What I love so much about Burundi life is that I get to meet and potentially work with superb people of faith and vision to positively impact this nation, both for this life and into eternity. Yesterday I sat and listened to my friend John tell me how he’d started importing Friesian crossbred cows from Tanzania which produce 10-15 litres of milk per day. Burundian cows are useless! They require constant supervision, eat whole fields, are skinny as can be, and produce 1-2 litres for all that effort. So John brings in dozens of cows, keep them together so they […]

We arrived last week with 16 suitcases of stuff to begin the next chapter of our lives in Burundi. That’s not too bad compared to the new US family up the road who have brought 24 suitcases (but they’re starting from scratch), or some others who ship stuff in crates or eve whole containers – but can you see that I’m trying to justify myself?! So as we slowly unpacked and took several days to get things in order – Lizzie being the ‘we’ mainly, doing a superb job, whilst I took care of the kids – I actually felt […]

So this Wednesday at 4am we’ll head off from Southampton to Heathrow to fly back to Burundi via Belgium. A whole new chapter is about to begin. I’m blown away by how many people pray for us and support us, so I wanted to fill you in on a very personal level, particularly as a number of you have written asking for more information on the family as opposed to purely ministry-level. We are so grateful for you. So, how do we feel about returning to Burundi after three years away? I have mixed feelings. I’ll be glad to get […]

Please read, this is hot off the press!!! These are stories from the last few weeks:   Remember I asked you to pray for our 615 evangelists sent out at the beginning of the month? Yesterday I emailed Onesphore, the leader of Harvest for Christ, for some stories from all that went all. There’ll be more to follow, but here’s a few for your encouragement. I’m translating his message, get a load of this! Thanks so much for praying, God is amazing!   One of our teams went to hospital to pray for the sick, but unfortunately started with a […]

I’m writing this shortly before the end of our fabulous family holiday at my folks’ pad in France. It feels a little bit like the calm before the storm, and I wanted to share a little with you where we are at. Over the last few years I have written relatively few ‘Warriors’ emails as we have been out of Burundi, and our lives have been less eventful. We head back en famille to Burundi on the 22nd August, so it really is very soon. We leave France this Friday, I then fly to Northern Ireland to give 8 talks […]

Reports are trickling in from our 615 evangelists upcountry in Burundi as they spend two weeks doing outreach in markets, fields, homes etc. I’m just sending this as a reminder to ask for your prayers for them. As ever there is some opposition, and a few of our guys have been arrested. Onesphore (the movement leader) wrote to me, saying that the fact they were released so quickly by the overruling of the regional Governor shows that there must be a lot of prayer back up, as that speedy result seemed very unlikely. He thanks you all for the intercession […]

As the Olympics kick off and many of us spend hours watching athletes in action, I’m fairly confident that apparently insignificant Burundi is at least as exciting a place to be as London in the coming two weeks. Picture 615 young people gathering tomorrow, Saturday, praying together, and then being commissioned to go up into the bush in 35 different teams, where they will preach the gospel, cast out demons, heal the sick, get their heads kicked in, and (if it’s anything like last year) in the process see about 30,000 people come to Christ in coherent one-on-one conversations. Our […]

This talk is well worth a listen at http://s3.stmarks-battersea.org.uk/Audio/Sermon/2012-07-22_06.00pm.mp3, but if you don’t have time, here’s a short section to stir you up: In the film, Chariots of Fire, there is a marked contrast between the two leading characters, Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddle. On one occasion, before a race, a friend says to Abrahams: “I hate losing. How about you?” Abrahams replies: “I don’t know, I’ve never lost.” You see his drive for recognition and his deep sense of insecurity. Then there is the contrast, having already lost the 200m, as he is now faced with the 100m, and he […]

Following on from the success of Bike for Burundi, we’ll now be going for a Bike in Burundi! I’m planning to launch the nation’s first ever ‘Tour du Burundi’ (hopefully will get our keen cyclist President to join us for a day!) some time in the early months of 2013, which will surely soon displace the Tour de France as the world’s premier cycling event (hmm… faith or delusion?!). If you’re interested in taking part in this, do get in touch with me ASAP for more info, and please pass this on to any cycling buddies of yours. The blog-to-book […]

