When we left Siaya it was a little odd to think of leaving that place that had become like home for a month. But I was looking forward to the next adventure.
Before we left we went the the district hospital to pray for the patients there. The hospital itself had an interesting set up since it was made of many small buildings connected by covered porches. All the windows I could see were open to allow any breezes to flow through.
I was with the group who went to the children's wing despite my earlier thoughts that it would not be something I would want to see.
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect from this hospital, and I was glad to see things looked clean and orginized if not very private. There were about five children in each room and each child had at least one parent or family member with them. We would introduce ourselves to the adult and ask the child's name and ask if we could pray for them.
Most of the children were under two years old and it brought tears to my eyes to see two infants on oxgen. I laid my hand on the girl while we prayed and I had a hard time getting any words out as I felt her frail body and heard her shaky, rapid breathing.
I never asked why they were there, although sometimes the information was volunteered. I figured Jesus already knew what was going on and how to heal them without me having all the information. I found that knowing the specific malady had more of a tendancy to make me focus on the sickness when all I wanted to do was focus on the healing and the healer.
As well as praying for healing for each child, I always asked God to reveal Himself to them and bring their whole families to Him.
The parents would then thank us for praying even if they didn't understand what we were saying and even though some were not Christians.
I prayed as we left that those children would each have miraculous healings and when they grew old enough to understand be told the story of the mzungus (white people) who came to pray for them.
Then we went to pray for the women and babies who had had complications with the birth and needed to stay for a while. We were unable to see the newborns in intensive care, but we prayed for all of their mothers.
Then we prayed for mothers in labor who were waiting to be taken to the delivery room, and then we went to the woman's wing.
I was impressed how almost every sick person had family with them at all times. Very few were alone. The family is very important to everyone here.
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Now that we're in Rukungiri I've been looking back on our time in Siaya. It was so good and it really felt like home. I fondly femember our time there and it was good.
But something seems to have followed us from Kenya.
Rain.
It actually started in Washington D.C. It rained several of the days we were there. Which makes things more interesting when one lives in a tent.
And in Kenya our first time at Deliverance Church in Siaya was for a prayer meeting. Before we'd even gotten started, a heavy, drenching rain began. Not a light shower, but a real downpour. And that was just the beginning. Almost every day of out time in Siaya it would rain. Usually at about 6pm. And they told us the rainy season was supposed to be over. And it had been a dry one. But when we showed up, so did the rain. Many a day we walked home in it, or raced it home, or just slipped and slided around in the mud.
Then when we stayed with the whole squad at Jinja for 2 nights, it rained. We had to wash the mud off our tents when we arrived here because we had had to tear them down while it was raining.
You might say this is all just coincidence, and I might agree with you, exept for the showers we've had almost every day we've been here in Rukungiri. It's not been quite so heavy as the earth drenching downpours we had in Siaya, but still, we have had an over abundance of rain.
My team is called BLAZE. Bringers of Life Abundant, Zealously, and Eternally. But I'm wondering if we should have been called BRAZE; Bringers of Rain…
We've been doing a lot of door to door ministry here and one day it began to rain while we were having lunch at a wonderful and generous woman's house. She thanked us for honoring her house with our presence and she said she knew we brought blessings of God because the rain had followed right on our heals.
At home I usually end up looking at the rain as an inconvenience, a bother, even a possible danger on the roads. But here they see rain as life. They know their food won't grow without it. Their crops and livestock will die without it. And so that is why we were thanked for bringing the rain.
So please pray for my team that we not bring an annoying, bothersome rain, but a life giving, refreshing, cleansing rain spiritually as well as in the natural.
