McKay Brothers Visit St. John, KS Bickertonite Branch

Br's Jim and Patrick McKay recently traveled to St John, Kansas to visit with an Elder and Seventy in the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite). This is a community which was first named Zion Valley by William Bickerton when he led a colony of saints from Pennsylvania to establish a stake of Zion on the boarders of the Lamanites in 1868. The community was later incorporated and became known as St John, Kansas.

These two elders graciously received us into their home putting us up for the night and feeding us. We spent hours discussing the latter day work and learning more about their side of the Restoration. We of course were able to bear our testimony of the movement of the Spirit which has both birthed as well as sustained the Reorganization. We found the Holy Spirit in our midst attempting to find common ground to heal the breach in the Restoration and begin reuniting and sewing us back together bringing to pass God's strange act as predicted in the 28th chapter of Isaiah.

We intend to remain in touch with these Brethren creating a common fellowship to help strengthen their small branch as well as building a bridge with this portion of the Restoration. We left several articles with them to read, pray and ponder over to give them a greater understanding of our portion of the Restoration.

Seventies Jim and Patrick McKay

New Missions Page on Seventy Website

The Missions link on the top navigation bar at http://restorationseventy.org now displays a new page with a current listing of Seventy proposed trips along with there status. Additionally, the page provides information to the Seventy on internal procedures for ease of information distribution. The hope is to make Seventy activites more readily available so that everyone can see the work that the Seventy are doing to take the fullness of the gospel into all the world.

The old Missions page is still available via a link called History found on the right side of the main page. The information derived from this page was more historical in nature, so the renaming of the page better fits the content.

Ron Smith's Kenya trip winds down.

First, let me apologize for my misspellings in my previous post.  Mishael Onyiego (aka Michael) lives in Nyabagege.  We had a wonderful time with he and his new bride, Scovia.  I found out what "missionary work" meant from Michael the day we walked around the area praying in many of the homes.  We had had classes in the morning, and several hours of visiting.  It was getting dark, and there were still a couple of stops to make.  As we started up a narrow cow path along yet another plowed field of maize toward the hut up the hill, Michael said to me, "Now you know what they mean by missionary work!"
 I also discovered what it means to be a "muzee".  I already was aware that it is a Kiswahili word meaning "old man."  We had talked about how Eric and I were both getting to the point in life where we were getting forgetful. I found that quite often I was being referred to as "muzee".  So I asked Duke, a priest who had spent a few days with us, how old one had to be to considered an official muzee?  He replied that they give you a test to see if you qualify.  I told him that I don't recall ever taking such a test.  He assured me that I had just officially qualified!
We have covered a lot of ground since then.  We were blessed to be in Migori, in the home of Hulda Simba. We held classes and confirmed several in Kehancha, on the Kenya/Tanzania border. We also held scripture classes and prayed in many homes in Kehezron, Oyugis, Ringa, and Kisumu. The Lord has been with us.  I am especially grateful that I have not been plagued this trip with the itchy welts that have accompanied every other trip that I have made to Africa!
I wish that I had time to write all the blessings that He has given, but we have not had ready access to the internet.  We are now nearing the end of our journey.  We will go to the airport tonight to welcome Brian Herren and Travis, who are coming in for the priesthood retreat this next weekend.  I will be going home on Wednesday morning.