Day 4: Tuesday January 28th, 2014

Returning to Mutulu

 The fourth day was another peace-filled day. We had time for devotional in the morning, discussing the first chapter of James, verses 19-27, in which we revisited the topic of being swift to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger and how important it is to reveal our faith in our actions, not just our word. Afterwards, we then went to the home of a local farmer by the name of Erastus. He and his wife Redempta have built for themselves a beautiful home and have many plans for improving it. While I was busy inside writing, the team was able to finish constructing the mango dehydrator outside while Jong-im, Redempta, and several of her friends peeled and sliced mangos for the first batch to be dried out in “Mango 1.” It looked good and we’ll see how they turned out on Wednesday!

 Next we headed out for lunch at the Christian Library to which we’ve been donating books throughout the last year. The shelves weren’t completely filled, but there is a good collection of about 400 books so far and another shipment of 1500 books will be arriving soon. As for lunch, one of the cows had just been slaughtered in the village and we were able to eat some of the roast meat just a few hours later. Talk about delicious!! While we ate, several children looked in through the doors, watching us.

 We next drove to Mutulu and visited a local leader by the name of William and his wife Sara. They live on a lovely hill looking out over the valley with a wall of bouganvilla running across their yard in front of their drive. When we arrived, several baby goats were roaming around and we were warmly welcomed as Sara immediately set about preparing us some tea and sandwiches. We sat in the shade and discussed the events of our trip, the hike up to the Mutunguni yesterday, Peter’s long vision, and William’s work in the local community and his work in the government of the President in Nairobi. It was only last year when William nearly lost his life, but God spared him and, while he’s doing much better, we prayed that he would be restored to his full strength and that he would have God’s discernment and wisdom in the days and years ahead to both help his community prosper, be blessed at work, and possibly assist us in building the Bible Schools on Mount Mutunguni. It was a lovely afternoon... that also featured a smart cat named Puss and mischievous roosters who weren’t afraid of flying up to the table to steal our snacks. (:

 We then walked up a backroad through the village to meet a young boy named Joseph and his grandmother on the road to the church service. Their living conditions are, to our standards, deplorable. His grandmother had no shoes and one of her ankles was swollen, likely because she’d stepped on something that pierced her skin. The skin on her feet was thick and calloused, coverered in layer upon layer of dirt that, over time, has been encrusted to her feet. Her clothes were frayed and soiled and their house a scattered collection of boxes, buckets, and clothes strung up across the dirt rooms. I took some photos of the interior because Joseph’s sister had been adopted to America and her adopted parents wants to help her biological family supply their basic needs which, as evident in the photos, are hardly being met. meeting several children and Anna’s daughter along the way. We were all heading to “the cinema” together. (: The sun was going down. The breeze was sweet. The picturesque hills were overflowing with abundant crops and green trees. And, from my own heart, I felt like I was home.

 Once we arrived to the church, we started setting up for the cinema outside. We arranged the chairs, projector, and our band equipment and people from the surrounding hills soon started piling in from all sides. People piled in from all sides, sitting both in the chairs, standing on the ground in the wide open aisle and even climbing up onto the small dirt precipice to the left of the church to sit along the edge and look out over the audience. We started by singing a couple of songs. We’ve gotten used to each other throughout the week and I don’t even think we discussed which songs we would sing before we started. The sun had long gone and (after being stung by a bee on the neck... weird) Peter moved into singing “God of Wonders,” one of my all-time favorites from my youth group days. It was perfect. We were singing of the magnificence of our God and all that He’s created under the brilliant expanse of that creation. The breeze was light and refreshing after a hot day and our last night in Mutulu soon began benath a star-filled sky.

 We played the movie. Just as at Musengo Church, people reacted to what they were seeing, but even more strongly. They were even more deeply engaged with the film and it was exciting. Everyone was watching, thinking, and responding in unison under a dark sky speckled with white lights. While everyone was watching, I moved around to take pictures of the scene. It was just so incredible! A full audience of Kenyan heads silhouetted against a brightly-lit church face. My heart was filled with so much joy at the scenes I was able to capture. It was yet another incredible sight here in Kenya that I had not anticipated to see and, to my joy, it was also a childhood dream come true… except a hundred times better. When I was a little girl, there was a drive-in movie theatre in my hometown and, though we only went a few times before it went out of business, I loved it. We would go to the movies as a family, bring some snacks and watch a movie outside under the stars. (In Korean, I think this type of theatre is called a “motor-movie.”) Well, my favorite part was being under the stars. It was so much fun. And, even though my brother and I would almost always fall asleep before the movie was over, it was one of the most exciting nights of summer and, in later years, I dreamed of owning a house with some land and a kind of barn with a wall wide enough to project a movie onto it. I'd have all the neighborhood come out and we'd sit beneath the stars with popcorn and sodas watching a movie… laughing, crying, gasping, and rejoicing together. Well, not only did we as a team in Kenya get to host just such a movie under the stars that night, we were watching a movie about our Savior and there were hundreds--literally hundreds--of Kenyans standing about in attendance, eager to watch the full story of how Christ came to save their lives and those of the world. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing and an experience I’ll never forget. About three-quarters of the way through though, there was a crazy spiritual attack. The generator—the brand new generator we bought only 4 days before—stopped working suddenly and all the power cut out. We filled it with plenty of petrol, but it refused to work. Fortunately, the church had a spare generator in their storeroom. Then the projector stopped working. Something about it wasn’t connecting with the computer. And then the sound on the computer stopped working. Eventually Mbondo just had to shut it down... but of course, that was when Windows decided to ‘install several updates.’ Seriously?? Mbondo just pulled out the battery and we started afresh. At last, he was able to figure out the sound, the projector was alright and the movie continued, but it was an unexpected intermission. Praise the Lord we got it up and running again, because the people of Mutulu needed to see the full story of their salvation!

