Emali Discipleship Weekend

This past weekend we traveled into Maasailand to work with the Maasia people there. We went to Oltinka Baptist Church for a weekend of discipleship training for pastors and elders in the area.
We arrived on Friday afternoon and began by setting up the generator, projector and sheets for the Jesus Film to be shown at dark. The church is a small simple church with dirt floors and wooden benches. As you can see they have decorated it with their best efforts.
Right off the bat, we began to meet the hard working and beautiful women of the church. Here is Gail helping the ladies in the tin kitchen as they prepare our goat meal for Saturday.
This is the house where we stayed for the weekend. The house is located behind the church out in the bush. The house of course has no electricity except by a generator and batteries. Even though it was very hot all weekend, the house was situated where a nice breeze would blow through most of the day. The missionaries that were living here just recently had to return to the states for medical purposes. Please pray for Jim and Linda Sellers, as Linda will be undergoing two surgeries on her knee.
The Maasai people are herdsmen and follow their cattle and goats around as they graze. Unfortunately, lately there has been so little rain there is very little to no areas for grazing and the livestock are beginning to die. Please pray for rain for Kenya for there are many areas where even the people are dying from starvation.
Friday night we showed the Jesus Film and God drew two more ladies into His Kingdom. Praise the Lord.

Early Saturday morning the discipleship conference began. Pastor Mike set up in the church with the pastors, elders and leaders from several local churches. Many of the leader of the churches were women as the majority of the church members are women. Please pray for the Maasai men to come to know Christ. Pastor Henry interpreted as Pastor Mike led the discipleship conference teaching about church doctrines and ordinances of the church. Pray for these pastors and church leaders as they continue to learn about God's Word.
Jeff and Neal led the young men of the church, while Dee, Gail and Jan worked with the children. Fortunately, the children and young men could all speak and understand English.
The conference went all day with a break for lunch when we were served goat stew with rice, which was very tasty.
On Sunday we attended worship service with them. Since many of the pastors and leaders had traveled a long way to get there, most of them stayed overnight and worshiped with us as well.

It is not every day that you meet a baby donkey on your way to church services. Isn't he adorable?

Even in Maasailand there are hymns to be sung throughout the service. Notice the glasses? We brought with us dozens of pairs of reading glasses to give out to those who needed them. It really blessed us to see them already in use.
Besides the hymns there was a special number done by the youth choir (of two) and the ladies did several songs along with their traditional dance moves. It was a small taste of heaven to hear them sing in their native tongue.
Pastor Mike preached the sermon with Pastor Henry interpreting.

After the service, everyone was so grateful for us having come to spend the weekend with them. Several of the ladies took their traditional beaded jewelry off and placed in on our wrists and around our necks. Please begin to pray for the people of this lovely fellowship, that they will grow in their walk with the Lord.

The Maasai women are very beautiful and very colorful. We thought you might like to see a few of the faces that you will be praying for.

FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY

Unfortunately many areas of Kenya have been experiencing severe drought. People have been unable to grow their regular crops due to the lack of rain and therefore many are going hungry. The church we attend, Ridgeways Baptist Church, partnered with another local church, Parklands Baptist, to collect food items to carry folks living in the dry areas. Ridgeways is a church that was planted by IMB missionaries. This year as the church celebrated it’s 21st anniversary, instead of having the usual dinner on the grounds, we were encouraged to bring in bags of maize meal for the food distribution. A great mission minded idea. The church collected 2652 bags of flour! This flour will be used to make ugahli, a very common and filling staple food eaten here in Kenya. Parklands Baptist contributed beans and oil.

On Friday, two large trucks were loaded with about seven tons of food. Then early Saturday morning we headed to Makueni to distribute the items.

Our truck was driven by Christopher, one of the mechanics at the Baptist Mission compound.

Makeuni is about three hours southeast of Nairobi and there has been no significant rain there since 2006. The closer we got to the area, the dryer things got. We observed that most of the rivers and all of the creek beds were dry. The roads were very dusty and dry and where we were headed was at the top of a mountain. Our mission truck did fine but unfortunately the second truck go stuck in the thick dust several times trying to get up the mountain and the men had to push it out.

When we arrived at the first school, there were already ladies gathering there. As we waited for the second truck to make it up the mountain, we began to sing songs with the ladies and before we knew it we were surrounded by many of the school students who ended up singing songs for us.

Jeff was moved by how many of the children had worn and tattered shoes if they had shoes at all. But there were plenty of smiles none the less.

Once the rest of the group had arrived, we met with the chief and had an official greeting and time of prayer together.

The group formed an assembly line and quickly unloaded a portion of each of the trucks and soon the room was full of bags of food.
Most of the group stayed there to distribute the food, while we traveled further down the mountain to another school to finish unloading our truck.
While the guys were unloading the truck the crowd began to gather.
Then suddenly several of the local women began helping to unload the bales. The African women are very strong and this was no big feat for them.
By the time the truck was unloaded a large crowd was gathered and waiting patiently in the shade. By the end of the day, it was reported that 1000 families had received some much needed food.

