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
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