July 2025 Update from Mike Malone

As I write this short update I am over Kenyan airspace, soon to begin the descent into Kilimanjaro, then on to Dar es Salaam.  From there a team of three teachers and one medical doctor will head to Mwanza on the south shore of Lake Victoria.  From there to Bunda (near the Serengeti National Park) for the 23rd annual conference for pastors and wives.  400 hard-working, faithful brothers and sisters will gather for a week of teaching, fellowship, prayer, laughter, singing and dancing!, and worship.  So many of you have had such a significant role in this partnership across the past 23 years.  Here is what you may thank God for:

-Literally hundreds of pastors and evangelists and their spouses have enjoyed the refreshing, enlivening, and deepening benefits from this week-long conference.  Many have moved to other dioceses in churches and positions of leadership.  Their experience in the Diocese of Mara-Ukerewe under the leadership of previous Bishop Peter Kitula and current Bishop Peter Pharles is having a leavening influence in the broader Africa Inland Church.  Our next conference for women is staffed!  Check our website for information.

-Water projects are completed, are under construction, or funded for 196 water projects.  Our goal since the completion of the first project in 2008 has been for each village with an AIC-T church to have a fresh-water well as a ministry to its community.  With 200 churches in the diocese we are, by God’s grace and the remarkable generosity of you His people, in need of funding for a mere four additional projects.  This program, led by Mr. Peter Ngwili, is touching over 500,000 people.

-One of our team members, Dr. Mel Payne, will spend most of his time in the diocese at the main Health Center in Musoma.  Mel and a good friend and colleague, Dr. Martin Fleming, are exploring opportunities to serve the medical initiatives of the diocese by building a relationship with medical professionals and surgical residents from the US through the Global Surgical Initiative of the University of Tennessee Medical School.  The recently completed and furnished two-theater surgical suite is an important step forward for the diocese and will provide the needed facility to accommodate these doctors.  

WORD, WATER, WELLNESS.  These three emphases have guided the partnership that has developed between the diocese and friends in America.  You are those friends!  And I am grateful for each one of you.  God please you.  And please pray for this year’s team.

With many thanks,

Mike Malone and Robert Browning