A number of you are asking for feedback on the National Prayer Breakfast in Kinshasa, and in any case I wanted to take the chance to ask you to pray for the Congo, so here’s a quick update: The leadership of the NPB are a great bunch, and Congo is at a critical juncture. The…

I’m writing this on a plane heading to Kenya with friends from the National Prayer Breakfast. One of them is Cris Rwakasisi, who spoke at our Burundian NPB yesterday. I thought I’d share some of his story, and some further thoughts: Cris was Ugandan President Milton Obote’s main man back in the early 1980s. Obote…

Warning: some of the pictures below are pretty gruesome. Some would say I shouldn’t include them (I have omitted the most graphic one). But actually sometimes it takes the pictures to stir to action, and brave Anesie’s battle is still ongoing. I see part of my very broad role in Burundi as telling these stories…

I’ve just finished reading a book on the life of Adoniram Judson. What can I say? My logic in risking life and limb in Burundi over the last seventeen years or so has always been the same. Either Jesus truly did die and then rise from the dead, or He didn’t. Either He is the…

I know some people really struggle to believe the stories I share from our annual summer outreach. Maybe you need to come out and meet these folks for yourself! In any case, in what was a massive and complex logistical operation, last month we sent out 701 volunteers for two weeks, who worked in every…

We arrived back again yesterday in Burundi after a summer of speaking at multiple meetings around the UK and also many precious times with family and friends. It’s great to be home. Yes, Burundi truly is home. However, that doesn’t mean all is well here. Far from it. I was shocked to see how much…

We returned two weeks ago in time for Lizzie’s ailing Mum Rosemary’s 80th birthday, during which we went out for a very special celebratory ice-cream. Her condition quickly worsened and after spending most of last week in hospital, she graduated to glory in the early hours of Monday morning. She’d wanted to make it to…

Hi gang! Below are my/our summer plans, just keeping you in the loop in case you want to come along: 21st June – arrive back from Burundi 22nd June – Rosemary’s 80th birthday 25th June – Men’s breakfast at St Luke’s, Wimbledon Park 26th June – 1030am St Paul’s Catholic College, Burgess Hill, then 3…

Hi folks! I’m not sure what’s going on with the blog, but you were sent one from last February yesterday, and the previous one came through twice. Sorry about that. Trying to work out the glitches. Have a great day! Simon 

10 riders, 3 support crew, 800km, 48,000 feet of climbs in 7 days. Those stats don’t do justice to what was simply an incredible week on what was the fourth annual GLO cycling tour. Due to the insecurity in Burundi, we had to do it in Rwanda instead. I was sad about that, because I…

The longer I am involved in work in Burundi, the more strategic I see the role of education is. Education is crucial to seeing Burundi transformed, and sadly the old style of learning by rote as taught in the vast majority of schools (with class sizes sometimes over a hundred) simply cannot produce critical thinkers…

If you follow our movements closely, you’ll know that we’ve been through some pretty challenging times recently, and sometimes there is more bad than good news. So I wanted to write a little about a friend of mine called Francois, who is as inspiring as it gets. Here are a few stories from his life:…

It was what was written on Francine’s T-shirt that grabbed my attention. It simply couldn’t be more inappropriate, of course, because here she was, languishing with about eight hundred other impoverished displaced people in the most miserable of conditions. Lots of worry, little happiness.  Just over two years ago there was terrible flooding on the…