Hey everybody! I am coming home this week, and I am so excited about seeing all of my friends and family. The only thing that would make the homecoming even sweeter would be a ticket to the National Championship game in Miami. I am searching high and low for a ticket, so please let me know if you hear of anything. Anyways, our team got back from Tanzania on Thursday, and the trip was certainly a rollercoaster ride. Time is becoming increasingly scarce during my last several days on this continent, so I am only going to give you a brief summary of what happened.
The purpose of the trip was to connect with churches that the Tidenbergs had previously worked with to encourage them and pray for them. Each day was filled with non-stop movement from place to place. It was an exciting but exhausting trip. The man who took us on the church tour was a man that a lot of you in Daytona Beach know from prior trips to Tanzania. His name is Mikaeli. He lives in Longido, Tanzania, and he is part of the Maasai tribe there. I mentioned it on the previous blog, but I should remind you that all of the people we worked with this past week are Maasai people. I’m not in the business of ranking where people stand with the Lord, but I must say that Mikaeli loves Jesus as much, if not more, than anyone I have ever met.
We went from boma to boma, or Maasai villages, preaching the Word of God and loving on the local churches. God is doing an amazing work there. Your prayers are being answered. Churches are growing and more and more Maasai people are coming to know Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. God is bearing much fruit among the Maasai, and His presence is evident in their church work. A blessing for me was to be able to go share the Word of God with people who are hungry to listen. Mr. Potochnik was able to preach a couple of times, Tim Tidenberg spoke twice, Matt got to share his testimony, and I was able to share mine as well and teach the story of David and Goliath. What a cool experience!
While the trip touched each of us spiritually in a unique and profound way, it also touched us physically—in a very negative way. Either four or five of the eight of us on the trip became very sick for a couple of days, throwing up and feeling very nauseous (sorry to be graphic). It was either the semi-raw goat we were forced to eat or the tortilla-like, grease-heavy chapati that attacked our team. It was a painful week physically for most of the group. Even those of us who missed out on the sickness, including myself, still had bouts with exhaustion and nausea due to the difficult physical conditions out in the bush. The conditions were made even worse because of the fact that we shoved six people into a five-seat Land Cruiser and had to rotate team members in the trunk of the vehicle. I ended the trip feeling very sick to my stomach because of the extremely bumpy roads that we encountered.
I only wrote all of that to share what we experienced. I hope that didn’t sound like complaining. All of the trials we faced simply add to the story. I believe that the team became even more united after enduring what we faced the past week. I have mentioned this before, but what strikes me is that we go in for less than a week and think we have sacrificed, when these people live in these tough conditions day in and day out. Other than the Tidenbergs, who actually lived there for several years, we don’t know what it’s like to daily face what the Maasai face. I told you months ago that at the orphanage, things were very green and beautiful, and it was not the Africa I have always imagined. Where we were in Tanzania this past week, however, was much like what we all picture Africa to be. It was very dry and very hot. The terrain was rugged and harsh, and there was hardly any green at all on the ground. There was not any body of water around for miles and miles, and the people work just to make it through the day.
I was again reminded about how fortunate we are to have what we have in America. I leave you with one last picture of how different life is here in Kenya and Tanzania compared to home. Almost everywhere we went, the people requested that we pray for rain to come down on their land. After asking for God’s continued blessing on the churches we came across, rain was the number one prayer request. That blew me away. Here I am thinking about material things that I want or think I need, like going to a football game, and these people desperately need rain to simply survive. If it doesn’t rain soon, there will be serious consequences for the Maasai, and life will become increasingly complicated and difficult. Think about that for a second. Think about having to beg the Lord for rain just so you can live. I will never forget standing in circles with the people, pleading that God would bring the rain.
What a time we had with the Maasai people of northern Tanzania. Again, God is moving in their midst. Mikaeli, Mathayo, Lukas, and others are helping to lead people into God’s Kingdom. Churches are growing and schools are being built. The people are seeing their need for a Savior. However, Mikaeli says there are still many more who have never even heard of this Jesus that we call our Savior and Lord. Would you please pray for the Maasai people this week? Would you pray for the salvation of souls, God’s continued blessings on the churches and church leaders, and for rain to fall down on the land?