Ogembo Evangelism Trip

Valentine's weekend we took a trip to visit an orphanage and school in Ogembo, located in western Kenya. We traveled with Mike and Dee Dameron, IMB missionaries who manage Brackenhurst Conference center near Nairobi and with Neal and Gail Alford, our supervisors here at the Baptist Mission of Kenya.

We left early Friday morning and our first stop was to deliver a new bicycle to a national pastor. His church is a five hour bicycle ride from his home. The rough roads had worn his old bicycle out. Pastor John was delighted with the new bicycle which had been bought with funds donated, for that purpose, from two ladies in the states.

We arrived in Ogembo late Friday afternoon and checked into the Rhockland Hotel (the only hotel in town).
Our room was modest....two twin beds and a bathroom.

As can see the shower had a "widow maker" that was precariously wired. Well the next morning, Jeff was taking a shower when there was a loud explosion and sparks started flying! Needless to say there was some shouting that went on before Jan was able to get the widow maker turned off for him. But it made for a great way to start the day by praising the Lord that he was still alive!

After breakfast, Pastor Robert met us and we traveled up the mountain on a rough dirt road to get to the orphanage and school. We had been told that there were around 20 children in the orphanage, so we had brought around 60 snacks and crafts for the children. Well, we quickly found out that there was a school next door to the orphanage and there were 192 children at the school. So as we traveled we worked on plan B.

The country was beautiful and was covered with sugarcane, bananas, coffee, tea and sweet potatoes growing plentifully on the steep hillsides.

When we arrived, we were greeted by the orphans singing to us.

Then we walked around back of the school to be greeted by the rest of the children attending the school. Many of them were still drinking their morning porridge provided by the school.

We quickly divided into teams with interpreters and headed out to visit with those living in the area. This was a very mountainous area and we did a lot of hiking up and down through fields and the thick brush around them.

As we went from home to home sharing Creation to Christ, we met many interesting people. Some were already believers and some prayed to receive Christ and became our new brothers and sisters in Christ. We talked with this family while they were planting sweet potatoes in their field.

We also shared with this group of women caring from their small children and each of them prayed to receive Christ that morning. We were fascinated to watch these men boiling up sugar cane and water to make into brown sugar. This grandmother had many grandchildren she was caring for. She was already a believer in Christ and felt we had been sent to her that day to pray for her family. She had a son in the mission hospital and a grandson whose ear had been cut off in another hospital. She told us she was blessed by our visit. We were blessed by the joy on her face.
When the morning was over and we returned to the school, each team gave a report and it was discovered that over 150 people had prayed to receive Christ during our visits. Our translators were invaluable during this time. Most of them were young pastors or church leaders in the surrounding churches. They wrote down the names of everyone who prayed and will be doing follow up discipleship with them in the following weeks. Please pray for these young men as they serve the Lord in an area where travel is so difficult.Our translators were Simon and Paul, two fine young men. Simon and his wife have twin nine month old babies, a boy and a girl.

After we were served lunch by the ladies of the church, we gathered all the children into the church to tell them the story of Esther. As Gail told the story and Jan showed them pictures, the children hung on every word. Then Jeff set up his computer and a projector powered by a generator and we showed them the Veggie Tales movie of Queen Esther. They loved it.

We had brought 60 copies of an Esther coloring book and plenty of crayons. So after the movie, we started tearing off pages of the coloring books and giving one page and a couple of crayons to each child. Even though we were disappointed at the smallness of the gift, the children were delighted.

Next it was time for the adults to watch the "Jesus Film".

As the movie was being shown the crowd continued to grow and grow until there were actually people hanging in every window trying to watch from the outside.

It appears that God has truly annointed this film and when it was over, there were around 30 people who came forward to pray to receive Christ.

While the adults were watching the film, we took a look at the rooms where the children stay at the orphanage. It was simply two rooms. Boys on the left and girls on the right.

This was the boys room. It had two twin beds and a set of shelves. It slept 14 boys laying crosswise on the beds.

This is the girls room. It had only one twin bed and slept 10 girls, some on the floor. Please pray for these 24 children living in these tight quarters in Ogembo. If you met them, you would be surprised to see their beautiful smiling faces. God has been good to them to provide for them a home with a place to sleep and food to eat.

Even though we did not speak the same language, the game of Hokey Pokey still translated!
Sunday we traveled back up the mountain for church. As we traveled, we saw many sights to reveal what life is like for these people. The women and children were washing their clothes in the river.
Small children were caring for babies.

The children start carrying water from the river at a very young age. Please remember to thank the Lord today for your many blessings and modern conviences.

When we arrived at the church, it was already packed and the children were excited to see us. Every age group performed a special musical and dance piece for us.

The church quickly became over-crowded and we had to move everyone outside. It was awesome to have the children continue to perform outside while we observed God's beautiful creation in the background.
Even though it was very hot, Mike did a wonderful job of presenting God's Word with Pastor Robert translating for him.
Mike ended the service by having all those who wanted special prayer to come forward and he prayed for them.
It was a long hard weekend, but very rewarding to see God work in so many wonderful ways! Please continue to pray for the people of Ogembo, especially the new believers.