Harris Family Update - July 2026 | Matthew & Noelle Harris Blog

29Jul

Harris Family Update
- July 2026 -

After looking up the disciples, we stayed there seven days… When we had finished the voyage from Tire, we arrived at Ptolemais, and after greeting the brethren, we stayed with them for a day.

~ Acts 21:4a, 7 ~

This has been a trying season, but God knows what He is doing.

On June 28th, Noelle, along with our four American children, traveled to the US while Apiyo and I remained behind in Nairobi to finish up her immigration process, because it was outside of our budget to change all 7 of our airline tickets. This process has been a lot more difficult than we anticipated. Apiyo needs two things to get to the US: a citizenship interview appointment with USCIS and a visitor visa from the US Embassy in Nairobi that will allow her to reach the citizenship interview. However, USCIS has canceled her appointment four times, and the Embassy has also not been easy to work with. We found out last week that both are being difficult because the High Court and the National Identification and Registration Authority in Uganda both messed up on some of her adoption paperwork, and the US is confused about other aspects of adoption paperwork in Uganda in general. So, we are compiling extra evidence to present to them, which we will turn in next week. Hopefully, they will be satisfied, and our path to reunite with our family will be open before we miss the birth of Apiyo’s baby sister. (Yes, we found out we are having a girl!)

Noelle and I have never been separated this long in our 13 years of marriage, and it has been very difficult to be stuck in Nairobi since May 30th, but God has been taking care of us in extraordinary ways.

In Acts, the Apostles always sought out the local church wherever they went, so on our second Sunday in Nairobi, we randomly googled a church to attend and ended up at Calvary Chapel Nairobi. Surprisingly, we ended up fellowshipping with them all day from 10 am to 7 pm because they invited us to a home Bible study after service! Then, the next Sunday, one of the families hosted an impromptu potluck at their home in honor of our family, and again, we fellowshipped with the church from morning to evening! The following week, when I learned that our family would need to split up temporarily, I called the pastor to ask if he knew of a good place in the city to stay, and he quickly found a member of the church willing to host us, free of charge, for as long as we would be in Nairobi! Amazingly, my first weekend at my host’s home, I found out that our sending organization, Saving Grace World Mission, actually planted this church 20 years ago! The next day at church, a couple was asking me what I was doing in Nairobi and then finished my sentence when I started narrating our immigration situation! When I asked them how they knew me, it turned out that Noelle’s brother had helped build something for their Bible camp and that they had read about us in his updates! God orchestrated things so well that I had to end almost every sentence in this paragraph with an exclamation mark!

Our time with the believers of Calvary Chapel Nairobi has been fruitful. I had the chance to share about our ministry in Uganda in front of the church during a Sunday service and invite them on a mission trip to their neighboring country (which they might really do). I have also had the chance to share at multiple Bible studies and prayer meetings and even an all-day men’s fellowship. Most excitingly, I have been able to reach out to many muslims because my host lives in a Somalian area of the city called South C, and he regularly ministers in the heart of the muslim population in another area called Eastleigh. This week I had the chance to follow Jesus’, John the Baptist’s, and the Apostles’ examples, who all exposed the false religious leaders of their day through public debate, and challenge Imams and sheiks in front of the crowds they draw every day in the streets of Eastleigh (Luke 3:7; 21:15; Matt. 21-23; Acts 4:13-14; 6:10; 9:22; 13:9-11; 17:18-24; 18:28). It was exhilarating to be filled with God’s Spirit and wisdom while engaging in the spiritual warfare of “casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5).