I wish I could transport each of you to Kenya where we sang that hymn with people from every kindred and tongue and nation, at least three different nations on the fifth floor of a building in Mathare slum. We sang that hymn. It was a little easier to sing it tonight because I haven't just walked up five flights of stairs in a city that is a mile above sea level where the oxygen is thin and where I'm already enough out of shape that I could hardly sing that. I want to introduce you to the booklet that we sang from this evening and explain a little bit of what's going on there, especially as it relates to these hymns. You'll notice that on the one page we have the English and I put for you on the facing page the Swahili words from their hymnal. I'm not suggesting that you sing it in Swahili in this service or in your own family devotions. But as much as I can, I want to bring to you the experiences that we had the privilege of experiencing over the last couple of weeks. And I thought perhaps that would be a helpful exercise for us this evening. It's a privilege tonight to bring to you greetings from the churches in Kenya and in Uganda. It was my privilege the last two weeks to bring your greetings to them, and you can be assured that they return to you the warmest greetings that one could imagine. It seems like everywhere we went, they wanted us to bring their greetings back to you folks, and it was a privilege to be your ambassador to them the last couple of weeks. Pastor Tom especially sends his greetings and his great thanksgiving that this church has invested so much time and personnel and financial resources in the church in Kenya. That is a source of immense encouragement to them that I cannot fully describe to you. Everywhere we went, Pastor Tom would introduce our pastor and myself, and he would introduce our pastor as his spiritual father, and he would introduce this church as the mother church of the churches in Kenya and Uganda. You know that Paul opens his first epistle to Timothy by writing unto Timothy as his own son in the faith. And the churches in Kenya and Uganda look to this ministry as a spiritual father and mentor, and they view themselves as spiritual dependents of this flock and of our pastor. And so it's in that capacity that we function. And I wanted to send you those greetings. This text that is here on the screen before us is one of several texts that was on my heart the entire time in Kenya. As I stated, it was absolutely amazing to stand on a building in the slums of Nairobi. and sing with people from other tongues and people and nations. And I thought often of that verse, as well as the 96 Psalm, which we sang, and what a privilege it was in some small way to declare God's glory among the heathen and his wonders among at least two other nations and people groups. I want to overview where we are headed tonight in the presentation. I want to touch briefly again on this handout. I want to go through the schedule of our trip and let you know what we experienced, what ministry functions we served, where we were and what we did. Then I want you as much as we can to meet the pastors, not all 25 that were there. We don't have time for that. And frankly, I didn't get to know all of them well enough to introduce them to you. But I have just a handful of the men that I want to try to introduce you to so that you can get a feel for what we experienced and who we interacted with. I want to then discuss some of the difficulties and obstacles in ministry in Kenya and in Uganda to the effect that you might better know how to pray for that ministry in Africa. If this trip did one thing for me, it educated my praying. And I know we all pray for Kenya. I've prayed for Kenya. My family prays for Kenya. And I've had perhaps a nebulous, vague idea of how to pray for them. And so I'm hopeful that tonight we'll have some more specific ways to pray for Kenya and that your prayers will be educated as well. The handout that we've distributed tonight has a couple of things in it that I want you to take notice of. One of my goals in going to Kenya was I was hopeful that I could get to know as many of the men as possible. And I wanted to come back with something of a directory of our pastors there in Kenya and in Uganda. I was hopeful that I could memorize all of their names by seeing them before the week was over, and I did not accomplish that goal. But I did bring back with me a tool to that end. I took a picture of every one of the pastors that was there, at least on that particular day. Some of them weren't there for the whole week. And I cheated and had Pastor Tom write down all of their names and where they were from. Even if I could remember their names, I never would have been able to spell them. And I wanted to provide you as well with something of a thumbnail map of where they are from. So you see listed the pastors. a picture of them, their name, and then the location in which they minister. And then you see a map there with a green pen that shows you where they're from. I tried to group these men by geographical location. It begins with Pastor Tom as the bishop, the head over the whole denominational body there in Kenya. The second individual there, delightful man, Peter Mutifutu, is the assistant to Pastor Tom. And then the third is Patrice Akali, who translated for us, a very able man that I want to introduce to you at length later. And then the other gentleman from Nairobi. And it concludes on the last page of the directory with the brethren from Uganda. And you see where they are from as well, some of them near the border, others farther into the interior of the country. So I wanted you to get an idea of where we were the men, where they come from, to whom we were ministering. One of the points that Pastor Tom made throughout his introductions was the fact that by coming, we in particular, or in general, our pastor in particular, touched these men from all over Kenya. they in turn touch their congregation. And by effect, this church has had the ability to really touch all of the nation of Kenya by extension through these men. So these are areas where the influence of this congregation is going by virtue of this trip, and by virtue of your prayers, and by virtue of our financial support. And I wanted you to get an idea of where they were from. There's some group photos in there of the men together. You see a picture of the building which we provided them. We held our training in the back half of that building. You can just barely see the structure on the roof there. And then we have pictures of a couple of the other churches that we ministered in. So that's an overview of that handout so that you might understand just what it was I was trying to accomplish with all of those pages of material. The schedule is as follows, and I'm going to try to move through this fairly quickly. We arrived in Africa on March 21st after about 20 hours of flight and layover time going through London. There's a shot of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, a place of great excitement to arrive. and a place that was great to be back at at the end of the trip because we were headed home. I've never been so happy to get on a plane in my life or to leave somewhere as I was to leave Africa. I listened to our pastor all the way to Baltimore Airport talk about how happy he would be when he was on the other way from this trip. People asked me how the trip went and it was wonderful and horrible all at the same time. The men that we met there are some of the most delightful people you've ever met anywhere, and the living conditions in which they live are some of the most deplorable that you can ever imagine. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time tonight necessarily describing that to you, but suffice it to say I was glad to leave for a multitude of reasons when we left this airport. Sunday, the 22nd, we were in Mwingi, and you see a dot there of where we were, east of Nairobi and a little bit north out in bush country. We spent the night in this motel in Mwingi. I had no hot water in my room, and the restroom facilities, suffice to say, did not work as they do in the States. It was kind of like camping out, which was no problem for me, my wife and children. My wife would not have enjoyed it. My son would have been fascinated with the experience to be sure. But I wanted you to see where we were. And then some of the sites around this beautiful country in that area, absolutely stunning. And I wish I could have brought my family to see that. But Kenya is no place for a lady. This is the church in which we ministered. having a service there, driving on Saturday, ministering there on Sunday. You can see at the rear of this church structure that there is a brick kiln where they have dug their own bricks out of the soil. and baked them. I don't know if they put a fire under there or not. It felt like the heat in this area was sufficient to bake anything that you wanted to leave out in the sun. And they constructed this building with their own two hands out of the soil there. I'm not sure that the structure is complete. Somebody asked me this morning if that roof is as good as it's going to get. I don't know. I suspect at some point they'll pull the money together to put a metal roof on that facility. but there's a picture of the congregation and the dear people that worship our Savior there. You can see the rough timber construction there in the underside of that building. Our pastor preached at this church from the Gospel of Luke and discussed and exhorted them on the necessity of repentance. It was a very strong evangelistic message and I think good for the people there. They did feed us lunch, and I won't go into all the gory details of the food, but I did enjoy a practice, which I was not expecting. Nobody had warned me of this practice. Before lunch, they bring out a pitcher of water that you would never, ever drink, and a basin, and they would wash your hands and pour that water over your hands. And it really did remind me of the foot washings that you hear about in the gospel. And it was a humbling thing. to be on the other side of the globe, having my hands washed by people to whom we had come to minister, not the other way around. The two folks in this picture, you recognize Pastor Tom there in the middle. The gentleman on the right is Simon, and we'll introduce him to you a little bit more detail later. He's the treasurer of the EMC of Kenya and assistant to Pastor Tom there, and translated for a pastor in this church congregation on Sunday. The pastor's training then occupied the bulk of the trip from Monday night through Friday evening. This is a street view of Mathare slum. The building that we supplied for them was this green building right here. See all the laundry hanging. We came to this building one morning And we had to walk around that laundry because it looked like it was raining, and it was the laundry dripping dry from the building. And we thought we were going to get baptized on the way in, but we avoided most of that. This is the facility in which we did the training on the roof of this building in the slums of Mathare. These chairs are fascinating to me. We put them on our decks in America, and they use them for everything in Africa. You would see them carrying them on their heads upside down, walking down the streets, literally everywhere. They stacked very nicely after the service, and that's what they used. You can see the structure of the building. This building was located around the corner of the block on an empty lot on the street. They got evicted because somebody else wanted that parcel of land. and they had no rights to it, and they kicked them out. And so they disassembled the building, carried it around the block, carried it up five flights of stairs to the roof of the building, which we supplied for them, and reconstructed it on the roof of that building. And so that's where Pastor Tom's congregation worships every Sunday, every Wednesday, there on the roof of the building in Nairobi. This is a group photo of the men that were there. Again, a more delightful group of men you've never met in your entire life, and a dear group of people who got much benefit from the training. There's another shot from the street, another proof that I was really there. I emailed lots of pictures home, and my dad told me he didn't believe that I was there because I wasn't in any of the pictures. So I had to sneak a few of myself in there so that you knew that I really was there. Again, these are some of the other men. To Pastor's left is Wycliffe. This is Pastor Tom Omukubero's brother, and he pastors in the western part of Kenya in a place called Mumias. And to the right is Tobias, spelled Tobias, but they pronounce it Tobias. And these are delightful men that we were able to spend some time with. This gentleman in the blue jacket is Wilberforce, a very delightful personality who would talk my arm and both of my legs off. And one of the most difficult men to understand as well. So I'm not sure what all I agreed to with him. I think that entailed a trip to Busia where he pastors, and probably a two or three week stay in his mud hut, complete with thatched roof and his family, but a delightful man to be sure, indeed, and a privilege to be with him. You recognize the gentleman in the middle as Pastor Tom Amucabero, and two of the men that are with him. Pastor Tom smiled the whole trip. I don't think I ever saw him when he wasn't smiling. And his wife was equally smiling