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by Juma F.

A Good Shepherd Lays Down his Life for the Sheep

The discipleship devotional camp (DDC) is a spiritual program we have been running in our ministry since 2004. This program is meant to equip our students who desire to live as campus shepherds with essential spiritual elements of faith. The program entails deep Bible study based on the life of faith from Genesis, life testimony writing and sharing, morning devotion through daily bread, special book reading, and inductive Bible study.

Right after our Easter Bible conference, our leaders felt the burning fire among our students and saw the need to keep them engaged spiritually. Even though we used to hold this program after the second semester when students were off-session, we had experienced difficulty keeping them in Nairobi since they needed accommodation or finances to support them on other basic needs. So this time, we decided to run the program concurrently with their academic schedule.
During this time, we focused on three major areas:

• Weekly Bible study every Saturday
• Daily Bread devotion
• Life testimony writing and sharing

Since we were already studying Genesis in our regular Bible study, we chose three lectures which we called shepherd ology study from John 21:1-17-(Shepherding! Where it begins), John 1:35-51 (Invitation of sheep-Come & See) and finally, John 10:1-18-(Know your sheep). We studied these lectures on Saturdays in 4 teams led by junior leaders. Our students and leaders joined faithfully for Daily Bread every day from 6 am in our bible center. Junior leaders faithfully served Daily Bread, sharing their own deeply meditated applications. After that, we all sat down in our teams, wrote our applications, and shared them before praying and departing.

After Bible study on Saturdays, the students sat in the Bible center to write their life testimonies. Then, with the help of their shepherds, they were guided to summarize their life testimonies in three pages before sharing them on the last day of the program.
At the end of the program, we held a (1) day leaders conference between Saturday and Sunday in our bible center. The students shared their life testimonies on Saturday, and on Sunday, 21st May, we held a designation ceremony after our worship service. Twenty-two (22) students accepted Jesus calling to be campus shepherds and were designated. Fourteen (14) brothers and eight (8) sisters were among them. Kevin served a special lecture on this day from 1 Timothy 3:1 (a noble task).

We were also blessed to have P. Mark and M. Jackie Y. present the graduates with shepherd designation certificates. This was very meaningful since this was one of the significant ministry events before they departed from Kenya later this year.
I was personally touched by the devotion and willingness of the students to go through the program faithfully. At the same time, I was encouraged by the devotion and co-working among our missionaries and senior shepherds who dedicated themselves to supporting and preparing our candidates despite their own personal involvement in heavy self-supporting work. Through this work of God, we could see great hope for our ministry to raise many disciples of Jesus through these young students. It was also a clear show of evidence that God had laid a solid foundation for discipleship ministry through the thirty years of labor for Christ by P. Mark Y. and M. Jackie Y.

Now, we pray that:
1. God may raise our newly designated shepherds(esses) to grow as mature and reliable campus shepherds
2. All of them may feed at least one sheep from the next academic year.
3. Our junior leaders may continue to grow as a strong link between them and senior leadership.
4. God may grow our ministry to pioneer five chapters through such growth.
5. Finally, we pray for good health and Holy Spirit’s guidance for P. Mark and M. Jackie in their next mission field.