Jim and Peggy Brown from Daytona Beach are seasoned veterans when it comes to working with Mikaeli and the Maasai people. I wanted to end this blog by telling you, Jim and Peggy, that almost everywhere we went people asked about you. They love you with a love like I have never seen. Mikaeli says hello, Babu Jim, and he desperately wants you to come back. Remind me to give you something from him when I get home. I love you two, and I love all of you back home. Thanks to everyone for your continued prayers and support on this trip! Please pray for a safe journey home and for all of my bags to arrive in one piece. See you all soon!
Monday, December 15, 2008
Friday, December 5, 2008
The Maasai--Kenya and Tanzania
Hello there! I want to quickly check in with you all as our team leaves Saturday morning for Tanzania with Matt’s parents and the Tidenbergs. I am rushed right now as I sit down to write, so I will try and briefly recount what happened this week and then ask for specific prayer requests at the end. Here is what sticks out in my mind from the past several days.
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, Matt, Erin, and I spent time with a missionary named Bob Calvert. Bob’s motor runs one hundred miles an hour in all aspects of his life, especially in regards to his talking and his driving. He is an absolute firecracker. He invited us to spend a couple of days with him in Maasai land here in Kenya. The Maasai are an indigenous African ethnic group of semi-nomadic people living in Kenya and northern Tanzania. When we went into the bush on Tuesday, we were expecting to walk around praying with these people and witnessing to them. However, the day proved to be full of tragic news.
The first man we went to visit was a Maasai named Elijah. He is the pastor of one of the churches Bob helped create. We found out from him that there was a good chance a war was going to break out between two neighboring Maasai subgroups, one being Elijah’s group and the other coming from just over the Ngong Hills. Four people from Elijah’s village were near death when we talked to him because they had been attacked the day before with clubs by the neighboring Maasai group. I wish I knew the names of the groups to make this easier. Basically, the people that attacked had crossed over the Ngong Hills and ambushed Elijah’s people, claiming that they owned the land and were there to take it back. According to Elijah, this was a completely unfounded claim. It is not the other group’s land at all. What’s scary is that most of the Maasai are now equipped with AK-47’s and know how to use them. The fighting that took place the day before we got there was about an hour and a half walk away from where we were talking with Elijah. We prayed that peace would be the result of this situation, and then we moved on to our next stop.
At the next boma, or family village, we went to find another pastor that was originally supposed to take us around to evangelize. I can’t remember his name, because we did not end up staying there very long. This pastor already had a few Maasai visitors with him due to the fact that his sister had died in a car accident the day before. Apparently, there were a whole bunch of people on the back of a pickup truck and the truck rolled over. Several were killed, including this pastor’s sister. What a horrible tragedy for this family, but they continued to praise the Lord in the midst of their trying circumstances.
While Tuesday did not go as planned, Wednesday was a very positive day. We went to another church Bob had started for a teaching session with certain Maasai pastors. Every once in a while, Bob gets several pastors together to teach them how to disciple their church members. The meeting lasted almost three hours, and at the beginning, the three of us got to share with the pastors how we came to know the Lord. It was a very encouraging time both for us and for them. It’s so neat getting to speak in front of Kenyan groups because they give you so much positive feedback as you are speaking. I love it! Anyways, the teaching session was centered around the concept of “storying.” The Maasai primarily learn through oral methods, and Bob has developed a storying cloth to show different events from Scripture in chronological order. Remind me to show you one when I get home. They are very effective teaching tools.
Well, that’s about all that happened worth noting from this week. Matt’s parents get here tonight, and we leave very early in the morning for Tanzania. In Tanzania, we will once again be focusing in on the Maasai people, encouraging local churches that have no missionary presence in the area. The Tidenbergs did a lot of their missionary work in Maasai land in Tanzania for many years, and they are taking us to churches that they have relationships with to provide them with any encouragement that we have to offer. Please pray for safety in travels this week, and ask God to prevent the rest of our team from getting sick. I had a fever for a short while, and I am still feeling quite crummy. The biggest prayer that I am praying is that souls would be saved. We want to share the good news of Jesus with the lost that we will most definitely encounter this week. Also, pray that these churches we visit would be encouraged, not only by us but even more by the Holy Spirit.
