Europe in early summer; part 3 - IFES colleagues

This is the third and final in a series of posts about our all-too-short-is-this-really-summer 3 weeks in Europe.

It was a joy to meet friends and colleagues in IFES. IFES is the international TSCF. TSCF was a founder movement of IFES in 1947; and we continue to be involved with IFES in 2008 assisting in new movements, training staffworkers across the South Pacific, financing Indian staffworkers' theological education, and supporting my colleagues Ruth and Josue in Ecuador.

It's fair to say we in TSCF love IFES. 140 countried have an IFES movement and IFES students and graduates are salt and light all over the world. Recently retired IFES General Secretary Lindsay Brown has written an excellent book filled with recent stories of how God is working in universities world wide. I highly commend Shining Like Stars to you - indeed, I've been giving away many copies to supporters and it was one of our best sellers at our recent TSCF Conference.


So it was a real joy to meet Phocas Ngendahayo (second from the right above), who's on the cover of Shining Like Stars and is mentioned in Lindsay's chapter on the growth of the gospel and IFES in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide in that nation. Phocas is studying at Redcliffe College, a Christian missions college in the UK. The Rwandan IFES movement is such a work of the grace of God. You'll have to read Shining Like Stars for details, but it involves the slaughter of many Christians in the genocide through to an explosion in an acceptance of the gospel message post genocide to such a point that now the Rwandan IFES movement has the largest on campus meeting of any IFES movement worldwide - about 3000 students week by week in Kigali.

Phocas is a humble, gracious, wise and godly man. I'd happily work with and under him. He's missing his family back in Rwanda. He has twins and as we were leaving, he wished us a typical Rwanda blessing 'I wish you double happiness with twins'. Liz tried, in a culturally sensitive way, to say she didn't really want twins, but Phocas was having none of it!


As well as Phocas, we met Armani & Esther (above, left, all looking ridiculously smart compared to my bestest polo shirt that I thought was smart), who work for IFES in Tanzania. They too are studying at Redcliffe. A very warm and lovely couple, and we greatly appreciated hearing tales of God's work on the campuses of Tanzania. Tom Broughton was taking part in TSCF Minty (discpleship training) last year, and in the next few weeks is heading to Tanzania. Armani & Esther are heading back to Tanzania very soon and I'm hopeful that either they, or other IFES Tanzania colleagues, can get Tom involved in his local university/college and continue to train him up in gospel student work during his two VSA years in Tanzania. They're in email contact about that. That'd be well cool.

Also on our trip we managed to meet Tim, who's a Brit who worked with IFES in Siberia for two years and it was great to hear his reflections on that. Sadly, we just missed Giovanni and Hannah who work with IFES in Italy.

But we did get to spend time with the wonderfully hospitable Mike & Amanda in France. Mike's from Seychelles/UK and Amanda's from Canada. Before they met working for IFES in France Amanda had spent time in the IFES movements in Canada and St. Lucia; and Mike time with the UK and French IFES movements.

So all in all, a great reminder to us of the strategic nature of the gospel through the work of IFES worldwide changing individuals and nations for Jesus.

IFES. Students reaching students with the gospel worldwide.