This man was born in a gypsy tent, of humble origins, and yet ended up being invited to the White House by two presidents. Rodney ‘Gypsy’ Smith came into the world in 1860 in Epping Forest, just outside London. Forty five times he crossed the Atlantic to preach the gospel to millions of people on both sides. His passion was almost unparalleled, and there was great fruit in what he did. What was his secret? Private prayer. His praying was even more powerful than his preaching. A delegation once came to him to enquire how they might experience personal and […]

The Bike for Burundi blog is turning into a book, which could be out within weeks, as I’m nearly finalized. I just need a strong title. Some of you will be horrified by what I proposed: ‘Bonking on a Bike for Burundi’ (‘bonking’ is the technical term for losing all energy in cycling). Anyways, it’s been rejected by people I trust, and my folks threatened to disown me, which was a strong disincentive! So, please help me: what should the title be? At the moment, it’s plain ‘Bike for Burundi’ with subtitle ‘3,000miles of Blood, Sweat and Tears Across America’. […]

Freddy’s just sent this to me, and I think it’s a beautiful example of reckless costly generosity and gratitude: Going back a few weeks, on Easter Sunday while  my family and I we were at Gitega, we went to church where our kids from Homes of Hope go for Sunday school. During the service the pastor asked people who had testimonies to share. A lady called Mariane shared her testimony of how God protected her the day she was almost killed in a car crash. People thought she was dead but she was taken to hospital by someone she never […]

Happy Easter! Well, it was such a pleasure to wake up back in my own bed, with even a lie-in until 634am when Josiah (2) woke up. Things have changed in my absence. He no longer wears nappies/diapers at night, and he said totally unprompted: “Can I share one of my eggs with the orphans?” which I hope is a sign of a future man of compassion and generosity. One less positive development is that he now says ‘wadder’ instead of ‘water’, which is slightly disconcerting, and we’ll have to thrash that accent out of him before it gets too […]

I fell asleep on the sofa last night and woke up cold at 3am, so it was another bad night’s sleep. But hey, thanks to my terrible lack of sleep throughout the whole trip, this blog happened, so my loss has hopefully been your gain! At 6am, Brent and John showed up from Charleston to join us on our last leg, and there’s also Matt who came last night. They brought superhero costumes with them so today I was Superman, Craig was Spiderman, Jeff was Captain America, John was Batman, and David was his sidekick Robin. Our host Bill nipped […]

We allowed ourselves a lie-in this morning, until 730am, as we only had a short ride – we are too far ahead of our planned mileage, and in fact could have made it all the way back to Charleston today at a stretch (c.130miles) but we have cool hosts planned for this evening with me due to give a talk, so that wasn’t an option anyway. We clicked on the weather forecast at breakfast and it talked of thunderstorms, flood risks, and all sorts, so we braced ourselves for an unpleasant few miles. Joanie sent us off with much better […]

We were up at 6am for a great breakfast prepared by Chris. My neck’s sore from fighting Ron in the pool yesterday, so maybe I didn’t get the better of him as I’d thought. As we ate, Brian talked about Northerners coming down and taking some of his business with obscenely low contract bids. He’s an airport runways contractor. Ron said: “Well, they must be cleverer than us to be able to do things so cheaply.” Brian replied: “We know those damn Yankies are cleverer than us because they keep telling us they are!” There’s undeniably a huge amount of […]

Last night we were hosted by David and Valerie, and their two daughters, Sydney (20) and Connie (18). The girls were immediately swooning over our accents, and sat down to listen to us, not for the content but just the sound! It’s funny, the number of times I’ve given talks around the States and afterwards someone has said: “Thanks for your talk, I love your accent!” – damned with faint praise if that’s all that stuck! Actually, an American friend of mine said that my accent was worth an extra twenty IQ points in terms of how intelligent people would […]