Finally, next Saturday, we are having a basketball game and cookout for all of the contacts we have made at Graffins College while living in Nairobi. To remind you, the main reason we came here originally was to do campus outreach. We have still been doing that a couple of days a week, but I don’t usually write too much about it on here. This cookout will give us a chance to introduce our new friends from Graffins to some of the other missionaries living here, so that they can stay in touch with these students after we leave. We don’t know if all of them are Christians or not, but I assume that there will be someone coming who does not know the Lord. So, please pray that they would see Jesus in us this weekend at the cookout and be drawn to a personal relationship with Him that we as Christians already experience.
Well, that’s it for me! I am heading home and will try to rest up for the long but exciting week ahead. I love you guys, and I will be seeing many of you in two weeks time. Get excited!
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday and Wednesday, Matt, Erin, and I spent time with a missionary named Bob Calvert. Bob’s motor runs one hundred miles an hour in all aspects of his life, especially in regards to his talking and his driving. He is an absolute firecracker. He invited us to spend a couple of days with him in Maasai land here in Kenya. The Maasai are an indigenous African ethnic group of semi-nomadic people living in Kenya and northern Tanzania. When we went into the bush on Tuesday, we were expecting to walk around praying with these people and witnessing to them. However, the day proved to be full of tragic news.
The first man we went to visit was a Maasai named Elijah. He is the pastor of one of the churches Bob helped create. We found out from him that there was a good chance a war was going to break out between two neighboring Maasai subgroups, one being Elijah’s group and the other coming from just over the Ngong Hills. Four people from Elijah’s village were near death when we talked to him because they had been attacked the day before with clubs by the neighboring Maasai group. I wish I knew the names of the groups to make this easier. Basically, the people that attacked had crossed over the Ngong Hills and ambushed Elijah’s people, claiming that they owned the land and were there to take it back. According to Elijah, this was a completely unfounded claim. It is not the other group’s land at all. What’s scary is that most of the Maasai are now equipped with AK-47’s and know how to use them. The fighting that took place the day before we got there was about an hour and a half walk away from where we were talking with Elijah. We prayed that peace would be the result of this situation, and then we moved on to our next stop.
At the next boma, or family village, we went to find another pastor that was originally supposed to take us around to evangelize. I can’t remember his name, because we did not end up staying there very long. This pastor already had a few Maasai visitors with him due to the fact that his sister had died in a car accident the day before. Apparently, there were a whole bunch of people on the back of a pickup truck and the truck rolled over. Several were killed, including this pastor’s sister. What a horrible tragedy for this family, but they continued to praise the Lord in the midst of their trying circumstances.
While Tuesday did not go as planned, Wednesday was a very positive day. We went to another church Bob had started for a teaching session with certain Maasai pastors. Every once in a while, Bob gets several pastors together to teach them how to disciple their church members. The meeting lasted almost three hours, and at the beginning, the three of us got to share with the pastors how we came to know the Lord. It was a very encouraging time both for us and for them. It’s so neat getting to speak in front of Kenyan groups because they give you so much positive feedback as you are speaking. I love it! Anyways, the teaching session was centered around the concept of “storying.” The Maasai primarily learn through oral methods, and Bob has developed a storying cloth to show different events from Scripture in chronological order. Remind me to show you one when I get home. They are very effective teaching tools.
Well, that’s about all that happened worth noting from this week. Matt’s parents get here tonight, and we leave very early in the morning for Tanzania. In Tanzania, we will once again be focusing in on the Maasai people, encouraging local churches that have no missionary presence in the area. The Tidenbergs did a lot of their missionary work in Maasai land in Tanzania for many years, and they are taking us to churches that they have relationships with to provide them with any encouragement that we have to offer. Please pray for safety in travels this week, and ask God to prevent the rest of our team from getting sick. I had a fever for a short while, and I am still feeling quite crummy. The biggest prayer that I am praying is that souls would be saved. We want to share the good news of Jesus with the lost that we will most definitely encounter this week. Also, pray that these churches we visit would be encouraged, not only by us but even more by the Holy Spirit.
