Solar Update - August 2022

Bringing Smiles to Hundreds in Africa

A team of six people from Lubbock, Houston, and Portland, Oregon, delivered Solar Players loaded with Gospel teaching to church leaders representing over 100 congregations and two schools of preaching in the nations of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Congo. The group was led by Doug Reeves, Sunset’s International Dean, and Dan Goodyear, Dean of African Schools. Terry Harrison, former missionary to Singapore, was there to represent the “10,000 Voices for Africa” initiative. Three women, Marge Reeves, Desarhea Cameron, and Kristin Hagins, taught women’s classes in a number of the congregations where the Solar Players were delivered. The team was hosted in Nairobi, Kenya, by Charlotte Hackett, longtime missionary with our partner training program, the Institute of Practical Christianity Ministry (IPCM). They spent two weeks traveling extensively in order to bless over 400 brethren with a Sunset Solar Player to help them evangelize, grow the church, and train more gospel preachers.

It’s Still Preaching After Seven Years!

Richard Karima (pictured to the right with Doug Reeves), Director of IPCM, was helping Doug Reeves demonstrate the features and use of the Solar Player to a large crowd in Kenya. Richard informed Doug Reeves that the Solar Player he received from Sunset more than seven years ago was still working and that he uses it regularly for personal study, preparation for teaching and preaching, and evangelism.

Gospel Preaching Bears Fruit

Vicky is one of the students in IPCM who received a Solar Player. She invited Kristin and Desarhea to accompany her on Sunday evening to a village outside the city of Nairobi where her husband is the preacher. They learned that Vicky had previously met a young man and had begun a spiritual conversation. She and her husband then taught him the Gospel (in the spirit of Priscilla and Aquila). That evening the three ladies were blessed to witness Vicky’s husband baptize the young man into Christ.

Sudanese Preachers Sacrifice to Help Ukrainian Refugees

Barry Smith, director of the Sudan Project, was in Uganda distributing SIBI Solar Players to a group of South Sudanese preachers who live in refugee camps. The brothers asked Barry about the war in Ukraine, the welfare of the Ukrainian brothers and sisters, and what American Christians were doing to help them. Following fervent prayer for Ukrainian brethren, they decided to take a love offering to help. They asked Brother Smith to forward their donation to SIBI. The amount these poor but generous Christians collected in their local currency was equivalent to $11.18 USD. Barry believes that many of these preachers emptied their pockets, giving what they would have used to purchase food for their long walk back to the Sudanese Refugee Camp. Like the Macedonians, these Sudanese preachers “gave...beyond their means, of their own accord...not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord.” (2 Cor. 8:3-5)

Solar Players to Uganda and Congo

The Solar distribution team brought 200 Solar Players to Entebbe, Uganda. Three team members met a group of congregations there, while the other three team members traveled by car for six hours on a rugged dirt road to the mountain town of Kasese, near the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Representatives of 46 congregations met them there to receive Solar Players, including three congregations from Congo. The brothers from Congo traveled twelve hours, partly on foot, in order to receive Solar Players to take back to a region that had not been reached previously.