(sorry for no photos, internet is too slow, I will add some once we get to Nairobi)
I’ve come up with a new way of having a prayer meeting. I call it “power hour”. A few years ago power hour meant taking a shot of beer every minute for an hour. Now it means creating a prayer list, and praying for something new every minute. It keeps you very focussed and helps you to remain passionate for each item on the list. Power hour used to result in a drunken stupor, but the power hour my team had the other morning resulted in the Spirit of the Living God coming down and meeting with us; walls came crashing down and people got filled with the Spirit.
We live in a wonderful house with running water and electricity. With only three or four in a room we all have sufficient space. We sleep on mats underneath sleeping pads. We purchased two fans the other day to help with heat exhaustion. The fans were sent to us via the same Simba Coach bus we took to get to Mpeketoni, and we sent the money back the same way. The other day our town ran out of gasoline, so we were not able to drive to our ministry location. Our contact managed to get some fuel sent from Mombasa on the coach bus. It is illegal to transport gas that way, but a lot of times it happens anyway.
We live in a small community of mostly mud brick houses. There is a mango tree outside our house and often times you can spot monkey’s climbing around it. The other day there were about 15 monkey’s hanging around outside the fence that surrounds our property. I tried to befriend them but they have trust issues. Pray for them.
Open air preaching, door to door ministry, leading worship, and caring for orphans gives you a taste of what we’re doing here.
Our contact Bishop Busuru is an amazing man and has really become a father to our team. He tells us stories at night. We always are sure to ask which stories are real and which one are legends. In Kenyan culture, the elders pass stories down to their children and some are real and some are legends.
Bishop shared a few stories from ministry school that are simply amazing. One time they were going door to door, and they met a woman who’s husband went missing one day. He had been gone for over a year at the time Bishop spoke with her. They prayed for her situation, and then continued going door to door. That was Friday night, and the following Sunday Bishop was preaching in a small church. As he spoke, he saw through the back entrance to the church a silhouette of a man coming towards the church. The woman Bishop prayed with on friday jumped out of her seat and ran out the door towards the man. She jumped into her husbands arms and they were reunited after over a years time. After the service the man told his story:
He was traveling one day to work and a group of bandits kidnapped him. They took him into their forest hideout, and forced him to become their cook. The group would steal cattle and take them across the border into Uganda to sell. He was under close watch the entire time away. One Friday night, the group of bandits were sitting around a fire eating what this man prepared for them. All of a sudden, a swarm of bee’s came through the camp, and attacked the group. All of them ran in different directions, and this man ran also, only he didn’t stop running. Once he was outside the camp he ran even faster and managed to make it to a highway. Before long he waved down a pick up truck and told the driver he needed rescue. He hitchhiked his way back home, and on a Sunday marched back into town!
Friday night was the night Bishop prayed, and at that same moment God sent a swarm of bee’s to rescue this man and reunite him with his wife!
This is a real story but it’s pretty legendary.
Another story he told us that night:
Bishop was traveling back to his ministry school via a van taxi. When the driver picked Bishop up, he was frantic. He had just found out his mother died and had been dead for three days. The driver neglected his duties and drove straight to his mother’s house. When they arrived, the driver said he would send out someone to take them where they needed to be. As Bishop sat in the van, he heard a voice from behind him say “go into the house and pray”. He turned around and saw that there was no one seated behind him.
He entered the house and began to tell people to stop what they were doing and start to pray. Bishop prayed and prayed, and prayed and prayed. The man’s dead mother was laid out on a mat in the room. Bishop prayed until he was pouring out sweat, and once the presence of God fell he prayed even more. Suddenly, the woman sneezed. She sat upright, and asked “who was praying?”
Everyone in the room was freaked out and pointed at Bishop. The mother said to him, “keep praying!” Bishop continued to pray, and then reached out and took the woman’s hand. He told us that when he took her hand, there was a surge of power that came upon his arm. He said his arm got super hot and he felt power like electricity jolt through his arm into the woman. The woman died from heart failure, but in that moment God healed her heart.
The woman was dead for three days but God brought her back to life. All Bishop heard was to “go into the house and pray”. He was faithful in that small request, and saw the dead come back to life. To this day there is a church where that house was. People from all over the area came and heard the story, saw the woman alive, and surrendered their life to Christ.