Finally, next Saturday, we are having a basketball game and cookout for all of the contacts we have made at Graffins College while living in Nairobi. To remind you, the main reason we came here originally was to do campus outreach. We have still been doing that a couple of days a week, but I don’t usually write too much about it on here. This cookout will give us a chance to introduce our new friends from Graffins to some of the other missionaries living here, so that they can stay in touch with these students after we leave. We don’t know if all of them are Christians or not, but I assume that there will be someone coming who does not know the Lord. So, please pray that they would see Jesus in us this weekend at the cookout and be drawn to a personal relationship with Him that we as Christians already experience.
Well, that’s it for me! I am heading home and will try to rest up for the long but exciting week ahead. I love you guys, and I will be seeing many of you in two weeks time. Get excited!
Monday, December 1, 2008
And All the Angels Rejoiced...
Hello to all my friends and family back home. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving celebration, and I know we all have a lot for which to be thankful. I am extremely grateful that I am in Kenya right now, but I am looking forward to a couple of weeks when I see a lot of you. I think there have been enough blogs at this point, so we can go ahead and skip a big introduction. There are three main stories that I want to share with you this week, so let’s move right ahead with story number one.
The first experience I want to express to you is our rafting down the River Nile. Yes, a lot of us know it as the Nile River, but the Africans say River Nile, and I like it that way. The whole time we were in the water we kept talking about how cool it was that little Moses was hidden on the banks of the very river we were rafting, and we thought it was cool that this same river was turned into blood. It’s a good reminder to me that what was written in the Old Testament actually happened. They aren’t a bunch of made-up stories, but Moses was really hidden in the Nile, and it did get turned into blood. Anyways, there were twelve of us that made the trip from Nairobi, Kenya to Jinja, Uganda, where we stayed in dorms at the Nile River Explorer campsite. We made the trip by bus, which was thirteen hours on Friday and eleven hours back today, Sunday the 30th. All of that driving for six hours of rafting, but it was well worth it. We got to Uganda around 8:00 PM on Friday, and were picked up and taken on the back of a truck through some villages in the country to the campsite. We were welcomed by extremely loud music and a whole bunch of drunk people. We did our best to go straight to sleep, but that proved to be difficult.
For those of you who don’t know, which included me until this weekend, the River Nile is one of two rivers in the world that flows from south to north. At least that is what we were told. The other river is the St. Johns River from the wonderful state of Florida. We got up Saturday morning at around 7:00 and were taken on the back of the same truck to another campsite for breakfast. Now, I got my first impression of the Nile early in the morning with the fog still encompassing it, so it was quite intimidating. I was shocked by the sheer size of the river. It is massive. The river is wide, and the water rushes faster than any river I have ever seen. After breakfast, which included some of the best pineapple I have ever had, we hit the rapids. It’s kind of hard to explain each rapid one by one, so I won’t. I will only say that I have rafted about five times in America, and nothing I did there ever came close to this. The rapids rivaled the waves of the ocean on a rough and choppy day. We were told that a four or five in terms of size and intensity of the rapid (on a scale of one to five) in America would be considered a two or three on the Nile. It is kind of like skiing in the East in America versus skiing in the West. Skiing in the East just doesn’t compare to the West.
The rafting was really fun, and it went relatively smooth. We only flipped once, compared to most other boats flipping at least two or three times. I jumped out of the boat whenever I could, just so I could get in the water which was at a perfect temperature. At one point while swimming in the river, we got to hang on a tree branch and body-surf a small rapid. By far, the coolest part of the day, and probably the most impressive of any boat, happened to us on the last rapid of the day. We had to skip a class six rapid because several people who attempted it have died, and we carried our boats around. We got back in the water with about one-third of the rapid remaining. We went through the first huge wave with relative ease, but we hit the very last wave of the day straight on. Well, we got stuck in that last wave. For literally over thirty seconds, and I have the DVD to prove it, we surfed a very big rapid. Up and down and side to side we went, and we could not get ourselves out of the wave. I remember we were in there long enough for Josh and I to have a conversation about what we should do if the boat remained stuck in the wave. To make matters worse, our guide Elias fell out of the boat, so it was just us in this predicament. Thankfully, the boat finally got itself out of the wave, and we were safe. The guide said it was “one of the most epic surfs I have ever seen, and I wasn’t even in the boat to experience it!” What a day that was, and I will certainly never forget rafting the Nile.
