While we were at debrief with the squad in Nairobi, Kenya our Squad Coach, Betsy Garmon, spoke about finishing the Race. She spoke about offenses and judgments that we hold against people, and as my month went on I knew that it was no coincidence that she spoke about it at the beginning of my month in Kenya.
Kenya. Oh, Kenya. Kenya was a tough month. It was a confusing and a quiet month.
We stayed at an orphanage in Kenya, but we spent most of our time working with local pastors in the area doing street evangelism. I enjoyed the pastors that we worked with and saw many people come to the Lord. What I noticed while doing ministry was that most people said they were born again. It was confusing because this small church in the middle of the slums in Kitale, Kenya had a heart for reaching the lost, yet the people of the town said they were Christians. It reminded me much of America and almost everything about Kenya seems to attempt to mirror America. They call America "heaven", if they only knew. I also noticed that most of the people didn't seem to believe or have faith in the power of prayer. We prayed mostly for finances and when we did pray for healing, they seemed apathetic. I don't understand anything about this country.
We were staying at the orphanage we were under a Bishop who had about 50 churches in East Africa. His family was great, each night Mark, Wes and I would wrestle with his little boys. I gave them all Native American nicknames in Swahili: Runs with Sheep, Buffalo Horn and Little Smoke. They were awesome. We also developed a great relationship with one of the helpers, she had a great attitude and was always very sassy. She was amazing and she always wanted us to buy her presents.
One day after church in the slums we arrived home and walked into the house. We were greeted and told that we would be eating in the other building, where we had been sleeping. I was confused, why weren't we eating in the house anymore?
Turns out that they felt disrespected by us. When I approached the Bishop about the situation, he quickly skirted the idea of talking about the issues. Instead he chose to keep them to himself and said, "Sometimes families just need to separate." I didn't understand, at the beginning of the month I learned that offenses needed to be talked about, they have to be shared. If you harbor these offenses, they will turn into judgments which lead into more problems. Even if you are healed from the wounds offenses cause, you still create judgments upon those events. So as we attempted to talk with the Bishop four times about the problems of disrespect, he still would not talk with us about them. We were not allowed in their house, unless we needed to use the restroom, and I felt ostracized from the people I once called "family" for the month. I wasn't allowed to play with the boys anymore and my friends in the community didn't even care to speak to me anymore. It was hard on me and the rest of the team.
It was confusing and didn't make sense. The whole year we have learned to confront issues, talk about our feelings and share feedback with each other. I understand why Adventures in Missions stresses this Biblical approach to living and I see the huge value it has in my life.
We ended up leaving our ministry early, and the night before we left I spent the whole night awake. There was stress on everyone from the issue at hand, and our feedback that night was a little rough. We ended the night not on good terms with everyone on the team because of an interruption by the Bishop. That night I broke down. I went outside and wrote in my journal, "Father, I need clarity. I don't understand why you are doing all of these things tonight. I don't understand. Why don't they want to solve the issue? What are you doing with this month? Why are so many offenses being brought against me? Why? What is happening in the Spiritual realm? There is a cloud over this compound right now and it really signifies how I have felt all month…"
The next day we were able to work out things with our team. Through apologies and abundant grace, I saw a team that truly loves each other. I saw a team that is constantly pushing to live more like Christ and a team that fights for each other because we love each other. Last Thursday, we hopped on a mini-van and headed into Uganda. I love Uganda. First of all, the place is beautiful. We stayed in Jinja for four days at the source of the Nile. We were camping on a hill that overlooked the Nile, saw an Eagle fly over, enjoyed swimming, a rope swing, baller chipati breakfast burritos for about 20 cents each and did a horseback ride.
God began to speak more clearly once I finally got out of Kenya. I heard his words with more clarity in Uganda than I have in quite a long time. I had been prayer journaling for a couple weeks before Uganda and I was seeing that my prayers were being answered.
Then I got distracted. We traveled to Kampala and stayed the night there. I met some cool girls from Amsterdam and one of them had actually worked at a Hostel in the Red Light District that reaches out to people staying there. She gave me a word from God about responding to opposition and it blew me away. The next day we traveled to Entebbe to wait on the rest of the squad to arrive. That night during feedback I got a call from Randy, our Squad coach, saying that we needed to get out of Uganda ASAP because of the Ebola outbreak that was happening. We called our driver who had just dropped us off and told him to turn around and come get us. He drove us to Jinja and we arrived there that night at about 2am. We stayed in Jinja for about 14 more hours till we were on another bus to Bungoma. We are back now in Kenya.
What the heck? The past couple days I have been a little upset that I had to come back to this country. I definitely miss Uganda. Coming back into Kenya, I have realized how distracted I let myself become the past couple of days. Through the crazy amounts of travel, I lost sight of my eternal goal and lost sight of a purpose. I haven't even felt like reading my bible or the Bonhoeffer biography I have been reading. I opened my bible a couple times, but just haven't felt like reading it. As I try to mirror my life after Christ, I can't help but wonder how He ever had enough strength to keep going. Then God spoke to me last night and told me. I have been traveling and relying on my own strength these past couple of days. I can't do this on my own and I can't even do it with my friends. My power comes from God. I was reading Bonhoeffer's biography by Eric Metaxas last night and this really struck me.
Bonhoeffer linked the idea of Barthian grace with prayer by saying that we cannot reach God with our own prayers, but by praying “his” prayers—the Psalms of the Old Testament, which Jesus prayed—we effectively piggyback on them all the way to heaven. We must not confuse what we do naturally, such as “wishing, hoping, sighing, lamenting, rejoicing,” with prayer, which is unnatural to us and which must be initiated from outside us, by God. If we confuse these two things, “we confuse earth and heaven, human beings and God.” Prayer cannot come from us. “For that,” he wrote, “one needs Jesus Christ.
I am still learning more and more about the character of God and Jesus. Each day is a new revelation about His grace and His love. I am still learning to pray which seems like a very elementary Christian concept, but there is so much more to prayer. There is so much more to the Spiritual realm that God is still waiting to reveal to each and everyone one of us.
As the guys from D-Squad head into South Sudan we are going to need all the prayers we can get. I fully expect God to do amazing things this month, and I want Him to completely change all of us guys. I want to exit South Sudan being a completely different person than when I entered South Sudan. I know that this is only possible if I continue to press into God, and stop living by my own strength.