 Afterward, many people raised their hands to commit their lives to Christ. So many people, young and old, so many children sitting sincerely in the audience with their hands raised, commited their souls to Christ. Our prayer now will be that they grow to commit their daily lives. For all we know, many of them will grow into the scholars and missionaries that graduate from the Bible School!

 We then offered to pray for the sick and those with personal needs. Dozens of people, the elderly and young children, came forward. I prayed for two of them. The first was an old woman with pain in her right thigh, just below her hip bone. I prayed for her for quite a while, and then she said she felt completely better. I then asked if I could pray for her, that she might walk without her cane. Somewhat mischievously, I took it from her hands and held it out in front of her while she began to walk without it. She was able to do a little dance, too! While I know she’ll likely continue to use the cane out of habit as she needed it to get home in the dark, as she walked away, I could see that she wasn’t really leaning on it and that was encouraging. (:

 I then prayed for a young girl who asked to no longer do poorly in school. She was so, so sweet, so I prayed that God would give her the determination and passion to succeed in school, that she might taste the sweet glory of being top in her class and that her future would be bright, full of high school and college days rich in learning and inspiration. She really was rather darling because she’d likely never been hugged and prayed for by such a stranger and her nervousness was overwhelming, so she burst like a horse from the gates as soon as I opened my arms, running off across the field and down the hill. But, God-willing, she’ll do better in school. (:

 As for the others we saw healed, Mwonzia was delivered from a state of inebriation, people with back problems, a child with a headache, another child with a desire to have a stronger faith, several other children who wanted to do better in school. There were several many others but I haven’t had the chance to ask everyone what they witnessed! (How thoroughly packed these days are!)

 Afterward, Peter asked me to take pictures of Joseph to send to his sister in America. At first he didn’t smile, but I made a silly face and he cracked a shy one just in time for my camera to capture it. I asked him if he wanted to see it and he said yes. Holding it up so he could see it, he simply stared at it silently for minutes on end, never taking his eyes from the screen. I quietly asked him if he had ever seen his picture before and he said, emphatically, “No... no...” It was such a precious moment. How much I take for granted all the pictures I have of me to remember my childhood. Once everything was cleaned up, I started telling Kijung about the stars that we can see so clearly here in Kenya. There are no city lights polluting the area, no planes flying overhead at night. I showed her the “cloud” of lighter sky stretching across the heavens. The Milky Way! We spotted a few other constellations and talked about how the ancients used the stars to navigate by night and just how massive the universe was... that many of the “stars” we were seeing were actually entire galaxies of God’s creation. We talked too of how infinitely small His creation is too when we consider the atom and the molecules that make up our material universe. And yet, through it all, God continues to show us His love. Our God is indeed a God of Wonders and, in many ways, I think it’s much easier to appreciate Him beneath the Kenyan night skies.

