The Village, part 1

Our time in the Village has been a step beyond anything I've experienced in missions so far...ridiculously challenging, beautiful, exhausting, effective, and a lot of other things all at once.

After a 4 hour delay in Nairobi (very very normal here), we piled onto the bus and were on our way. I had experienced the long and half-boring, half-terrifying drive out there once before, but a bus full of the entire Kenyan team (about 15 members) and with our luggage and their sound equipment tied down on top, it was a much longer trip than before. And getting to a homestead with absolutely no amenities at 4:30AM is not the conclusion anyone would hope for. We knew this was coming, but in the moment it does not make it any easier. I had to remind myself constantly that we are in one of the poorest, most difficult places in the world to reach (much less do any work), so if our focus did not remain on God we would very quickly become discouraged. We all managed an hour or two of sleep on whatever mattresses they were able to find and lay out for us.

The next morning we got off to a very late start, and the girls got to the school sometime around midday. We arrived at the church later, around 2PM. At the church, following worship and fairly lengthy introductions, we began our session. Quick note: the acapella worship in the Village is still among the beautiful things I've heard, and I will always count singing with our brothers in the familiar brick-walled, dirt-floored sanctuary as one of the greatest experiences I will ever have on this earth. We finally got down to teaching and Pastor David began bringing the Word, talking about what it means to be a pastor. The sixty or so people in the church did seem to be mostly leaders, so the audience was right and they drank in every word. It was also beautiful to see a man whose knowledge I respect so much share about God's truth with people whose hunger for the Word is so deep! Where there is such great need and such a lack of resources, the opportunity to disciple is completely amazing.

Following Pastor David's teaching and a 4PM lunch break, my dad shared the first couple of sections of the Worldview material. Although the give-and-take discussion style he likes to use is difficult when using translators and in the Kenyan communication style, it was still well-received. We concluded the session around 5:45 and they called us piki-piki's (Kenyan moto-taxis) to join the girls for the evening's crusade. The crusade happened at a little "center" which is basically a collection of roadside shops - there's one every couple of miles. I preached at the crusade following the Nairobi worship team's high-energy set (as always). I was so tired that I have no idea how powerful my words were or how they were received, but I pray God used them anyway. The crusade ended around 8, the team loaded up the equipment, and we were back on our way. The bus again crawled over the muddy tracks that pass for roads here, sometimes leaning over so far that people had to get out to let it negotiate the ruts without tipping, but finally, around 10PM, we made it home. Day two report coming soon...

PS - I doubt I will ever understand Kenyan scheduling. After getting home from the Crusade exhausted, rather than go to bed, the team set about making dinner. From scratch. They began eating at around 11:30. And they couldn't understand why some of us decided to sleep rather than join them...that's just normal here I guess...