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Name: REYNOLDS, Reginald Vincent (Rev.)

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Birth Date: 22 Sep 1901 Yackandandah, Victoria, Australia

Death Date: 19 Nov 1964 S. Africa

First Date: 1919

Profession: Africa Inland Mission

Area: Box 409, Nairobi, Hut - 1930 Thika, Githumu, Kapsowar

Married: In Renfrew, Ontario 6 Aug 1924 Victoria Alexandra Hamilton b. 4 May 1902 Alice, Renfrew, Ontario, d. 1976 Transvaal

Children: Graham (1926 Kenya-1935); Eileen M. (1928); David H. (1932); Ruth Shirley (1933)

Book Reference: KAD, Red 31, Hut, Red 22, Miller, Foster, Grasshoppers

War Service: RE

General Information:

Miller - …. our Superintendent the Rev R.V. Reynolds had sent word to the British Home Council ..
Red 31 has Rev. R.V. Reynolds, Githumu, Fort Hall
Grasshoppers - from South Africa - started Kapsowar mission station.
Kenneth Richardson, Garden of Miracles , A History of the Africa Inland Mission, Reg had been born in Australia, but while he was an infant his parents moved to South Africa. There he had his education. A trip to East Africa with his father, herding cattle and hunting, brought him
into contact with missionaries. A casual remark made by one of them made him conscious of a great lack in his own life, and led eventually to his conversion. He went to the \4oody Bible Institute in Chicago, and, after graduating, he married a Canadian fellow-student. He often said that he had been born in Australia, brought up in South Africa, rrained in America, married in Canada, worked in Kenya and his citizenship was in Heaven!
They arrived in Kenya in 1925. Their first few years were spent at Githumu, one of the older Kikuyu stations. Reg became an expert in Swahili, taking advanced government examinations. Later, Reg was asked to make a survey trip into the tribes to the north of the township of Eldoret. This eniailed travelling over 2,ooo miles by car into teritory
occupied by the Marakwet, Geyo, Tuken and East Suk (Pokot) tribes. In some parts there were no roads at all. On the floor of the Rift Valley, in the low burning plains of the Pokot they had to cross unbridged rivers, as well as river-beds where water was only seen at the height of the
annual rainy season. During the course of this long safari they visited places which had never before been reached by missionaries, and
where the Gospel was unknown. Only those who have seen the precipitous hills and deep valleys can appreciate all that this and subsequent safaris cost in physical endurance. As a result of these journeys, the whoie area was thrown open to the Gospel.
In 1934 the station at Kapsowar was opened. Reg made his centre at Kapsabet, and remained there till 1959. He was then made Acting Field Director and moved to Nairobi.

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