 Until next time, in worship of our Awesome God,

 Ellie

Day 3: Monday January 27th, 2014

While Jiteck and Peter went out to prepare the dehydrators, the rest of us had a devotional time together and prayed for one another as well as the church. While we were talking, Byung expressed concern about people he had seen the night before. He remembered several of them and he remembered praying for them the year before. He said they had been healed at the time, but now their pain had returned and they were requesting help for the same difficulties they had before. He felt as though somehow he didn't do a good job last year, that he wasn't good enough to do God's work. Why else would the pain have come back? We talked about this in detail because it's a fact that sometimes God chooses ~not to heal people. Sometimes the pain is immediately relieved but later returns. This very difficulty is what I had faced the night before with the lady at Musengo and I felt blessed to know why healing doesn't always come in the way we expect. To encourage Byung, we discussed the many possible reasons why God doesn't always heal, remembering Peter's devotional words about the necessity of miracles being in God's Will, God's Way, and God's Time. Life is such an ongoing experience. Just like the ways in which we must regularly work to maintain our lifestyles (sleeping, eating, washing, etc.), we must also work similarly in the Spirit. Perhaps our difficulties, whether emotional or physical, need to be continually brought to God for "maintenance." Sharing our difficulties (as well as our blessings) with God should be a way of life, not just the work of a fleeting moment. Where's the relationship in that? That's like going to the baker's to buy a cake instead of spending time with the baker to learn how to make the cake together. Byung was encouraged and I was grateful to be the one to encourage him. We then shared prayer requests and prayed over each other. Marcus then mentioned that we should pray for the church back home, any members that needed prayer. Just as we began mentioning people who needed prayer, Peter and Jiteck returned with most of the materials they needed for the mango dehydrators and he later expressed how encouraged his heart was to find us praying for his church. It lifted his spirits greatly and we were glad to have done it. After we prayed for many people back home in Korea, the team got to work constructing different parts of the dehydrators while I wrote some of the posts for the blog. Time-consuming, this! After they finished all they could do, we then ate a quick lunch of ramyeon (we packed it from home) before hurrying out to visit one of the top performing schools in the area. The school, Syomutwa Bethel Academy, was founded in 2007 and, despite having few materials (the classrooms are bare with only a few desks and a blackboard attached to the brick walls), the school has done very, very well on the national exams and the director has been able to build a boarding house for a few girls that need to stay closer to the school. For about $15,000 USD, they built the house with an adjacent shower room. The building is well-built from concrete, with large concrete dividers running down either side to make separate spaces for up to four girls to sleep in bunk beds. The boarding-house head mistress sleeps in the room by the door. Her name is Penny and she had been a teacher at a nearby secondary school for 7 years but the director of Bethel Academy asked her to come and help manage the boarding house and she is so happy to be working with the girls. Her room is simple and she could do with a bookshelf or closet to store her things, but she has one overhead light and a radio, lots of books, and she's glad to have the space in such a nice new building. She's currently looking after 10 girls, but is excited to look after more as soon as the school can afford to buy more bunk bends, mattresses, and supplies to house the students. Housing costs for one girl are about $600 per year, including their uniforms, books, and meals, and Peter is hoping we can do something like this for the girls in Kibera. He would like to bring them out from Nairobi to a peaceful place where they can complete their education all the way through secondary school with opportunities for going on to college or, perhaps even Bible school. The Bible School. For so much of the rest of the day, I had no words for what I was about to see and anything I did say seemed trivial. I had not anticipated where we were to go next, but it's a place for which I will always be so, so grateful we did. From the school, after gathering most of the kids together for a spontaneous picture, we drove further up into the Kenyan countryside, up into a more mountainous region that we hadn't been able to see before from our current days spent in Tulia. This part of the world, the way leading up to the small town of Mutulu and the highest point in the area, is beautiful. Beyond beautiful really. As we drove up the hill, and then especially after we got out and starting hiking up the mountain on foot, it was like the entire world was laid out on all sides below us. Rolling hills with tiny brick houses scattered about, stitched between ribbons of dirt roads that have been etched across the hills. Small towns clustered together among a rippling ocean of farms, green with the abundance of the recent rains. Even though I had once lived on the continent and even traveled across its southern point, I never knew Africa was this beautiful. Twelve years before, Peter had spent 5 months serving there as a missionary in the area alongside Mbondo who had come up at the same time. He came to love the place, and as I was about to see, it isn't hard to do. One day, while walking with Mbondo at the top of the mountain, Peter had a vision of a Bible School being built there, right there at the top: a place of study and worship and peace for Bible scholars preparing to take God's love to the world. While he lived in Kenya, he came to realize how difficult it was for pastors working in the countryside. There simply isn't enough money in each community to support a pastor full-time, so most pastors must work in several towns. Another difficulty is simply raising up missionaries to become pastors as the money is so rarely there for even the most ambitious and skilled students to go to secondary school, let alone seminary. His initial vision was to serve the local Kenyans, providing that secondary school, a Bible school, and a theological library to raise up Kenyan