A Few Photos for Y'all!

One of the Bible College students -- Andrew is in his fourth year.
I went on outreach for the first time on Tuesday. I did enjoy it, but it was kinda difficult to understand exactly what the people were saying and how they were responding to the message. The Kenyan pastors with whom Brian and I went were very good about translating most of what was being said, but it’s just not the same. I went with Rev. Kendagor and another young pastor called Immanuel. They call it “visitation” here, rather than door-to-door work or outreach, but it’s the same idea. We were given seats at each house we went to – inside or outside, depending on how big the house was. Some of them were only one-room houses.
The first man we stopped with told us that he had been saved four times already and it had never done him any good! He did not seem to be interested in the least at first but of course was very respectful and willing to listen. But as the conversation went on, he seemed to open up a bit. The second home belonged to a young woman (she looked like she was in her middle teens, if even that) who had a 10-month old baby, and 3 other kids in the house. I don’t know who belonged to her and who had just come in to see the white people! Anyway, this girl told us that she knew very little about Jesus Christ and how to be saved. So Rev. Kendagor turned to me and asked me to explain the Gospel to her. I was a bit daunted, but God certainly undertook and gave me the words to say. The men translated for me as I spoke, and then they took a turn speaking. Pray for these people – sometimes I think that they just agree with what is being said in order to keep us happy or get rid of us. Pray that a true work of grace will be done in their hearts.
I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to get out on the visitation. The men go two or three times a week, and Brian has been going with them, but with commitments at the school etc. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to go. I heard on Friday that I’ll be starting to take a computer class this week – it will be two classes on Tuesdays and two on Fridays. Now I’m sure that my brothers will laugh their heads off when they hear that I’m teaching computers, but apparently most of the kids (this is at the school and will be Form 3 – equivalent of Lower 6th or 11th grade) don’t even know how to turn the computer on! So it will be pretty basic. Here's the Standard 7 class that I teach Bible to on Fridays!
I now have a car to drive while I’m here! It’s so good to have some independence again; everyone’s been really good about giving me lifts here and there, but it’s nice to be able to go somewhere when you feel like it (or need to go). This is Kathy’s car – it was in Nairobi for the past couple of weeks getting some repairs done. When it arrived in Kitale on Thursday, I went to pick it up and spent the entire day there getting the rest of the work done on it that they hadn’t finished in Nairobi. It needed a new battery, and four new tires. You can’t just leave the car into a garage and have them do all the work – at least not in Kitale. You have to go to one shop to get a battery, wait until it charges and they install it, then go to another shop and buy the tires (actually we ordered them in the morning and then waited 2 hours while they were brought from Eldoret), then take the tires to another place to be fitted, balanced, aligned, etc. Thankfully one of the drivers that the missionaries use was with me the entire day, and did most of the talking and bargaining – otherwise I would never have gotten the car sorted. As it was, I left the house at 8am to “pick up the car” and didn’t get home until after 5pm! That’s life in Kenya.
Today I went to an “umoja”, which is a joint meeting where a lot of congregations come together to one church. They have these meetings once a month, and today we went to Kerenger. It was a good day – we left here at 10am, spent an hour driving round collecting people (and waiting for them), then travelled about 40 minutes over pretty rough roads.

We arrived about 11:30am, and the meeting started an hour later, which wasn’t too bad for Kenyan time! The preliminaries included congregational singing, a couple of special groups singing, a lot of announcements, etc. We were meeting outside because the church building wasn’t big enough to hold everyone, and the preacher had only spoken for about 10 minutes when it began to rain – downpour. So after a few minutes, when it became obvious that the rain was there to stay, the whole congregation got up, picked up their benches or chairs or desks, and crammed into the church. We sang a couple verses of a hymn and then the preacher started again! I felt badly for him – I’m sure it was off-putting. So altogether the service lasted about 3 ½ hours, which is about the par for these joint meetings. One of the Bible students kindly translated for me, which made all the difference!