Our CMS link Mission Partners, Sue and Richard Kellow
Immanuel and St Andrew's supports the Church Mission Society (CMS), and, after nearly 6 years of supporting Toks Akinbadewa in Uganda, we are now focussing on our new link Mission Partners, Sue and Richard Kellow.
Sue and Richard will be working in Rwanda. Richard is a modern languages teacher and Sue is a speech and language therapist. Both are qualified teachers of English as a Foreign Language. They have a new baby daughter, Emily.
You can learn more of their background from the profile sent to us by CMS below - and still more about them and the work they will be doing by going to their own website at www.freewebs.com/kellow. The photo and map come from their website.
Sue and Richard will be leaving for Rwanda in mid-November 2007. After a period of cultural and language training they will be working at the Anglican Theological College in Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The college is new, having opened in the spring of 2006. It hopes in due course to become a university.
The official languages of Rwanda are Kinyarwanda, French and English. Much of the study at the college needs to be in English, and many theological texts are in English. Richard will be running intensive English courses for the students - most of whom are French-speaking - to enable them to take part fully in the course and provide them with a valuable tool for their ministry. Sue's main preoccupation at first will be the family, creating a home for the two of them and baby Emily, but she plans to get involved in the life of the college and run some conversational English classes.
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We were very pleased to meet Sue and Richard, with their new baby Emily, when they visited us on our Gift Day on 14th October 2007 and told us more about themselves and what they will be doing. It was good to see Sue at the International Evening the day before. Afterwards, Sue wrote:
"I wanted to write and thank you for having us the other weekend. It was lovely to spend a few days with you and to come to the international evening in order to see some of the community life at the church! Maureen and Jim were so kind in putting us up.
"The CMS Finance team now feel that we have enough raised/promised to go to Kigali in faith that the Lord will provide the final portion. We are only a couple of weeks away from travelling to Rwanda now!...
"Other answers to prayer:
"Emily is growing well. The news this week is that she has a tooth and is crawling! It all happened at once, and she is becoming more and more a little girl. Other news is that we have tenants who are interested in moving into our flat. Another answer to prayer is that a couple of former CMS mission partners have moved into our village and have offered to be key holders to keep an eye on our flat.
"Finally, the diocese of Kigali has found us a 2 bed bungalow and it is being painted ready for us to arrive. Things seem to be falling into place and we feel as though we will actually get to Kigali after all this preparation!"
Sue also said that they were hoping to raise money (through CMS) to buy a vehicle - the college is an hour's drive from the diocesan compound where staff live and most have to use a taxi, which is expensive! It would be the Kellow's family car and they would be responsible for its upkeep, but it would be available for work and obviously a great help. As we have just made our Gift Day collection we will not be making any special collection for this, but if any member wants to make a donation specially for the Kellow's 'car fund' it can be handed to David Gray, the treasurer, or sent to him at the church.
Link Letters
We should shortly be receiving Sue and Richard's first 'official' Link Letter from CMS - hopefully in both 'e-' and paper versions! When it arrives we will make paper copies available in church, but the 'e-' copy will not be available direct from this website. Instead it can be downloaded from the CMS website (www.cms-uk.org) but ONLY after first registering with the CMS site at https://www.cms-uk.org/Resources/LinkLetters/tabid/158/Default.aspx.
After registering, you can go to the 'Resources/Link Letters' section from the CMS Home page to download Link Letters. Sue and Richard's letter may not be there yet, but you can see letters from other Mission Partners and read what other people are doing or have done - if only to try out your user name and password! You can even still read the ones from Toks!
To read the link letters you will need Adobe reader installed. If you haven't got it click the Adobe icon on the left of the page to visit Adobe's website and download and install a copy.
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CMS 'Profile'
CMS have sent us another photograph and this 'profile' of Sue and Richard, which tells us something of their background and their call to serve in Rwanda:
Richard is a modern languages teacher who has worked in secondary schools in Cambridgeshire. He has also worked as an administrator for a large, lovely church in Cambridge. He has travelled extensively in Europe and spent a year studying in Germany.
Sue is a Speech and Language Therapist specialising with children with hearing impairment and also those with severe learning difficulties. She has also worked in Cambridgeshire as well as in a school for the deaf in Tanzania for 1 year.
They are both qualified teachers of English as a foreign language and have recently spent a year teaching in Moscow, Russia. Richard taught mainly adult business English and Sue worked in English language nurseries. During their time in Russia they were linked to CMS through the SALT fellowship and volunteered with charities supporting orphans and refugees children. They also made friends with believers from the Russian Orthodox Church, providing opportunities to share with fellow Christians from very different cultural and denominational backgrounds.
They have both felt a calling by God to make a longer-term commitment for service overseas with a particular heart for the disadvantaged and those who suffer due to poverty, disability or other forms of injustice.
They have a baby daughter, Emily Joy, and are enjoying the gift of family life as they prepare for their future service.
(Information and photograph provided by CMS, © CMS.)
For further information about the work of CMS visit the CMS website (www.cms-uk.org) or write to Church Mission Society, Watlington Road, Oxford, OX4 6BZ Tel: 0845 620 1799. CMS is a registered charity, no. 220297.
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Page last updated 03 November 2007.
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