pastors for the area, but soon his vision grew into something even more and, over the last twelve years, through many discussions with Mbondo, Alexander, & James, the dream now includes a boarding school to provide a loving home and a rich education for the girls in Kibera, a university that will allow missionaries to also get degrees in other fields that they might go out to the world and minister through their work as business-owners, lawyers, and agricultural specialists, etc. And this university will be attended by students from across the world, not just from within Kenya. Students from nations across Africa, the United States, Korea, and every other country in the world in which hearts are being called to bring God's love to the world and make disciples of all nations. There will be guesthouses and a conference hall to host seminary retreats for pastors from across the world. This will be a place of where the heart of God can delight in those seeking to serve Him and, as I was looking out over all that we surveyed, I just knew that God's Spirit must roam these hills when He's in need of rest. It's so beautiful--so lovingly designed by God--I can't imagine why He wouldn't Together, we prayed over Peter's vision… that God would bring it to pass, that He would soften the hearts of the current owners of the land to be willing to sell their parcels, that we might start building something soon, and that the right people would be brought together to make this vision a reality. We also prayed for our mango project, that it might succeed and bring in the necessary funds to support the boarding schools and the construction of the seminary campus. As the sun was going down over our prayers, I was in awe that such a great dream could ever come true… simply because it's such a great dream. It's so simple and yet so beautiful. Could we really be so privileged to become part of such a legacy on this earth? I know that, in order to see it come about, all who are involved must have their hearts and ears fully inclined toward God. We can't have more than one Master in the building of this project. With God and for this project, it's all or nothing… But how awesome it would be to receive such a gift! To see this seed of a vision grow into an abundant harvest! And all we have to do to succeed is obey the Lord, giving our all to Christ. We then walked down the mountain, watching the sun set over the hills. Earlier, Mbondo had explained that, if there weren't any clouds in the distance, we'd be able to see Mt. Kilimanjaro to the south and Mt. Kenya to the west. "Really??" I asked. To think that this vision would truly be like a city on a hill, shining God's glory out and over all the land, to the very edges of Kenya! The thought that kept running through my mind as we made our way down the steep road was how much this place felt like Heaven on Earth. God's Kingdom will reign here. We then returned to the church and started to set up for that evening's worship and prayer service. We were testing the instruments and warming up our voices when, before we knew it, our rehearsal turned into the spontaneous opening set because the townspeople just started piling in while we practiced. So many people came. Timid and shy, they crowded together like sardines at the back, almost afraid to come forward but we asked them to pile in to the front of the rows of chairs, even sitting in the middle of the wide aisle. After Peter spoke, imparting that no follower of Christ can serve two masters, that they must be wholly devoted to Jesus only and that they cannot hold the hand of a demon at the same time, we asked for anyone who needed prayers of salvation and healing. So many people came forward that night. I prayed for a woman named Anna. She had a lump on her back, her chest was heavy, her blood pressure always rose steeply and woke her in the middle of the night, and she suffered headaches. I prayed for her for a while. I prayed that she would be relieved of her headaches and soon, she said it was free of pain! I prayed too for her blood pressure—that it wouldn’t wake her early in the morning—and I would ask her the next day it woke her up later that night. It took a while, but I also felt the swelling of the lump go down significantly. At first, it had the height of a hardboiled egg in my hand, but after we finished praying, it was about the size of a slice of mango. It didn't disappear completely, but Anna insisted that I pray for others. She was resigned to the fact that she would likely need an operation, but of course there is no money for such a surgery, so before I let her go, we prayed that she would be able to receive either complete healing at the hands of God or the funds for the surgery. Her spirit was so incredibly light throughout it all. She never once ceased praising the Lord. The lump might still be there, but she realized that it perhaps was her burden, her thorn to carry to like Paul's. Every time she thinks of it, she is reminded of the value of her devotion to God on this earth, how important it is that she remain faithful in spite of hardship… and that her place in His kingdom will not be hampered by an earthly body. I then went on to pray for a girl who couldn't hear and Anna's daughter who was suffering headaches. Both of them were healed. Anna's daughter is an angelic little creature. She's actually 18 years old, but she lives in the body of a twelve year old, and has the mind of a toddler. Her eyes are crossed and her mouth hangs open as she looks out in observation of the world around her, but her smile is ready and willing to appear whenever there is something to be glad about. I think, when God looks at children like Anna's daughter, children who experience few feelings of pride or malice, He takes delight in their purity. They aren't devious or calculating… they simply live and, like Him, shun injustice and take delight in goodness. Two women with chest problems, another lady with back aches, one who suffered a kind of heartburn (we prayed twice for her), Anna’s daughter had a headache, another girl had difficulty hearing. One lady has difficulty walking. A young girl, who was a good dancer, had stomach and chest pain and often suffers fainting spells. A mother came forward with her son and explained that he was too scared to go to school by himself. So many others came forward to receive prayer for both physical problems and personal needs. It was a truly blessed time in the presence of God. Until tomorrow, I pray you all are blessed of God. We are so blessed to be here! Ellie

