In April 2018, some of Wesley House’s Life Friends and Donors came to a lunch to celebrate the first anniversary of the college’s rededication. After lunch two of the students spoke about their experiences as they entered the third term of their three years of study.

Alice is studying for a PhD at Anglia Ruskin University.

Ladies and Gentleman good afternoon. My name is Revd Alice Muthoni Mwilla from Kenya serving in the Methodist Church in Kenya as a synod bishop.

 

I came here from September 2017 to do studies in PhD and I have been here for the last six months and I want to say that it has been a great time here to start over my studies. When I am through with the studies I will go back to Kenya to continue serving the church with the skills and the knowledge that I will have gained to enable the church to continue with her mission.

 

Back in Kenya the church can use me in two areas; that is to continue with leadership or use me in the university, where both in the university and the church we lack qualified trained staff to serve. Therefore this is going to be really an addition to the church back in Kenya.

While here I want to say that the study that I have been doing is to do with the migration of young people from the mainline, or rather the traditional, mission churches to the pentecostals and is a phenomenon that is really common and really growing very fast in Kenya. Just like I have realised here that also the young people are not in the church.

 

I want to say also that this training that I am going to finish in three years is going to benefit the church back home, not only Methodist Church but also other churches. It is going to benefit me as an individual and it is also going to benefit the community.

 

I have enjoyed being here because maybe you might say doing the same PhD back home would maybe have been better. But I want to say coming over here gives us more experience and mixing with a different culture, looking at that different world view, and even thinking and seeing how people view religion, how they live their lives, what they value and what they don’t value, how they carry out their daily activities. All this is going to impart strongly in my life and even as I continue walking around these places and travelling like I did travel a few days ago to Manchester for a research seminar, I felt very much equipped because I was able to listen to different theologians, different scholars presenting different areas of their studies and that adds to my knowledge. Therefore I want to take this opportunity to thank you very much for your generosity because the finances that you have been giving to Wesley House have contributed highly to bringing all of us here, the beneficiaries of the grants, together with the Methodist Church in Britain that has paid for our studies here.

 

Thank you very much. Continue to support this work because by supporting one individual you are supporting the whole of the community in the churches where we come from.

 

Thank you very much.