the entire time that we were there. And that smile is contagious. And I've never heard somebody laugh as much as Pastor Tom laughed. It doesn't matter if you had just hit somebody in traffic on a motorcycle. he was laughing, or if you just ripped the bumper off the rear of your car from all the potholes, he was still laughing. And it was amazing to me, the ability that he had to laugh through circumstances, which would have given me a stroke, and almost did on this trip, but he smiled the whole way through it, and a delightful individual to be sure. On Thursday of the pastor's training, the whole week was on teaching and preaching from the parables. And I think one of the most helpful things that was accomplished this week was on Thursday afternoon, Pastor John divided these men into five or six groups where they were to study two parables per group and draft a sermon on both of them for two men to preach on Friday. And so you saw all afternoon on Thursday groups of men like this studying the scripture together, going through a list of questions and a formula of sorts for preparation of a sermon. And it was an absolutely delightful thing. Simon, who translated for us, tells us that on Thursday evening after we had left, these men continued to study in these groups in their rooms. and that they were found Friday morning, rising early, back in those groups, pouring through the scriptures, on their knees, praying through the text. And he'd never seen that in a pastor's training course before. It's a delightful thing to see these men discussing the scriptures, iron sharpening iron, pouring through the text in preparation to preach. There's another group shot of these men. I have some video of them preaching if you'd like to see it. And by the way, if you have questions along the way, feel free to stop me and ask them. I want to make sure you get the information from this trip that you would like. I have some videos, but they don't play real well through PowerPoint. So if you want to see them, I'll have to do them later. I did not include them in here. One of the, again, one of the most delightful experiences for me all week was to sing with these men. And I don't know how well this will play. The video and the audio don't stay together. The two hymns that we sung tonight, we sung with those men on the roof of a building in the slums of Nairobi in Swahili. And it was a delightful thing. And I hope I can give you just a taste of this if technology will cooperate. Happy Gods of India That gives you just a taste. And there's one more. You'll recognize this as one of the hymns we sung this evening. Your We formed a choir with these men, and we made them sing to us all five verses of that. If you want to sit through all five minutes of that, I can play it for you. But that hopefully gives you just a little bit of a taste of what we enjoyed singing with these men. He doesn't like that file size. I wrote home to my wife about this event, how blessed it is to hear men sing a cappella even here in the States. I love it when our men here sing or when any group of men sings a cappella. But to have a group of pastors singing a cappella is a different thing entirely. But to be on a roof of a slum singing with men from three different countries all to the same God is a different experience altogether. And this is not responding. We'll start over and hopefully skip through whatever is trying to be problematic for us. I also have on this laptop, if you are interested, all 900 pictures I took in Africa. So if you want to see them all, I'll be happy to stay here all night and show them to you. I suspect none of you want to take me up on that offer, and that is totally fine. But if I can skip. All right, we'll start over and see if we can't jump through. You wanted to see these pictures a second time anyway, didn't you? OK. On Sunday, rather actually on Saturday, I've got bad material in here, we went down to the southern part of Kenya, very near the Tanzania border where we visited with the Maasai. And you can see down here is where the Maasai are. By the way, the map on the front of this, booklet shows the tribal regions of where the different folks are from so you'll see the tribal designations there and can get a better idea where these different people groups are from. But we were down there with the Maasai for a service The chief of the Maasai was there for our service as well, a gentleman who evidenced fruit of the spirit and who I believe was truly born again. He pastors a church in that region and was there to greet us. The interesting thing about the Maasai and these tribal people in general is the lines between tribe and community and even to some extent church are just a little blurry. The staunch independence of America doesn't apply to Africa. And so the chief of the tribe who pastors his own church was there in our church to greet us and to speak to us. It was a delight to be with him. The chief over there, from what I understand, is an official appointed by the Kenyan government. So it's not exactly a chief in exactly the same terms that we might expect or describe, although he is obviously some sort of tribal leader. He was a younger man, probably in his 40s, spoke very good English, and commanded the respect of the people around him. I will talk more about him and our experiences with him later. This is a view of the countryside from where the Maasai are. It was amazing to me on the drive to the Maasai, we stopped at a petro station. They don't have gas stations, it's petro stations. And we put petro in the car by the liter, more expensive than in the US, about $4.50 a gallon is what it came out to, what they're paying for gas over there. But we're at this Petro station and this van pulls up with Maasai men in the traditional garb with the earrings and the walking stick and the brightly colored clothing and the sandals. And those guys walked out of the van and walked right up to Pastor John and myself and shook our hands and greeted us. And I'm thinking, We, as white men, are as strange to them as they are to us. And I think they wanted to go back to their tribe and say they shook a white man's hand, just like I wanted to come back to America and say I shook a Maasai's hand. But it was very ironic to me to see this Maasai man walk into a convenience store in the traditional Maasai garb out in the middle of nowhere in Kenya, seemingly, And in the convenience store, he pulls out his smartphone and starts taking pictures. And the contrast there between the traditional lion hunting Maasai with a smartphone was striking. And so this is a view from the church where we had cell service on our iPads. And Pastor John is FaceTiming with Diane on the drive back from this church. And it's just a very strange contrast