Day 2: Sunday, 26th January, 2014

Day 2: Katothya & a Movie at Musengo I apologize in advance for any confusion in my posts! Today is actually Day 4, but because these days are so packed with incredible moments, it’s been a challenge getting them all recorded and an even greater challenge getting them posted to the internet. Our limited wifi prevents us from both working quickly and uploading many (if any) pictures. We’ll see! Hopefully I can at least get a couple more posts up today! The morning of the second day, we all woke up earlier than we meant to… jet lag. (: But after breakfast, Peter led us in our first morning devotional from John 14:8-14, reminding us that Christ’s highest goal in coming to the earth was to honor the Father, that He was so much in unity with the Father in Heaven, and the Father was in unity with Him, the very words He spoke were not of Himself, but of the Father dwelling in Him. God the Father is the one doing all the great works as His will, in His way, and in His time. We simply have to trust in Him and all will be as He intends. And, in trusting Him, we can call up the name of Jesus as His son who lived and died to glorify Him and we will accomplish even greater things than Jesus did because He has gone on ahead to the Father on our behalf. We then departed for the town of Kabati, about 10 minutes away, to rendezvous with Reverend and Mrs. Musyimi, Grace, and Alexander and to get some gasoline for the generator. While we were waiting, I climbed out of the van to greet a crowd of children that had gathered around the van to get a glimpse of the latest visitors to their area. I asked them (in a kind of mime) if I could take their picture and they agreed with shy grins that soon grew into big smiles as soon as I flashed them a funny face and gestured that I thought they were beautiful. I took a few photos and then showed them what they looked like on the LCD screen and their smiles turned to dropped jaws and shouts of excitement to see their faces looking so clearly back at them. Knowing they don’t get the chance every day to learn about cameras, I showed them how to look through the viewfinder and take a picture. In all actuality, this is probably something they’ve never done before and may never do again. One of the girls, so sweet, didn’t really understand my directions and nervously held her closed eye up to the hole, not really looking through to see what lay beyond the lens, but trying her best to do it just like me. (: We then drove about an hour to the very rural village town of Katothya. There were maybe a dozen houses on either side of the dirt road running through the town, most of them backing up to surrounding maize fields. It’s a very small village, but serves as a community meeting place for the many surrounding farms. The church we were visiting is pretty much the coolest church I’ve ever been in. The reason? Because it was a church made of the people more than the permanent structure they were meeting in. There were only two brick walls, running parallel to one another with a storage room attached to one of them at the side. There was no wall behind the pulpit area nor at the back of the church where the people were seated. There wasn’t a door. There wasn’t a roof. And the floor was made of dirt. The only thing protecting us from the light of the sun were a few tarps strung up over tall frames made from slender tree trunks that had been shorn of their branches. A collection of plastic lawn chairs were set up in rows and the local churchgoers—who had been patiently waiting for us for over an hour—were singing and dancing to the beat of a drum. African praise music is truly beautiful. It’s so full of rhythm and energy. The words are simple and repeated many times over, but it’s sustaining in its constancy. I love it and I know God loves it, too. We set up for praise and worship, started the generator, and offered up our songs of praise for the congregation. Many villagers and visitors from other churches gathered around the tent to listen to our songs. Many of them have never seen a full band before or any kind of electric drum set. After the worship, Peter spoke to the congregation (while Reverend Musyimi translated) and encouraged them to believe that, despite the difficulties of their circumstances, their passion and faith in the Lord was strong and, just as Christ calls us to make disciples of all nations in Matthew 28:16-20, the people of Katothya should start praying to send a missionary of their own into the world. Their circumstances cannot keep them from sharing God’s love with the world. Many of them were inspired by this message, feeling enriched that God has a calling on their small church, no matter how remote it may be in the world. We then started praying for any members of the church who were suffering from sickness. The first woman to come up had great difficulty with her vision, unable to see clearly. After praying for her just a few minutes, she opened her eyes and she could clearly see the mountains that were literally dozens of miles in the distance!! Even I wouldn't have been able to make them out without my contact lenses, but she could see them perfectly. The next woman that came up said her eyes couldn’t handle the bright light of day. She was unable to look out at the fields without pain. We prayed a few minutes and she said it was a little bit better, but not completely. Peter took that as a sign of encouragement though and we continued to pray. After a few minutes, she was able to look out at the fields and up at the even brighter, white tarp hanging in the sun and she said there was no pain! We are reminded of the verse in Mark 8:22-26 in which Jesus must touch a blind man twice to heal him completely. The healing didn't come in full the first time, but he was fully restored after Jesus persisted in his prayers to heal him. The next man to come forward was old. His hair was fine and light gray, his face drawn with the years. He walked with a cane, but he asked instead for prayer over his back. (I think he has lived with his cane so long, he doesn’t think to go without it.) He couldn’t bend over, barely able to touch his knees. We prayed over him and sure enough, this man was able to touch the ground without bending his knees! (He’s probably more flexible than those of us who prayed over him!) As we laid hands on him though, I noticed just how tattered his clothes were. He was wearing a dusty-rose suit jacket and ochre-brown dress pants, but both of them were so worn. There was a hole in the jacket pocket and the edges were frayed, though he made sure to keep the frays neatly trimmed away. Dusting his shoulders was the dirt of his town… years of dust from his life on a farm covering his shoulders and the hem of his pants, but despite the hardship that has made him old, something about him was also childlike at the same time... He had lived a long time, but his faith in what God could do for him swept across his face in the most joyful, youthful smile. As soon as he was healed, it seemed as though he was also refreshed with wonder for God’s awesome and loving power. He was grateful for his long life of blessings. We prayed for several others that afternoon, but I had yet to lay hands on anyone on my own. I’ve never thought of myself as a healer, thinking I wasn’t good enough for the task—my analytical skepticism and doubt have always prevented me from ever trusting that I could do it—but I was reminded by Peter’s morning devotional that it’s not us doing these things, but the Father working in us, and if we simply ask Him to do His will in the name of His Son that has gone to Him before us, we will do great things for