Divine Appointment
Our team has started door to door evangelism this week, and on Wednesday I went out with Rachel and three Kenyans named Simon, Stephen, and Phyllis. Walking down the dirt roads we turned into a poor housing complex where houses are like small stone one room apartment buildings and many women outside washing clothes in pans. The first six people we met said they were already believers but we got to pray with them, but near the end of the complex we came across about four ladies and the Lord really laid them on my heart to talk to them after the leader said we wouldn’t, but one of our members sensed in me through the Holy Spirit also I wanted to stop so we did. Here we met four women named Rose, Christine, Josephine (daughter of Rose), and Lois. As Stephen introduced ourselves, I started to share the gospel with them as Phyllis translated. I could tell that they were being cut to the heart about the love of God for them and how Christ did all the work for us. Rose told us that she wanted to believe and I held her hands leading her to Christ and gave her a huge hug afterwards. Then her daughter Josephine said she wanted to also, and told me that she wanted to receive Christ because of His love for her. I then prayed over them a prayer of blessing after they received Christ and told them about prayer and reading the Word.
Then Lois was crying and told me that she wants to receive that gift and so in faith she received Christ and the Holy Spirit and she was so thankful that we hugged countless times as she wouldn’t let go of my hand. Before I prayed a blessing over her, she has a dad that is sick and she came from Nairobi to visit him for a week. So we prayed for him as tears were in her eyes and so she came to see her sick dad, but received more than that. I promised to pray for him, named Timod, and they said that they want to come to the church Sunday. It was so cool and thankful for what God has done. Since then we have followed up and Rose tells us that she has had so much joy since we came and prays for joy as she grows in the Lord and becomes like Christ more. She said she’ll start coming to the Nakuru Worship Center and so will the others.
About half an hour later I then met a man named Walter, and also had the opportunity to share God’s love with him and he later received Christ. I then expressed to him that he is now a man of God, I explain prayer to him and reading the Word. He said he could read English, so Tosh gave me one of her Bibles that I could give him and explained the Bible as his handbook for life. He was so grateful to receive it and said he will come on Sunday. God is moving here and people are coming to the Lord.
Do Not Fear, Only Believe!!
This past weekend the church we are helping called Nakuru Worship Center had a revival where our team has been able to play some music, but this Sunday morning I got to preach for the first time in Kenya; something I’ve wanted to do for years. The worship is really high spirited and a lot of fun, making us want to take some of Africa back to the States. The Lord laid on my heart Mark 5:22-42, Jairus’ daughter and the sick woman of twelve years, one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I had a translator and he was really fast and really good, almost like I never really had to pause to wait on him. Have you ever considered how desperate the situation was for Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue who was well known had to come to Jesus to bring his daughter back to life. Or, the lady who was bleeding for twelve years and had tried everything this world had to offer, but it was only Jesus who could make her well.
Verse 36, Jesus says, “Do not fear, only believe”. How many times in our lives do we allow fear to overcome faith, when nothing that we fear can ever overcome Jesus, or that most of the things we fear never really come to pass. If Jairus and the women never believed, they never would have experienced the real healing power of Jesus and his compassion for them. But they didn’t let fears overcome them. I am not sure what’s more life changing; Jesus’s power or his compassion. Is there anything in your life that you fear and that keeps you from realizing the desperation of how much we really need Jesus? The Race is teaching me much about how big God really is and how this world really can’t offer anything better. If I feared God’s call on this journey and the economy and the doubts of many other things, then those baptisms in the prison in the Philippines wouldn’t have happened, the kids in New Zealand wouldn’t have maybe known Christ yet, and our lives would still be the same in many ways.
HIV, It's Just Normal
Picking up one of the Saturday papers of Nakuru, thumbing through the pages of the current events that we as Racers don’t always get the luxury of keeping up with, I stumbled into the personals section where people are trying to find love. In over half of all the people who were looking for love were people who had to put that they were HIV+, were looking for someone with the same condition, or that a HIV test results were mandatory when finding someone. It’s a reality that can easily be forgotten that this country suffers so much with the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. It’s so sad that it has become so normal that you find it in the classifieds of a local paper where people have to admit as a normal reality. Children here at the orphanage know the immediate results of it, have lost parents to it, and as we walk the streets each day the faces of these beautiful people hide a lot. There’s a mark of shame that people walk around with here, but I believe that people are finding freedom in Christ here and realizing that He doesn’t look at us in that way. Still I don’t know what’s more life changing, the power of Christ or His compassion for people here and around the world.
