Raising up Men of God

I haven’t been blogging much because the reality is there hasn’t been much going on.  We arrived in Kenya at the start of the Holiday season & pretty much everything shuts down for Holiday in Kenya, so it has been extremely slow here.  I feel like all this down time has been more of a struggle for me than my time in Murrieta overloaded with studying & homework. While all the others are enjoying relaxing & taking it easy, I’m going crazy because I am so bored.  The only experience of mission work I’ve had is a fast paced twelve hour day one, so that's what I was expecting when I arrived here.  The reality is, long-term mission life isn’t quite like that.  It has its busy seasons & slow seasons.  Arie is trying to teach us that being a missionary is simply Christianity in a different cultural setting.  It is the same ministry & the same God as in America only we’re under more stress because of the cultural differences.  By nature I’m a busy-body, I thrive with having too much on my plate running around from place to place.  I’m just at a stage in my life where a crazy schedule works well for me.  I’m young, single, no children, so I’m enjoying it while I can.  Only having to prepare for one Bible study every few weeks & some days not even leaving the house is really stretching me.  It seems like the only ministry work I’m doing is within my team and I’m coming to a point where I’m wondering what I’m doing here.  In this mental struggle I’m realizing that God is teaching me that my only motivation to be a missionary in Africa should be to serve Him; because when things aren’t going the way I would like them to, knowing that I’m working for the Lord & following His will is the only thing that will sustain me. 

Because I feel like being here with several Americans is causing me to miss out on the experience of being immersed in the culture, Arie has challenged me to take the step of setting up meetings with the Kenyans to engage with them & learn how to do things on my own not depending on others to schedule an event for us.  So I excepted his challenge & yesterday we learned how to take a Matatu (taxi van) to the church.  Riding a matatu is quite an experience & requires a bit of training for muzungus (white people).  The rides are fast, bumpy, music blaring, people sitting on laps, pick-pocketers, drivers fighting over you to ride their taxi…it’s crazy but so exciting at the same time!

Today we served at a men’s luncheon at the church.  Arie’s deep desire as well as Far Reaching’s, is to raise up strong Godly men in the church.  In Kenya, like America, Godly men are lacking.  Most are caught up in worldly pleasures; they aren’t willing to go to the ends of the Earth & lay down their life down for the Gospel.  There are single mothers everywhere because the man who fathered their children are off with other women or getting drunk.  Today’s message was geared towards fathers being the head of the household & raising their children in a Godly manner.  To our pleasant surprise 22 men showed up & a few of them even brought their sons along. 

Pastor Arie teaching

We ladies cooked & served them lunch after the teaching; I finally felt like I was somewhat part of the culture. This morning we had to leave the house at 7am to get to church by 8am to start cooking.  We have to walk about a mile to the first matatu stop, then change matatus 3 times before we get to the church.  We cooked sukuma wiki (which is like a spinach leaf) with beef & ugali (maize flour).  We had a great time cooking with the ladies. 

Cleaning & cutting sumuka wiki

I was able to make an entire pot of ugali on my own…you’d have to try it yourself to understand what feat that is.  The ladies said I was fit to be an African wife. You pour the ugali flour into a huge pot of water & almost immediately it turns into a play doh like substance.  You stir it continuously & as you’re stirring it becomes tougher & tougher to stir, I had to put my entire body into it…the Kenyan women can do it with one hand!  They are some tough women!

Making ugali



The finished project