between primitive living and 21st century technology with 3G cellular connectivity back there. It's just amazing to me. This is a church where a precious group of people live. It is not an all-female congregation. It just so happened that they were the only ones interested in getting their picture taken, apparently. The men were actually inside the building. where they wanted to meet with us and with Pastor Tom, and I want to report to you on that meeting, just a little bit of what happened. The pastor of this church, who is the gentleman in the middle in the suit, James Clamoy, really disappointingly brought formal charges against Pastor Tom over the issue of the well that is to be dug for the Maasai men there. And I think he handled himself a little recklessly and a little bit arrogantly, I think, in that meeting. But I want to tell you that Pastor Tom handled himself beautifully. It never flustered him. He never raised his voice or acted in disgust. He handled it very well, very accurately, very plainly. And I want to give you an update on the situation on the well, because I know many of you have asked about it. Many of you gave to that project. You know that several years ago, we sent the money over there, that the well driller that was hired defrauded the ministry and took the money and never delivered on his promise. A court case ensued and the money was returned to the denominational body there in Kenya. Pastor Tom has since contracted with an additional well driller who has come and surveyed the land here in Maasai territory and has promised to dig a well. He's been delayed a little bit because of how much work he has to do, but has promised Pastor Tom that late this month, or in early May, he'll be in this area to finally drill the well that has been promised. So that is the latest, and we trust that that will come to pass as planned, as very few things seem to come to pass as planned in Kenya. But pray to that end that the work might go forward there and that the well might be dug. The gentleman in the white shirt there is the Maasai chief, and the traditional hospitality is to take your guests out to tea. And he would have liked to have had us in his home, but we did not have time. So we went into town and had tea and something of a pastry, where one of the funniest conversations occurred that Saturday evening there in Maasai territory. Our pastor asked the chief if the Maasai really do still hunt lions with nothing but a spear. And they looked at him like he was crazy, because of course they still do. And they explained how a group of Maasai men will go out into the African wilderness and will hunt lions with nothing but a spear. And if you run from the lion, They take you back to the village, and they beat you. You're not allowed to run from the lion. Even if he attacks you, even if he bites you, qualls you, knocks you 30 feet in the air with his paws, you're not allowed to run. The courage among the Maasai is very, very important. And to interact with these men and to see their value system was fascinating. I brought home with me for my son a Maasai bracelet, not because I was fascinated by lion hunting men, but because the value system of the tribe is very beneficial even to 21st century North Americans. Courage is huge. Trust in the clan is huge as well. You're not supposed to run from that lion. Because not only are you supposed to be courageous, but you're supposed to trust the other warriors to come to your defense and help you kill that lion. So we had that conversation, which was very interesting. And all of the men that we met in Kenya, and the Maasai in particular, were very interested in the technology that we brought with us. They would watch us and look at the pictures on our iPad all day long. And Pastor John delighted in showing them pictures of his grandchildren. and of this congregation and of the facilities here. And flipping through those pictures, he came to snow, which none of them have ever seen before in their lives. And they were fascinated by snow. And they said, how deep was that snow? He said, well, at one point it was about 20 inches deep. How cold was that? Well, about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which puts it below zero Celsius in which they're used to. How long did that stuff stay on the ground? Three, four, five weeks solid. And the chief looked at Pastor John and he said, that's dangerous. And I'd been out around Pastor John, I looked at that chief and I said, lions are dangerous. And Maasai and Mzungu, which is their word for white man, laughed together. And we learned that some sense of humor is transcontinental and transcultural. And we had a good laugh about the comparative danger of lions versus snow. I suppose if I were in nothing but sandals and sarongs, I might be a little more fearful of the cold than I am in my winter coat and boots and three pairs of socks. On Sunday, March 30th, we left Nairobi for about a 50 minute flight, saving us about seven or eight hours in the car and flew from Nairobi up to Kisumu. We landed there and drove for more than two hours through those sleeping policemen that our pastor described for you this morning. The ones put in place by the government weren't so bad. The fact of the matter is, in Kenya, there are more people walking on the roads than there are vehicles, and so fatalities of pedestrians are very common. And so the villagers would take dirt and make their own sleeping policemen, which were not to spec, and we bumped and we dragged and we slammed down on those for more than two hours. Along the way, we stopped at Pastor Tom's home place and met his parents, prayed with them, saw them barefoot in their mud-walled, manure-plastered home. Right behind their home, Pastor Tom has his own place, which he doesn't live in, but which he hopes to retire to. some day. He has a garden plot, probably two-thirds the size of this sanctuary, where I'm sure the village people grow vegetables in his garden. And in his front yard he has a mango tree and two avocado trees. I know some of you would like to have that in your yard. From there we drove and stopped in and visited one of our churches yet in Kenya, just long enough to greet them, say hello to them, spend a few minutes and pray with them. And then we drove to the border city of Busia, which you see in that red dot. The name itself did not show up there. And we crossed. the Kenyan border, checking out of customs in Kenya, checking into customs in Uganda, and met up there with the Ugandan pastors. We climbed into a 14-passenger van, not near the size of our 15-passenger vans in the States, and we drove through villages with mud huts and tin roofs and thatched roofs. In Busia, on the Ugandan side, you did see a lot more wells than you saw on