His glory. Before this trip, I was just praying that God would use me… even if only just a little. Maybe I wasn't worthy enough to be used a lot, but if God would just let me be used for His glory a little… I'd be so grateful. Suddenly, I found myself standing in the midst of several groups of our team praying for different people, but I was alone. Reverend Musyimi noticed and he pulled me over to a young woman who was just walking forward. He explained her situation to me. She had been suffering from stomach pain, but the Reverend didn’t say which kind. A prick of doubt ran through me, “God, aside from praying for her stomach, how could I possibly make a difference if I don’t precisely know what to pray for?” But, okay… I could at least try. Without warning, Reverend Musyimi—so humble a giant of a man—thrust my hand forward to grasp her stomach. He stepped back and prayed from a short distance, choosing not to touch her. “Oh Lord, please, please pleeeeease use me, Lord,” I quickly prayed for myself, and then proceeded to pray aloud for her stomach, whatever was ailing her. I asked God to expel from her body whatever pain was coursing through her, if it was muscle cramping, digestion, swelling—whatever it was—it had no right to stay there anymore because she was one of God’s holy temples and she wanted to be in good condition to serve Him. My prayer only lasted a few minutes, but I asked her how she was feeling. She touched her stomach, testing it to see… she felt her stomach, hesitating to make sure, and then she looked up at the Reverend with a tiny, tiny smile on her face, almost unbelieving, but the Reverend asked her if she felt better, and then turned to me with a huge smile to say that she was completely better. What?? Really??? It WORKED??? I was shocked! God used me to heal someone! And then, if I'm being honest, I thought, “That’s it? It’s as simple as that? All we have to do is pray and believe that God can heal someone, call upon the name of Jesus, and they will be healed… but that's so easy!!” Joy spread over me as I realized that the King of the entire universe saw fit not only to heal this girl of her stomach pain, but He trusted me to help in the process. What a privilege it was! My heart swelled with the honor and I was eager to see Him do more, grateful for every opportunity to pray for anyone in need. It still feels strange, but I'm getting used to the idea that, in God's Kingdom, that's how the Doctor often chooses to work. How utterly simple and beautiful this Kingdom of His is! As a team, we continued to pray for many members of the congregation and God continued to heal. It was that easy. We called upon Jesus and He presented our prayers to the Father. It was a blessed, blessed afternoon. In the sweltering heat, there was hope and joy and people were met with the healing love of Christ. It was beautiful. We were then treated to one of the best meals I’ve ever had. One of the village elders invited us to his farm where, in the beautiful golden light of the afternoon with the sunlight shining through the leaves of the trees and the husks of the corn, we thoroughly feasted with the local church members on roasted chicken, avocados, rice, tomatoes, paw paw (similar to cantaloupe), and—my favorite—a spinach, tomato, garlic, onion, and carrot salad. I don’t know what heavenly secret ingredient the cook used, but it was one of the best salads I’ve ever had! While we were eating, the chickens and chicks from the farm roamed about our feet, trolling for scraps that fell to the ground, and I spent the time talking with “the two Graces” as I called them with a grin (Grace, Reverend Musyimi’s wife and Grace the worship leader of Masengo). We shared stories about our families, Africa, and the blessings God has given each of us. We were then treated to a crate of glass-bottled Cokes to finish off the meal. For me, it was truly a bit of heaven on earth. If the Kingdom of God is nigh, I think that afternoon is what it must look like much of the time… a community coming together in grateful appreciation of the beautiful blessings God has given us. From Kathotya, we returned to Masengo where the congregation was waiting eagerly for us to arrive. (Once again, we were running on "Africa Time" and were about an hour later than we originally intended.) But all was well once we came. We set up the movie projector and showed the people of Masengo a movie about the life of Jesus. The movie is one of a very few that has ever been translated into the local Kamba language. It was a unique experience watching the life of Jesus—all of the stories, his miracles, his sacrificial death and resurrection—unfolding before me in another language but, because I grew up with the stories, none of the meaning was lost. There were moments when everyone laughed aloud together, gasped in awe at Jesus' miracles or in horror at the nailing of His hands to the cross, and clapped for joy when His followers realized He was risen. I knew why the congregation laughed, why they cried, why they responded to what they were seeing. It’s truly an international story that can touch the hearts of every man, woman, and child who learns of it, and it was beautiful. Once again, we invited people to come up for prayer if they needed healing of any kind. A woman with ringing in her right ear was completely healed. Three ladies with stomach aches, two ladies and one gentleman with chest problems, one lady with a neck problem, a woman who had symptoms of pneumonia and had difficulty breathing was soon able to breathe normally, and one lady with vision problems were immediately and completely relieved of the pain they were suffering, and God-willing, the pain won’t return. But sometimes, as I would learn later that night, God doesn't always bring healing in the way we expect. While we were praying for many people, I prayed for a woman with muscle and joint pain in her right leg. At first, the pain in her hip disappeared immediately, and soon went the pain in her thigh, but her knee persisted to trouble her, so we prayed more. After asking her whether or not she felt relief, she bent her knees, rotated them in a kind of dance step, and then stood upright. She explained that she felt better, and Mbondo translated that she was healed, but something on her face didn’t convince me. If she was healed, shouldn’t she have a smile on her face? Shouldn’t there be a light shining from her eyes? My heart dropped a bit. Perhaps I was wrong, but I wanted to continue praying for her. She bowed her head thankfully though and slipped quickly back to her seat before I could stop her. I watched her throughout the rest of the service… trying to find some kind of joy in her expression for what she had said God had done, but there was none. At the end of the service, Peter asked the congregation to raise their hands if they received healing that night and I was surprised that she raised hers, as still she wore no smile, but she raised her hand, so… perhaps God had relieved her suffering, but I continued to pray for her, and this time for her heart. Perhaps there was a pain in her life that prevented her from experiencing God's joy and, at the very least, I could continue to pray for that. All of these miracles, all of these little changes that bring relief to individual lives might seem small--comparably insignificant to the size of the universe--and yet they reveal so much about the character of God. He has love in abundance for each of us. He’s a personal God who He hears our prayers and, more often than not, truly listens… if only we take the time to ask. Until the next post, blessings from the rolling hills of Tulia in Kitui county, Kenya, Ellie