Another interesting story took place on Thursday, which was the day before we all left for the Nile. As you know, Rose Bugusu is the director of the Tumaini school and orphanage I was at for a couple of months. For a couple of weeks, she is living in Nairobi with her husband and son. Her husband works in Nairobi, and he helps fund the orphanage from about eight hours away. Well, she had a package for me that was sent by the Sullins family back in the States. I had been trying to find this package for a month now. Kellie White tried to take me out to Rose’s place in the morning, but there were a couple of bad accidents, and we could get nowhere in almost an hour. We also saw a girl’s foot get run over by a car. Anyways, Kellie dropped me off about fifteen minutes from the Tidenbergs, because she had to get home and cook, and I walked home. Daniel, who works for the Tidenbergs, told me he could take me out by matatu (public transportation) to get the package.
We set off for Kuwangware, which is on the outskirts of Nairobi and where Rose lives, and it literally took us two hours to move twenty miles. The traffic here is horrible. Again, everywhere I went I was bombarded with questions about whether or not I know Obama or like him. Once we got off the matatu, we called Rose, and she sent her son Moses down to bring us up. I spent about a half an hour chatting with Rose, and then Daniel and I set off. He sent me home by myself because he had some business to take care of in the city. I was without a phone this whole time because my battery had died. So, I got dropped off by a matatu back in Westlands, where we live, and I had to try and hunt down Matt and Erin to no avail. I decided just to walk back to the Tidenbergs and hangout until Matt and Erin were done with our Thanksgiving dinner with some missionaries. Luckily, I was able to put my sim card in one of the worker’s phones, and Matt called my phone soon after I did that. They came and picked me up, and I got to heat up a delicious Thanksgiving meal. What a crazy day. I rode and walked miles and miles for that package, but I am so thankful for it. It is loaded with good stuff. Thanks Sullins family!
Finally, this week was one of the major highlights for me for the Nairobi part of the trip because of this next story. David Cox, one of the missionaries with the IMB, took me to his house on Tuesday, because we were to go witnessing in one of the slums while Matt and Erin made one of our college visits. Unfortunately, our contact in the slum never showed up, and we were unable to go. The next day, Matt, Erin, David, and I went into the slums together. We got to share Christ at several different slums, but the most exciting thing took place during our last visit of the day. I have thought a lot about whether or not to share this with you, but I have decided to so that we can rejoice together in seeing our prayers answered. At the last house of the day, our translator Rama said we needed to share the Gospel with the three women and one man who had gathered to hear what the wazungu (white people) had to say. Matt and Erin had seen someone come to Christ here, and I had been praying that God would grant me the joy of seeing someone give their life to Him. I realized that I had no role in saving anyone, but I wanted to see God’s power move right there before me and through me. David Cox knew I had been itching to witness and see someone come to the Lord, so he pushed me to share the Gospel through my testimony. He pushed me in a good way, because it kept me from backing out of it. So, for about twenty minutes, I put forth the great news of salvation and what Christ had done in my life. I told them how I had been saved, and what my life would have been like if not for Christ. After speaking with them, I asked them if they understood everything. They said yes. Then I asked them if they wanted to make Christ their Lord and Savior and have a personal relationship with Him, and three of the four eagerly said yes.
So, through the translator, three of the four prayed to receive Christ! I explained to them that the words they prayed had no power on their own to save them if they were not spoken with a sincere heart. We put so much emphasis in America on praying a prayer, and we see false conversions because people think that reciting magic words will save them. I told them, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” The two women that prayed to receive Christ got down on their knees and cried, and the man had a huge smile on his face. We made sure they got Bibles, and Rama will follow up with them a couple of times a week. We do NOT want to go around evangelizing and then leaving no one there to train and disciple them. Again, we all realize that we play no part in saving anyone. I am simply ecstatic that three people were born again. Afterwards, I hugged Matt and cried tears of joy. The cool thing about witnessing is that it brings you back to your salvation, and it makes you rejoice because of what He has already done in your life. We all celebrated after what happened, and we will be praying for those three. We know that all the angels in Heaven rejoiced when these three surrendered their lives to Christ.