the Kenyan side. And I think that's because of the influence of the charitable organization World Vision, which had a big sign there. And there were hand-pumped wells, and there were the round wells that you pulled buckets of water out of. But they seemed to have more water there in Uganda. We stopped and visited at one of the churches there. And when we left, they all left. And they piled into that 14-passenger van, and I started counting heads. And there were at least 20 of us crammed in there. Thankfully, Africans are thinner than yours truly. And thankfully, some of them were children on the laps of their parents. And we drove for another half hour or so through dirt, mud roads to a church in Uganda. I'm not moving off this slide because I don't have pictures in Uganda. Saturday was a full day in Maasai territory, where we ate a grand total of one meal. And by this point, it's 2.30 in the afternoon, and we've had nothing to eat all day. And I wanted to be anywhere but Africa at that point. And I was not getting the camera out, not even to bring pictures back to you folks. It was just a low point for me in the week. We got to the church and 45 minutes, I kid you not, 45 minutes of introductions. I think that's the African way. We got to introduce these pastors who came from a couple miles away and give them a chance to speak. We've got to introduce Pastor Tom. By the way, the man who donated the land for the building is here, so he gets to speak. And 45 minutes later, Pastor John gets up to preach. for about 20 minutes and he preaches on that text. Study to show thyself approved unto God and a blessed text that is to be sure. And we continue to pray that they got the intended message. After the sermon, the pastor gets back up and expresses the dismay of the children in the congregation who don't get to participate as much as they would like. So they got up and sang for 30 minutes or more to us in Ugandan, and we didn't understand a word of it, but they sure were sweet and cute young people wanting to impress and be hospitable to their American visitors. And then they brought out the meal. And the last thing I wanted Sunday afternoon, about 4.30 in the afternoon, was one more meal. cooked by barefoot women over an open fire in the bush in a manure-walled church building. And they brought out Cokes, which probably did me more good than anything else, and then banana, and then peanuts, and then hard-boiled eggs, and then rice, and then stew, and then beans, and another 45 minutes of a meal, and we were on our way. The conversation, however, in the vehicle leaving Busia was blessed, and these are dear, dear people. The people in Uganda seem to me, on the whole, to have more vibrant and outgoing personalities, and I think they might have a little greater ability as well. And they're just dear, sweet people. We played a game of 20 questions on the way back from Uganda, and they wanted to know everything they could about America. They were surprised that I do not have a banana tree in my yard. It just does not compute with them. And it's very commonplace in that part of Uganda to have banana trees and everything else. They wanted to know what kind of foods we did eat. I tried my best to explain the concept of a pizza to them, but it was something that they had never experienced, although you would see a pizza restaurant in Nairobi. They didn't know what a pizza was, and so I don't know how they would survive in America without that. Then they asked me how many children I have. And I told them two. And the response was a unanimous shame on you. You need to have much more. And so I asked them, how many do you have? And the gentleman in front of me appeared to be about my age. It's hard to tell cross-culturally. And he had five, and he was nowhere near completion of his family. The guy next to me, who I'll introduce you to later, Michael, delightful fellow, has seven children ranging in age from about 13 to six months. And so I tried to explain to them that typically in America, the family size is not what it is in Africa. But I did explain that we have a few large families in our congregation and told them of a family with eight children and of a family with 10 children, and they were amazed. I said, in America? I said, yes, in America. I said, in your church? Yes. And then they looked at me and they said, are they white? I said, yes, they are white Americans. And we had a good time with that at the expense of some of you dear folks. I apologize for that. But they were proud of you for the size of your family and shame, shame, shame on me and my wife for our feeble attempt at promoting the human race in America. Michael there in the vehicle told me that I am to return to Uganda for no shorter than two weeks. He explained that motels are expensive in Uganda. So when I go back, I'm to stay for two weeks in his mud hut with he and his wife and their seven children for the entirety of the two weeks. And the cultural divide there cannot be sufficiently explained. They just don't get it, and I'm sure we just don't get them. But they're delightful brothers in the Lord and delightful people to be with. On Monday morning, we got up and left the place that we stayed, Kakamega. And we drove what was estimated to be a 30-minute drive to Kisumu, which took us closer to an hour over multitudes, villages full of sleeping policemen, both government and village-made. And we nearly missed our flight back to Nairobi. We were the last two people on the plane. I think we jumped on while it was moving and took off and returned to Nairobi. where we visited these orphans in their school. Orphans in Kenya are defined differently than in America. Some of these Children that you see here have no parents whatsoever. Some of them may have a father or a mother. Some of them may stay with an aunt and uncle during the day and take a meal in the building that we provided there in Nairobi during the day. They go to this school where a delightful lady leads the effort there. And when she said jump, they said how high. And I've never seen a group of students react to an administrator as quickly as these young people did. And they were very happy to pose for pictures for us and beautiful, beautiful children. On Monday, we visited the orphans. We visited this young lady, I believe it was on Friday. This is Agnes. She is in form four, which would be 12th grade, and is a very promising student that we were able to meet. She was not expecting a visit from us today or that day, and I'm told that when Patrice walked in to greet her, that she jumped on him and hugged him and was delighted to see him. Her mother died of AIDS some time ago. Her father is around, but is completely unable or uninterested in helping her. I'm not sure which. It just didn't