Isaac, [his son of promise] up to the alter to sacrifice him – God saw his willingness & he didn’t have to make the sacrifice. I believe as we’ve laid it all down to the Lord, He is blessing us in much the same way & we won’t have to be separated from our children & grandchildren for too long of an extended time.

We believe February 2010 will be the right time to go back to Kenya. This timing will allow us to spend Christmas in Canada with our kids & grandkids & to make so many preparations.

We appreciate & are eternally thankful to everyone who has stood with us & supported us prayerfully & practically. We cannot [& do not want to] do this alone & know God has divinely networked us with so many amazing people. Words cannot do justice to how overwhelmed we are for what God has done & continues to do in our lives & ministry. We are involved with so many people who inspire us & provoke us to carry on the call of God in our lives.

We love to hear from you – it encourages us so much. God bless you all & we hope to hear from you soon.

In His Service,
Greg & Renee Plunkett