Please pray for those that were saved this week. Pray that they will grow day by day, and pray that satan will have no hold over their lives. What an incredible week! This is why we pray, and this is why we send people to foreign countries: to tell them about Jesus Christ. Thank you for your continued prayers and support. Please pray for more souls to be saved this week as we go out with Bob Calvert to witness on Tuesday and Wednesday. We leave for Tanzania this coming Saturday, and I will hopefully post one more blog before then, but you never know out here. I
love you guys!
The first experience I want to express to you is our rafting down the River Nile. Yes, a lot of us know it as the Nile River, but the Africans say River Nile, and I like it that way. The whole time we were in the water we kept talking about how cool it was that little Moses was hidden on the banks of the very river we were rafting, and we thought it was cool that this same river was turned into blood. It’s a good reminder to me that what was written in the Old Testament actually happened. They aren’t a bunch of made-up stories, but Moses was really hidden in the Nile, and it did get turned into blood. Anyways, there were twelve of us that made the trip from Nairobi, Kenya to Jinja, Uganda, where we stayed in dorms at the Nile River Explorer campsite. We made the trip by bus, which was thirteen hours on Friday and eleven hours back today, Sunday the 30th. All of that driving for six hours of rafting, but it was well worth it. We got to Uganda around 8:00 PM on Friday, and were picked up and taken on the back of a truck through some villages in the country to the campsite. We were welcomed by extremely loud music and a whole bunch of drunk people. We did our best to go straight to sleep, but that proved to be difficult.
For those of you who don’t know, which included me until this weekend, the River Nile is one of two rivers in the world that flows from south to north. At least that is what we were told. The other river is the St. Johns River from the wonderful state of Florida. We got up Saturday morning at around 7:00 and were taken on the back of the same truck to another campsite for breakfast. Now, I got my first impression of the Nile early in the morning with the fog still encompassing it, so it was quite intimidating. I was shocked by the sheer size of the river. It is massive. The river is wide, and the water rushes faster than any river I have ever seen. After breakfast, which included some of the best pineapple I have ever had, we hit the rapids. It’s kind of hard to explain each rapid one by one, so I won’t. I will only say that I have rafted about five times in America, and nothing I did there ever came close to this. The rapids rivaled the waves of the ocean on a rough and choppy day. We were told that a four or five in terms of size and intensity of the rapid (on a scale of one to five) in America would be considered a two or three on the Nile. It is kind of like skiing in the East in America versus skiing in the West. Skiing in the East just doesn’t compare to the West.
The rafting was really fun, and it went relatively smooth. We only flipped once, compared to most other boats flipping at least two or three times. I jumped out of the boat whenever I could, just so I could get in the water which was at a perfect temperature. At one point while swimming in the river, we got to hang on a tree branch and body-surf a small rapid. By far, the coolest part of the day, and probably the most impressive of any boat, happened to us on the last rapid of the day. We had to skip a class six rapid because several people who attempted it have died, and we carried our boats around. We got back in the water with about one-third of the rapid remaining. We went through the first huge wave with relative ease, but we hit the very last wave of the day straight on. Well, we got stuck in that last wave. For literally over thirty seconds, and I have the DVD to prove it, we surfed a very big rapid. Up and down and side to side we went, and we could not get ourselves out of the wave. I remember we were in there long enough for Josh and I to have a conversation about what we should do if the boat remained stuck in the wave. To make matters worse, our guide Elias fell out of the boat, so it was just us in this predicament. Thankfully, the boat finally got itself out of the wave, and we were safe. The guide said it was “one of the most epic surfs I have ever seen, and I wasn’t even in the boat to experience it!” What a day that was, and I will certainly never forget rafting the Nile.