get there. But this is a lady with great ability and a bright future who's in the church and the thari every chance that she gets, and is participating, and is vibrant, and is truly pious, I believe. I wanted then to have you meet some of the pastors. You know this gentleman, this is Pastor Tom and his wife Nancy in front of their home there in Nairobi. And again, the smiles that you see on their faces where they're all weak, I think it's stuck on and I don't think they could get them off if they tried. But Pastor Tom took me to his home and was delighted to have me in his home. And we picked up this day the gifts that you all had supplied for them and drove them back to the building where we distributed them. So Pastor Tom and Nancy. Peter Mudavuda is the assistant bishop. He's the understudy, if you will, to Pastor Tom. He met us at the airport when we arrived the Friday before and is a delightful man. I put this picture of him in the class. He is writing his name in the front of the book that we supplied him. And he was very studious through the whole class with rapt attention, taking notes, soaking it all in, and was very willing to respond to questions and share what he had learned. He is down from a different part of Kenya. You'll see his location in the booklet. And he'll be assisting Pastor Tom in traveling in some of the churches as well. Patrice Akala is the one who did the translation. We'll show you this picture again in a minute when we talk about the difficulties of ministering there. Patrice is a man of great ability. I think he is the future of the EMC of Kenya. He has a degree from the Bible College of East Africa. And if the video will work again, I wanna show you what happened frequently throughout the week. You'll notice our pastor in the background sitting. He didn't do that much, But he did sit on occasion because Patrice would simply take over the class. Pastor John would teach a concept which apparently didn't translate real well in the Swahili. And so Patrice would explain the concept taking 10 or 15 minutes sometimes while Pastor John let him do it. And I think he did it with great ability and to great help to our pastor. And he's interacting with these men. He's a young man. He's probably about 30 years old. And yet the people in the class respect him. Patrice has preached every Sunday in this congregation, where Pastor Tom is the senior pastor, except for four Sundays. He's preached every week, a lot of times on Wednesday night. I think it was Thursday morning. We showed up to the class, and Patrice was not there. And I thought, this is unusual. This young man is always in a seat, ready to go. Typically, when we got there, he would be leading them and singing already, waiting for us to arrive. Sometimes it was apparent that he'd already begun to teach them or preach to them, just kind of taking over and showing obvious leadership. But the one morning he wasn't there, and he showed up about 10 minutes after the class started. And I got a chance to talk to him at break, and he apologized for being late. He'd gotten up that morning and left this building at 5.30 in the morning for an hour drive one way, where he acts as something as a police chaplain. And he preaches to the policemen every week, and I think does something of a Bible study with them. And even though he had great responsibilities this week to these men, he kept that responsibility with the policemen and drove an hour, preached to them, and drove an hour back so he could be here for the class. A fine young man, Patrice, one day at break said, Brother Shane, come here, I want to take you to my home. And I thought, okay, let's see this home. And so he walked me out the back door of the building, across the breezeway and into the other side of the building where he has a one-room apartment. His apartment is probably the size of my office in the high school building. He has room, the width of his room is a bed. And the headboard touches one wall, and the footboard touches the other wall. He has a chair and a small table and a two-seat sofa with about a three or four inch padding of foam on it. And you sit down, and you feel the wooden slats beneath you. And about enough room in between all of that to open the door and maybe walk around the door. And he brought me into his home and was delighted to do so. And even in a home that tiny, the first thing that I noticed were two texts of scripture that he had on the wall, one from Job and one from Psalms. And I commented on those verses. I said, it's good to see scripture in your home. Those are wonderful texts of scripture. And he said, I cling to these verses every day. These verses are my life. And the word of God is his life. And God is very real to him. He's a pious young man. I sat in his home and really felt like I was talking to somebody on staff or within this church congregation. If Patrice were ever to come to America, there would be two dangers. The first would be American prosperity might spoil anybody from Africa. And the second is that you folks would not let him leave. Just a delightful individual. I can't say enough about him. Conversation with him comes easy. And he is a delightful young man who is fervently serving our savior there in Kenya. This is Simon here getting his hands washed by that water that I'm not sure was real clean. And Simon is a treasurer of the EMC of Kenya, a very able man. He translated for Pastor John in this church in Mwingi the first Sunday that we were there. Simon works for Coca-Cola. Yes, they have Coke over there, and we drank a lot of it, I think, so that we could keep him employed. And Simon is in something of a management position there, managing a group of men who I think are mechanics servicing the fleet of Coca-Cola trucks there in Nairobi. He was not with us for the passenger training because he simply could not get off of work to be there, but a very able and delightful young man. This last gentleman is Michael, who I met, and we really had a good time. Michael loves to laugh, and he loves to have a good time, and he would own the room if he walked in. He pastures there in Uganda about two hours drive from where we were on Sunday, even though he was with us on Sunday. Pray for Michael, and we'll mention this here in a little bit. The influences in Kenya of the different stripes of Christendom are much more acute than they are in the States. And I sense in Michael not only a very charismatic spirit and personality, but I know there are charismatic influences upon these men, and they're just ignorant. They don't know any better. It's not that they've studied charismaticism and come to conclusions. They just tend to believe anybody who opens a Bible and talks to them, no matter what stripe they're from. So I put him up