A Harambee on Mt. Elgon

Today was Sunday in Kenya, and for a Mzungu (White) visitor that usually means that you will be preaching at some church. I was happy to learn that I'd been assigned to go to a church back on Mt. Elgon.

Pastor Stephen Mairori, our friend and ICM Country Director picked me at 9:30 and we drove up to a point on Mt. Elgon that is the highest up I’ve gone to-date. We drove up and through Kapsakwony, picking up Pastor Harry Bowen at the AIC house. Pastor Harry graduated from our BA program yesterday. In addition to pastoring his congregation, he is the supervisor over 21 other African Inland Churches in the Kapsakwony area.

A few kilometers out of Kapsakwony on the Kopsiro road we turned right and headed up the mountain. We stopped first at the shell of the church that they are building. This is actually the second oldest AIC congregation on Mt. Elgon, but the Government forced them to relocate (they were in the forest). So they bought a plot of ground a little further down the mountain and are constructing a new building. What we were going to was a Harambee (a fund raiser) for its completion.


The Harambee was held at a school that was so close to the forest – we could have walked a few hundred yards east, north or west and been in the forest. The event went from about 11pm to 2:30 pm. It was interesting and I think that the message I preached was helpful. Pastor Harry was my interpreter, and I gave him a good workout. The giving was good - about 92,000 Kenya Shilings were raised (about $1,100). We had a light meal afterwards - my piece of chicken put up a struggle, but I prevailed.

Hunger and Hope on Mt Elgon

I got to Kitale on Wednesday evening. The next morning I joined a short-term mission team from Mtn View Community Church, Clovis CA on an expedition to the Mt. Elgon Training Center at Kopsiro on Mt. Elgon. It was great to be back and to see the once-devestated hillsides once again planted with crops and new homes scattered across the land. But the area is far from recovered from the trauma of the land dispute violence of 2007-2008 - there are a lot of traumatized indivduals, and hunger is a present reality for many. We were told that four individuals of that community had starved to death the preceding week.

The good news is that the church is alive and well in Kopsiro. At a leadership training conference the team put on there were over 100 pastors in attendance. Since they all had to walk to the center for it, this implies that there are nearly 100 churches active within a 10 kilometer radius of Kopsiro.

On Friday we did a distribution of sheep for widows, cows for pastors and maize (corn) for all. The team had paid for 2,000 lbs of maize, but even that wasn't enough to give something to everyone. At times it seemed tense as people waited for food, but in the end there was an orderly distribution. Pray for this area - for God to sustain these Sabaot people until they can harvest the crop that has just recently sprouted.

I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane

I'm sitting in the departure lounge at LAX waiting for boarding to start. It always takes a ton of energy to reach this point, but right now I'm feeling good. When things go right, we feel good. Right now there is a family sitting behind me who had a snafu with their flight arrangements and are on stand-by. The flight is overbooked and they are calling for volunteers to give up their seats. Some people who are checked in are going to be bumped off. They don't feel so good. Thank you, Father, for watching over me, and over all who are traveling today!

Geezers Unite!

What is it about technology? There are new and improved items hitting the shelves all the time - it seems that the pace of innovation has been picking up during the past thirty years. Sometimes I catch on fairly quickly (I got my first personal computer in 1983), but sometimes technology and I don't get along. For example, I really dislike talking on the telephone. I've gotten better at phoning, but I like to see the person's face when I'm talking to them - the non-verbal expressions communicate so much. But, hooray for other technology! I've just installed webcams on our laptops so we can use the video feature of Skype when we're separated. Our webcams also let us take video - a scary thought.

OK - webcams have been available for years - I admit that I'm not an early adopter of technology. But eventually I come around to new things that prove their worth. Next week we'll get to test out how these will work for us from Kenya. I'll be able to talk with Kathy, and with our kids - that is if they join their geezer father in getting a webcam on their computer!

I Drove Around the World

Following the death of Kathy's father, Mam, in 2001 we inherited his car, a 1996 Buick Regal. Her dad was an expert in choosing cars that would last long and go far. I'm not sure that when he purchased it he had any awareness of how far it would eventually go.

I drove around the world in that car over the next four years. Not in the sense of actually circumnavigating the globe, but in terms of miles driven. The car came at a good time - I had just begun my MA studies in New Testament at MB Biblical Seminary in Fresno. A round trip to school put over 200 miles on the odometer, and I had to drive up about twice a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. By the time I was awarded my degree in 2004, I had added over 24,000 miles onto the odometer.

It would be a big task to drive around the world in one go, but taken in smaller increments I did the distance. It's a good reminder that big jobs can be broken down into manageable bites - something that Kathy and I are practicing once more as we prepare to move to Kenya.

"All good things come to and end." That's not always true, but it is in the case of the Buick. We decided to donate it so that ICM would get some residual value out of it. Yesterday the Cars 4 Causes representative came and collected it. Good-bye car - may someone else get the service from you that we have.

Procrastination

I'm a procrastinator. Despite my best intentions in school, I'd always be preparing the book report or studying for the text on the night before. One of my worst areas for procrastination has been the fix-up projects around the house. Usually Kathy has to get in her Wakasugi-woman power ring combat mode to move me into beginning a fix-up or remodeling project. Once I'm moving, though I get the job done - with any tool at hand.

Shortly after we moved into our home in Bakersfield we noticed that there was a crack in the ceiling and wall joins in our bedroom. "Someday," I'd say to myself, "I'll have to do something about that."

Fast forward twenty plus years. Someday has arrived - we're moving out in a few months and the room needs painting (obviously I haven't painted it in twenty years plus either!). Armed with my left index finger and a $3.00 tub of E-Z Patch and the motivation to get the job done, hey presto change-o, the job is complete. Well, mostly - I still have to paint it.