Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It gives me great pleasure to be able to greet you in Christ Jesus.
Reflecting on 2022
If there is any lesson that the Lord has taught us in 2022 it is that we do not always get what we want. In addition, things don’t always go the way we predict or plan. All of this should teach us to rely on the providence of God as we live out the gospel. God has eternal plans and purposes, and whatever he has foreordained will come to pass, for his glory alone. Nothing happened by chance in 2022. Even if our plans worked out, it was all by God’s Fatherly hand.
The Kukunis: Changes and Progress
As a family, we have so much to thank God for. In his providence, his ever present and mighty power, he upheld and governed our lives through the ups and the downs. You will remember at the beginning of the year we reported that we will be living together as a large family of eight. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to learn more about God’s ways when things go our way and when things don’t go our way. It was financially difficult and challenging, but God saw us through the year in ways we never expected or planned. At the time of the writing of this update, my family has moved out and only the original four Kukunis remain.
My sister-in-law left for Johannesburg because she received a job offer there, to work as a sign language interpreter. Although it comes as a loss to our church, the Lord has provided for her and our loss will be another church’s gain, and for that we are grateful. My sister and two nieces will also move back to Johannesburg to re-join their husband and father and trust in God to provide for their needs. We trust and hope that we were healthy gospel witnesses to them even though we are fallen sinners. Please pray for them!
We would also like to ask you to thank the Lord with us for sustaining our kids throughout their schooling year this year. Warona made progress, although slower than her brother. Tikvah excelled in all areas of his home-schooling. He even almost reached the level of teaching himself with very little supervision from us. He is aware of his abilities and smart brain that God has given him, but please pray for humility and for diligence as we aim to shepherd both their hearts.
The Kukunis: Growth
By God’s grace, Keitu and I have grown in our relationship with the Lord. Keitu found spiritually nourishing biblical material to equip herself to grow in Christlikeness. Not only for herself, but she used some of it to equip the younger women in the faith concerning biblical womanhood. We thank God for this.
I have also found doing devotionals from the Greek text very rewarding. It is not an easy thing to do daily, but praise God that he kept me going daily. On top of this, I managed to complete the studies I was busy with this year.
Keitu and I have also grown close to each other and we enjoy the marriage bond we have. In March next year we would have been married for ten years, which is all by God’s grace.
FSBC: God’s Fatherly Hand Has Been With Us
There is a lot to be thankful for to the Lord for how he sustained Free State Bible Church this year. We have reported on these developments and so we can only thank the Lord for his providence.
Since we are at the end of the year, many of our folks have gone away for the long holidays. This means our services have ±10 people who attend on a Sunday. We continue to serve the Lord faithfully although we may be few. There is a new man who has started attending our services recently because he became convinced of our convictions recently, but struggled to find us. He eventually did and he said he is here to stay. Praise God for that.
At the moment, because our number is low, we only have one service on Sunday morning. We enjoy singing praises to God and hearing his word taught faithfully by my associate pastor Tebogo and I. Pray for us to stay faithful until everyone is back next year. Pray for rest and refreshment.
Herein you will find a picture of what our service more or less looks like during this time. You will also see some of the young men who before recess started doing street evangelism with Tebogo.
Thank for praying for us and for taking the time to read this brief update.
For Free State Bible Church
Tsholo Kukuni