Two months after Kenya and I am still recovering. Our team of 12 returned to the States on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. The physical recovery took longer than I imagined. Sleep was hard to come by but I blamed it on a mind that was spinning faster than the little beach ball on my laptop when it is having trouble processing too much information.
I tried to slip back into my routine while anticipating my daughter, Ashling’s wedding, and planning for the Christmas ministry season. But I viewed everything in the final days of 2007 with a Kenyan lens.
It’s 2008 and the impact of the trip is getting stronger and stronger. I assume the media coverage of the chaos in Kenya following the presidential election helps keep the trip in my mind’s eye. But I think it is more than that.
Kenya today reminds me of the fragility of life in real time. In my travels from Nairobi to Karundas to Kisumu my senses were overloaded but the evidence of the difference the Church has made in Kenya warmed my heart.
It is obvious that when everybody else gets tired, bored, discouraged or distracted the Church and God’s servants remain.
I spent “Black Friday,” with the Pastors of a church planted by Africa Inland Mission missionaries in 1904. A huge church, even by American standards, with a school, an orphanage, a thriving youth ministry and community development projects all run by nationals. Risper’s parents and her extended family hosted us. They had waited anxiously for my arrival. They greeted me with song, prayer and much celebration. They peppered me with probing questions covered with deep pride about the prospect of Barak Obama becoming the next president of the United States.
While the ladies prepared the first of two incredible meals I toggled between talking to the Pastors and meeting the Kenyan believers.
The Pastors had an endless list of questions about shepherding God’s flock. The question that brought the biggest smile to my face was their problem of introducing contemporary music into their worship services. They explained the problem of the senior members of the church rejecting anything but the great hymns of the faith, imagining I could never understand such a conflict!
They tried to sit at my feet but in reality, I was the student, I was the novice in the faith life. The daily and weekly discipline of the members of the church in Kisumu is the stuff of the hero’s of the faith. The prayer, the fasting, the knowledge of Scripture, the sacrificial giving and the broad ownership of the call of God to provide light and salt to their world caused me to be humbled as I said goodbye and returned to meet the team in Nairobi.
Today Kenya, the most stable country in central Africa, is reeling. Someday soon the politicians will figure out a way to save face and work to restore the confidence of the people, the rest of Africa and the world.
The local churches scattered across Kenya will not wait for the politicians and governmental authorities to restore order. They have already begun the process of preparing for the next chapter of God’s work in this part of Africa. I trust we can be part of that story!
