Between 2019 and 2021 Pastor Tom Opiyo, founder of People for Jesus Ministry (PFJM) in Kenya, received an APF scholarship to study for a bachelor’s degree in theology at the Pan Africa Christian University in Nairobi. He graduated in July of last year and recently sent a very full and encouraging annual report.
PFJM is a registered Kenyan non-governmental organisation. It is based in Narok County in the south of the country and works in Maasailand in practical and pastoral ways. Tom’s report ran to nearly twenty pages so here is a brief except and a few of the highlights:
Adult Literacy Programme
PFJM churches are being encouraged to address the education gap experienced by many Maasai women and girls that drop out of school due to early marriages. The classes combine basic literacy with income generation skills and advice to enable adults to earn as they learn. Although the overwhelming majority of pupils are female, around 15% of the cohort is male.
Support for Flood Victims
During 2022 there were severe floods in the Kandaria area. Many local residents were housed in the compound of Kandaria Secondary School, a PFJM foundation establishment. Even after the floods subsided some people remained due to food and economic insecurity with more than 350 people displaced from their homes that were lost to the flood.
Outreach to the Nations
During March 2023 PFJM teams were visiting Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Iganga in Uganda for short term missions. The outreach involves evangelistic crusades and intercessory prayer gatherings, as well as support to local projects and churches. Closer to home two churches have been planted at Loita, near the Tanzania border and Nyang’ande in Kisumu County in the far south west.
Care for Vulnerable People Groups
In Nyang’ande, People for Jesus Ministry is giving a helping hand to more than 80 children living with disability through socialisation activities and around 40 senior citizens at the Bigoma Community Centre. The community is not connected to the national grid and lacks power, lighting and access to clean water. Tom hopes that once the power supply is installed a well can be drilled if resources allow.
In addition to these ministry needs Pastor Tom requests prayer for his family, especially his wife Eunice who shares much of the ministry burden in church and managing the many women’s projects, and their children: Joy (studying Public Health at university), Joshua, Deborah and Peter who are still at various stages in their school careers.
The PFJM motto for 2023 is Isaiah 40:31. Let us pray with them as they reach out to the hungry, thirsty, helpless and oppressed that, waiting on the Lord, Tom, Eunice and all the team will “mount up with wings like eagles … run and not grow weary … walk and not grow faint.”