Jarretts Ministry

May 28, 2002

Dear Friends and Family:

Thank you all for your expressions of sympathy and prayers for Marty. My reports indicate that she is doing well, although she is missing her mother very much. If you wish to write her directly in Indiana, she can be reached at newsies777@aol.com, which is Debbye and Becki’s account. Her phone number is 317-769-3496 [no answering machine] or 317-769-3302, if you like to talk with voice mail.

Laura and I are doing very well. Her cooking skills far exceed mine, so I may not lose any weight after all. We made a quick trip to Nairobi last week and got our teeth checked, bought groceries, saw Spiderman, and phoned home. And we shopped at the dukas for Marty and took some more orders for Bibles and teaching materials. We have received four book bags from our home church, so we have new supplies to distribute. One man, Gerrison, has started a Christian tape lending library with some tapes by Pastor Anders that we gave to him. We are sending some Ralph Walls tapes and some others that will be an encouragement to many. His dream is to have a projector and a power source to show the Jesus video in remote villages. I encouraged him that if he makes himself totally available to God and it is God’s calling for him to do this, that God will supply the means. He attends a Full Gospel Fellowship in Nairobi.

Patient Updates

You may remember praying for a small

May 18, 2002

Dear Friends and Family:

Marty’s mother’s [Frances Alley] condition worsened this past week and Marty was led to return home 9 days early. Those of you on the e-mail list received the urgent prayer request on Monday of this week. Marty and the girls returned home safely in time to spend some time with Frances and other family members who had gathered at the hospital. Friday morning, about 48 hours after Marty’s return, Frances went to be with the Lord.

Urgent return home from Kenya

Things were pretty busy around here with Marty and the girls preparing to leave Kenya on May 22. Packing, weeding out, doing those things that were put off till tomorrow, and carrying on with the normal activities made for a busy time. We had received word two weeks ago that Frances had a serious urinary infection. Her health had been frail for some time, and she had experienced some near brushes with death. Initially, she responded to medication, but complications seemed to set in with leg pain, abdominal pain, and spells where oxygen was needed. Marty began to have the feeling that she needed to go home if she were to see her mother alive on this earth again. She really felt the need to be with her mother.

On Monday morning the decision was made to see if there was a possibility of going home early. The tickets we had could theoretically be changed once without charge, although Alicia’s had been changed once already to

May 4, 2002

Dear Friends and Family:

Thanks for your prayers for our family for the past two weeks. I’d like to share some answers to prayer that God has given. We had a relaxing week of vacation and some success in doing paperwork in Nairobi. Two men are experiencing their first week of new life with Jesus. Debbye and Becki have received generous financial aid for next fall at Indiana Wesleyan. And Marty’s mother is recovering after another serious bout with a urinary infection.

Beach Adventure

The trip to Mombassa was wonderful. The plan: drive to Nairobi, pick up the girls’ new passports at the American Embassy, go to the airport, and fly to Mombassa. The only hitch turned out to be that the passports weren’t ready; God turned that into a blessing anyway. We arrived in Mombassa with about an hour of daylight left; most of that was spent driving to the hotel from the airport. We could see the area where rioting had occurred earlier in the year when the city government condemned some roadside shops in order to widen the road. All was peaceful now.

The weather was pretty typical for sea level near the equator: hot and humid. The equatorial sun is brutal for light-skinned people. The early colonists wore broad hats and extra padding over the spleen, liver, and spine. It wasn’t until the middle part of the past century that it was discovered that normal clothing was protective. We used sunscreen and stayed in the shade as