Day 1, part 2

I didn’t get to finish telling you about our first day. It ended with us traveling several hours outside of Nairobi to Tulia-Kitui where we arrived to the house, dropped off all our stuff at the house, and then proceeded to the church in Musengo to lead a worship service for the local congregation. The house was packed, brimming over with people, and after we sang, after Peter preached, many people came up to receive prayers of healing. Ten people received pain relief for a variety of symptoms: their eyes, their ears, their joints, their stomachs. God’s healing fell upon everyone we prayed for and it was a wonderful thing to see! The church was so generous and, even though the service didn’t end until after 11pm, they insisted on feeding us a dinner of chapatti, chicken, avocados! (a little foreign luxury we don’t often get in Korea), and glass-bottled sodas. We didn’t get back to the house until after midnight and many of us weren’t in bed until two. It was a long day, but a good one!

 

Day 1: January 25th, 2014

The Long Day & The Long Journey At last! The first update from our January 2014 trip to Kenya!! We left Incheon, South Korea at 9pm this last Friday, January 24th. After 14 hours of a graciously uneventful flight, we arrived to Jomo Kenyata International Airport in Nairobi at 6am local time. Upon arrival, we weren’t anticipating having any issues with the customs office, but as soon as their saw our large boxes with donations for Kenya, they said we brought too much and needed to pay import taxes. Of course we didn’t actually bring too much—only $1400 worth of equipment between the 8 of us (when most travelers are allowed up to $400 each)—but they began to run some very unofficial numbers off the tops of their heads and said we needed to pay as much as $700 in taxes. Peter, seeing that they weren’t exactly working from any official customs documents, knew this was an opportunistic dip into the “wealthy foreigners’ purse,” and was able to talk them down to $300 after one of the officers dubiously asked him, “Well, then how much do you feel comfortable paying?” So, it wasn’t exactly a customs check that was on the books. After an hour, we chose to just go on to avoid spending any more time at the airport, we paid the $300 and went on our way. Outside, we met our awesome crew that will be hosting, guiding, and supporting us as brothers throughout the week. Josphat Mbondo, Peter’s friend of the last 14 years, Paul and his brother Solomon, and Mula welcomed us all with warm smiles and ready arms to haul our luggage. We were greeted as warmly as old friends and they’ve already made us feel like Kenya is our second home. Our first stop was Mbondo’s house and office, a gated property (with an abundance of chickens people have given him to celebrate the birth of his firstborn, Gideon, last year) in a lovely and quiet neighborhood. Taking a rest, we were treated to a good breakfast and our first cups of tea—THE drink of choice for every Kenyan. As Mbondo says, “In Kenya, any time is tea time!!” That sounds good to me. Comprised of warm milk and water with a generous heap of sugar, this tea is delicious… maybe too delicious. (: After eating breakfast, Peter and I went to meet Mbondo’s most recent ward, a young girl named Nancy who was raised in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. Nancy’s parents moved to Kibera when she was very young and her father spent 10 years trying to find work, but found little. This last year, he decided to move back to the country with his wife, but Nancy—an excellent student at primary school—knows that she will never finish high school if she returns to the country with her parents, so her family asked Mbondo to hire her as a nanny for his new son instead. This might sound like a solution, but it’s not for several reasons. The first is that Nancy’s not legally old enough to work, so Mbondo would be breaking the law by hiring her, second, Mbondo can’t afford to help her family pay her school fees as it is, let alone the money he would need to pay her wages, and third, if she’s working, when will she have time for school? Nancy is only 14. She’s still a girl. She should be a girl for at least a little while longer, but like so many girls in Kibera, the threat of reality for the poor in Kenya is haunting her at an early age. The consequences of Nancy not completing high school is akin to the difference between night and day. If she finishes high school, she’ll be able to get a good job working in an office, in a retail shop, or in a restaurant with the opportunity to go on to college and get her teaching certificate or business degree, etc. But if she doesn’t finish high school—if her education is limited to the first 8 years of primary school—she will not be eligible for any jobs beyond the walls of the slum, and jobs in the slum are already in scarce supply. But education is not cheap, nor is it compulsory in Kenya, so if students are going to go to high school, there are many fees attached to the ‘free’ cost of their education. In countries like America and Korea, most everything is paid for (including electricity, lunch, and school books). In Kenya, however, only the cost of the teachers is paid for by the government. Electricity, books, uniforms, lunch, and the staff to cook the lunch are all additional fees which add up to a whopping $500 per year. That might not seem like a lot for a full year to those of us in the