here as somebody to pray for and as an example of some of the obstacles that we have there in Kenya. So I want to discuss then difficulties and obstacles to ministry there in Africa. Number one is the language barrier. We touched on this a little bit. Most of those men do speak English, and some of you have been asking, you know, can you converse with them? Can you talk with them? Most of them very well. and you can interact with them. But yet, when it comes to an academic endeavor, when English is not their only or first language, it helps to have a translator. And so, there's always going to be a difficulty when you have a language barrier. Second is the weakness of Swahili. And I think I have a picture here. This picture that I wanted to show you, and there's another one that I don't think I put in there. the subject of the teaching was teaching and preaching from the parables. And I began to notice Patrice with his translating, and you begin to pick up on a few words here and there. And he kept using the one word over and over and over again, the word infano. And pastor is discussing the concepts of an example, a parable, and a type, which are three very different concepts for us in English. But there's one Swahili word for all three of those concepts. And when I talked to Patrice about that at break, I said, are you having trouble translating this? Are these American concepts one word in Swahili? And he said, Swahili is very short on words. That's how he described it. It's very short on words. At one point, again, Patrice took over the class. He wrote out a whole list of words on the blackboard, and then he put Swahili words next to those English words. In some places, he put definitions. In other places, he would put a whole Swahili sentence to try to define and describe that concept to these men, because it just didn't seem to translate well. And yet, you know, they report that this class showed more progress than any other class yet to occur. And so the Lord gave grace even with that language barrier. Another weakness of the Swahili language is the lack of literature that these men have available. We so take for granted the depth and breadth of English theological literature which we have. It was a shock to me when our pastor was discussing examples and metaphors and he jumped into an illustration and he asked the men to raise their hands if they were familiar with John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. You know how many hands went in the air? Exactly zero. None of them had ever heard of the book, let alone read it. Patrice explained that although Patrice is familiar with it, he doesn't believe it's been translated into Swahili, and so these men can't read it. So that was a shock to me, and maybe we never take for granted. I contemplated much in these weeks, those weeks, the text, to whom much has been given, much has been required. And American Christianity, American Christendom is exporting a prosperity gospel, it's exporting pop culture around the globe, and what a shame that it cannot export Pilgrim's Progress. And I think what liability our nation and our language group has with those shortcomings. The third difficulty to ministry, I'll say, is the youth of Christianity in Kenya. And by that, I don't mean that all of the people in Christianity are young. What I mean is Christianity itself is young in Africa and in Kenya in particular. Kenya was first successfully evangelized to some extent in about 1844, if I'm recalling the details correctly from Pastor's dissertation where he discusses that. Contemplate that great contrast with American Christianity, a nation that was settled about the time of the Protestant Reformation, where we had Puritan influences, where we had several great awakenings, where we have a rich Christian theological history. We have none of that in Africa. Christianity in America is hundreds of years old. Christianity in Kenya is about 160 years old. And that's a very real obstacle. And when we contemplate some of the other difficulties in ministry, maybe some things that maybe they're not getting quite right, I think it's imperative for us to recall the great disability that they're at, not only with the language barrier, but the fact that Christianity itself is so young. Maybe we should give them another 350, 400 years before we pass judgment on certain things that they do that we might not fully agree with. I think it's a very real difficulty and obstacle in ministry. The fourth is the educational level of the pastors. I surveyed our pastor's dissertation not to keep beating that horse. But in the end of that, he has a chart where he surveyed the first class that he taught over there of 18 students. Four of them have graduated high school from that initial pilot program. Maybe two of them had some sort of college education. I think 11 of them had an eighth grade education or lower. So you can't walk into a pastor's training conference in Nairobi and teach them seminary level. It's like walking into a junior high classroom and trying to do all you can over the course of a week to advance them. and their ability to rightly divide the word of truth and to feed their flocks over which the Holy Ghost has made them overseers. And they're just, not to be unkind, but they're unlearned and ignorant men. And I contemplated the comparison, the contrast that there was this week with endeavoring to train these men who are largely unlearned and what our Savior did in three and a half years with relatively ignorant men. And we're really doing the same kind of thing over there. We're taking men who live in mud huts or in slums with almost no education, some of them even an elementary education only, and we're endeavoring to make them leaders of churches in Africa. And for what the tools that they have, I think they're doing a remarkable job. But as you pray for Africa, as you pray for Kenya, as you pray for Uganda, pray that that educational disability, if you will, will be overcome by the spirit of God and by the efforts of these men. Speaking of educational obstacles and disabilities, I don't know if you can read what's on the blackboard there, but that is Matthew III colon V, a Roman numeral. And the materials that we brought them use Roman numerals for scripture references. They don't have a clue what that is. And so one of the things that Pastor had to do this week, one of the things Patrice did this week, is he explained to them Roman numerals and how they're used. There was a chart in the back of our handout which gave them the Arabic equivalents to those Roman numerals. And that was a very real obstacle there. The second thing, and again, the other thing that shocked me teaching these men were the use of maps. One of our Bible teachers here donated