Another interesting story took place on Thursday, which was the day before we all left for the Nile. As you know, Rose Bugusu is the director of the Tumaini school and orphanage I was at for a couple of months. For a couple of weeks, she is living in Nairobi with her husband and son. Her husband works in Nairobi, and he helps fund the orphanage from about eight hours away. Well, she had a package for me that was sent by the Sullins family back in the States. I had been trying to find this package for a month now. Kellie White tried to take me out to Rose’s place in the morning, but there were a couple of bad accidents, and we could get nowhere in almost an hour. We also saw a girl’s foot get run over by a car. Anyways, Kellie dropped me off about fifteen minutes from the Tidenbergs, because she had to get home and cook, and I walked home. Daniel, who works for the Tidenbergs, told me he could take me out by matatu (public transportation) to get the package.
We set off for Kuwangware, which is on the outskirts of Nairobi and where Rose lives, and it literally took us two hours to move twenty miles. The traffic here is horrible. Again, everywhere I went I was bombarded with questions about whether or not I know Obama or like him. Once we got off the matatu, we called Rose, and she sent her son Moses down to bring us up. I spent about a half an hour chatting with Rose, and then Daniel and I set off. He sent me home by myself because he had some business to take care of in the city. I was without a phone this whole time because my battery had died. So, I got dropped off by a matatu back in Westlands, where we live, and I had to try and hunt down Matt and Erin to no avail. I decided just to walk back to the Tidenbergs and hangout until Matt and Erin were done with our Thanksgiving dinner with some missionaries. Luckily, I was able to put my sim card in one of the worker’s phones, and Matt called my phone soon after I did that. They came and picked me up, and I got to heat up a delicious Thanksgiving meal. What a crazy day. I rode and walked miles and miles for that package, but I am so thankful for it. It is loaded with good stuff. Thanks Sullins family!
Finally, this week was one of the major highlights for me for the Nairobi part of the trip because of this next story. David Cox, one of the missionaries with the IMB, took me to his house on Tuesday, because we were to go witnessing in one of the slums while Matt and Erin made one of our college visits. Unfortunately, our contact in the slum never showed up, and we were unable to go. The next day, Matt, Erin, David, and I went into the slums together. We got to share Christ at several different slums, but the most exciting thing took place during our last visit of the day. I have thought a lot about whether or not to share this with you, but I have decided to so that we can rejoice together in seeing our prayers answered. At the last house of the day, our translator Rama said we needed to share the Gospel with the three women and one man who had gathered to hear what the wazungu (white people) had to say. Matt and Erin had seen someone come to Christ here, and I had been praying that God would grant me the joy of seeing someone give their life to Him. I realized that I had no role in saving anyone, but I wanted to see God’s power move right there before me and through me. David Cox knew I had been itching to witness and see someone come to the Lord, so he pushed me to share the Gospel through my testimony. He pushed me in a good way, because it kept me from backing out of it. So, for about twenty minutes, I put forth the great news of salvation and what Christ had done in my life. I told them how I had been saved, and what my life would have been like if not for Christ. After speaking with them, I asked them if they understood everything. They said yes. Then I asked them if they wanted to make Christ their Lord and Savior and have a personal relationship with Him, and three of the four eagerly said yes.
So, through the translator, three of the four prayed to receive Christ! I explained to them that the words they prayed had no power on their own to save them if they were not spoken with a sincere heart. We put so much emphasis in America on praying a prayer, and we see false conversions because people think that reciting magic words will save them. I told them, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” The two women that prayed to receive Christ got down on their knees and cried, and the man had a huge smile on his face. We made sure they got Bibles, and Rama will follow up with them a couple of times a week. We do NOT want to go around evangelizing and then leaving no one there to train and disciple them. Again, we all realize that we play no part in saving anyone. I am simply ecstatic that three people were born again. Afterwards, I hugged Matt and cried tears of joy. The cool thing about witnessing is that it brings you back to your salvation, and it makes you rejoice because of what He has already done in your life. We all celebrated after what happened, and we will be praying for those three. We know that all the angels in Heaven rejoiced when these three surrendered their lives to Christ.
Please pray for those that were saved this week. Pray that they will grow day by day, and pray that satan will have no hold over their lives. What an incredible week! This is why we pray, and this is why we send people to foreign countries: to tell them about Jesus Christ. Thank you for your continued prayers and support. Please pray for more souls to be saved this week as we go out with Bob Calvert to witness on Tuesday and Wednesday. We leave for Tanzania this coming Saturday, and I will hopefully post one more blog before then, but you never know out here. I
love you guys!
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