west, but that’s an extreme amount here in Kenya, especially among the poor. That’s the annual rental cost of an “apartment” in the slums. Tragically, though, Nancy is not alone. There are thousands of girls in a situation like hers. Mbondo’s social work as a high school counselor has put him in a unique position. So many girls have come to him with their heart-breaking stories—their addictions, their self-doubt, their longing for suicide, their mothers’ inability to care for them and their subsequent abandonment to the streets of the slum, their sexual submission to a man in order to simply have a place to live and food to eat… They feel trapped. They are trapped. Where are they supposed to turn when they have no one? Or when whoever they do have doesn’t have enough? Girls like Nancy have little hope of the lives we so easily take for granted outside of Kenya. The government hasn’t come to their rescue. Their community barely has enough strength to survive. Her family has no money. Her guardians can’t support her without help. If Nancy doesn’t finish high school, her future will be a repetition of her parents’ past, not an improvement on it. She will likely end up in the streets, or in the house of a man who will only pay for her to continue living if she repays him with other favors in return. With over 1 million people crowding its garbage-lined shanty streets, Kibera was a heartbreaking sight to see. Walking through row after row of shacks made of tree branches and corrugated tin seamed together in lopsided patches, there was rubbish strewn about everywhere, and in many shanty windows residents hung whatever meager collections of wares they had to sell: bananas, mangos, key-rings, shoes, etc. Few residents eat more than one or two meals per day. This is not a place where life is full of abundance… at least not the good kind of abundance most of us think of when we speak of the word. The trash is abundant. Hunger is abundant. Drugs are abundant. Alcoholism is abundant. Crime is abundant. Neglect is abundant. Need is abundant. Kibera was the next stop on our journey yesterday, but one thing we are anxious to avoid is giving the impression that our visit to Kibera was simply a kind of “slum tourism.” We weren’t walking the streets just to see how the poorest people of the world live. We already know it’s bad. But there’s a difference between knowing about something and truly understanding it, so we walked through Kibera to understand the severity of the circumstances in which most of its citizens find themselves. In visiting Kibera and documenting the suffering of its residents, we are now equipped with the first-hand knowledge and records we’ll need to tell others about the township and help make a difference for the people living there. Before we even set out for Kibera, Peter shared his vision of starting a scholarship program to do just that. In raising awareness for the people of Kibera, we aim to raise enough money to offer the chance of a better life for young girls like Nancy who have little chance of rising up out of such a place without help, many of whom will turn to prostitution and drugs in their desperation when they don’t get it . Girded with that understanding, we now have a deeper understanding of what it will take to help, of how much work is ahead of us, but also of how worthy a cause it is to be fighting for. For less than than $0.75 a day, we can send these girls to high school and completely change their lives. Imagine that. For a fraction of the cost of our morning cup of coffee, we can protect and promote the bright futures of these incredibly smart and dedicated girls who are only waiting for their chance at a better life. As soon as it’s offered to them, they’ll be able to run with it. To give you a better idea of what Kibera is like, it’s the largest urban slum in Africa. It’s literally an ocean of tin-roof shacks and shanties poorly stitched together in a maze and labyrinth of Kibera is a township beyond even the control of the government. Gangs, drug-running, prostitution, and crime run high. There are few places with running water or electricity. Rent for an “apartment” (a tiny, one room, tin-roofed shack in which an entire family will live) costs anywhere from $30-$50 a month and few families can ever afford more. In order to go in, we needed to hire armed guards, otherwise, as foreigners we would have been quickly swarmed, harassed, and mugged by the local residents and gang members. Taking further precautions, Peter asked that I be the only one to carry equipment and take any pictures. Because we were foreigners, we had to hire armed guards to go in, otherwise we would have been swarmed by the residents and, likely, local gangs who would forcefully take our money and belongings. Wanting to avoid any risk, Peter asked that I be the only one to carry any equipment. {Because wifi is limited, I apologize in advance for the delay in any posts, as well as the limited number of pictures I’ll likely be able to upload for the time being.} Anyhow, it’s about 8 in the morning… everyone is up and getting dressed for our next full day in Kenya… and it’s time for tea—creamy, sweet, warm and yummy tea—along with breakfast. We hope you all have an amazing Sunday! We’re anticipating an amazing one. Americans, Koreans, and Kenyans coming together in the presence of our wonderful Lord and Savior. How could such a day not be incredible? (: Blessings until next time, Ellie