these maps. We took them to Africa with us where we left them. And here's Pastor John explaining to them the map. He pulled up this map of Israel, of the Holy Land, and then he flipped it to the next map, which is a map of the whole Mediterranean area. And he asked them if they understood how those two maps interacted. That Israel is but one tiny strip of land on the whole map of the Mediterranean. And he got blank stares in response. They didn't have a clue how to read those maps. And so Pastor John took a step back, got out the chalk, and drew a big circle on the blackboard. And he said, this is the earth, and here's the African continent, and here's the Mediterranean, and here's where these pieces fit into this. And they seemed to get it. But you don't anticipate teaching a group of pastors having to explain to them how to use a set of maps like we would have in the back of our Bibles and would turn to frequently and would learn how to use in elementary school. The other difficulty and obstacle to ministry is what I'll call Kenya's Christian culture. This is a rear of one of the buses made by Isuzu. A lot of the buses were Nissan buses over there. And you'll see a text of scripture plastered across these public service vehicles. Now, what would happen in America if we had a government-sponsored bus that hauled people around and we put a verse of scripture on it? We'd have the ACLU or whatever fighting to get those things removed. But there are Bible verses and religious sayings plastered everywhere in Kenya. And I thought a lot about these two weeks about the material that Dr. Utter brought to us from the Marshall Islands, explaining the religious culture in the Marshalls. And I think it's similar there in Kenya. I'll describe it as an optimistic, Religious, what's the word I'm looking for? Just. you know, the knock on wood thing. And they'll put a verse of scripture, not necessarily to protect from an evil spirit like we talk about in the Marshall Islands, but just a hopefulness that somehow God is just gonna rescue us from all of the suppression that's here because of our economic situation. And so when we preach to them or teach them, I'm not sure what they're decoding from our communication. When we talk about importunity and praying without ceasing, do they see this as one way to get out of their repressed culture? I don't know. But I think there's a very real obstacle with this optimistic religious culture that they have. 80% of Kenya would claim to be Christians. And that's certainly not that 80% of them are born again, but they have this optimistic religious outlook, which I think is in part the influence of the American prosperity gospel. And you can imagine how something like that would take root in effect in a land that has such great economic need. Again, the charismatic influences over there, the men simply don't have the discernment between perhaps a Baptist denomination, an evangelical Methodist, a Bible Presbyterian, some of the charismatic influences, and even Roman Catholicism. Those lines to them are very confusing and blurry. Some of the men would have charismatic influences simply because that's all they've known and they don't know any better. Again, if you've only got a 5th or 6th or 7th grade education and what you're seeing from America is that kind of influence. And yet Pastor Tom reported to us over dinner Monday night that some of the men that seem to have that leanings have really grown and advanced beyond that through this training. So I cannot emphasize the importance of these training opportunities over there. I really think the best thing we can do for them is to train them. The next thing that I'll mention is the advancement of Islam. Here we are at a gas station on the way to the manga with the Maasai, and here is an Islamic mosque. And you would see people on the streets of Nairobi wearing the burqa. You would hear the morning we left Namanga to fly back through Kisumu to Nairobi. I was awake at 5 o'clock in the morning and you heard the eerie cry of the call to prayer from Islam echoing out across the African countryside. And what an eerie sound that is. And I had to think that he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. He'll break them with a rod of iron. So pray that the onslaught of Islam might be stopped through the conversion of its adherents. So how to pray for Kenya missions in conclusion. Number one, pray as we train that the language and cultural barriers that are inherent in that culture might be overcome, that in spite of great difficulty, there might be advancement. Pray for the maturity of true Christianity in America, that it might age more quickly and more maturely than the few years Christianity has been there would be. Pray that the training might be effective, that it might truly meet the needs that are acute there in Kenya. I asked Pastor Tom over dinner Monday night, I said, if you were to pick the material for the next class, what is the greatest need that you see? And he really didn't come up with anything. He very much trusts and appreciates the direction that our pastor has taken these classes in, but pray that the plan, that the material that we present to them might be helpful. Pray for discernment. These men might truly discern what is right and wrong, what is a true Christian biblical influence, and what is not, and pray for the conversion of Muslims there in Africa. I leave you with these verses from Psalm 36, which we read tonight. Declare his glory among the heathen, his wonders among all people. For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. I've taken much longer than I anticipated. We'll skip the closing hymn. Let's close in prayer. And if you have any questions that I can help with, or if you wanna see any of the other 900 pictures on this laptop or two hours of video, you're welcome to. Let's pray together. Our gracious God and Father in heaven, we thank thee for the open door and great opportunity and enormous responsibilities which we've been given in Kenya and in Uganda. where we thank thee for these brethren from other kindreds and tribes and peoples and nations. and rejoice that these men are singing thy praises and are fervently serving thee and doing all they can to serve the king of kings and lord of lords and we pray that they might know great help and advancement, that their flocks might be fed with the true word, that they might know the bread of life to the refreshment of their souls, they might be given great skill and discernment, that Islam might be stopped in its tracks and that those confused and tricked by it might know the true converting of the gospel. We pray for Pastor Tom and for these men and ask your great blessing upon them. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.