Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by archiveworldraceblogs

I bet you are wondering what Ive been doing for two months…..
 
I was in Lodwar, Kenya in December. DESERT. 100+ degrees everyday. Almost every morning we went for house to house evangelism. Houses were a significant distance apart…

During house to house evangelism I was often with a Pastor or youth who would act as my translator. The local language is Turkana. Once we got to a home we would gather whoever was around and sit under the shade of a tree, find out if they knew about Jesus Christ, and then share the message of the Cross. If the families were already Christians we would offer them encouragement and blessings.

 
I think that was the craziest part of the whole month. I was in the middle of nowhere. I mean NOWHERE. And I was talking with the most traditional people you can imagine. The women wore hundreds of beaded necklaces. The men were goat and camel shepherds. And yet in the middle of a group of homesteads was a church that was led by a Pastor who had been trained at a Bible school, most of the Turkana people that we met had already heard about Christ and many were already Believers in Jesus Christ.

During our 2nd week, we joined around 35 Lodwar youth (age 15-25) on their mission trip to the Lake Turkana area (~50km outside Lodwar).  That’s right. The Gospel was so strong in Lodwar that the churches there were sending missionaries into the Bush! My preconceived notions that I was going to the bush to bring the Gospel to people that had never heard before was shattered. Instead I got to see that the Kingdom of God is Alive and Well even in the most remote places on the planet.

 
 
 
Here is the Daily Schedule from the Lake Turkana Outreach:

6:00AM: Morning Glory (Worship)
6:30-8;30AM: Personal Time
8:30-10: Breakfast
10-12:30: House to House Evangelism
12:30-1:30: Swimming in Lake Turkana
1:30-4PM: Lunch and Naptime
4-6PM: Open Air Crusade
6-8PM: Dinner
8PM-?: Revival or showing of the Jesus Film
?: Bedtime

The 3rd week in Kenya our two teams (Dunamis and Quake) split up into 5 groups and stayed with Pastors out in the Bush. My group was Carly, Dennis, Bev and myself. We did more house to house evangelism in the morning and then had an open air meeting in the afternoon. At the open air meetings (or Crusades as the Africans called them) we got to preach the Gospel.

The month ended with an African Christmas. We went to church at 9PM on Christmas Eve, and while most Kenyans stay up all night, the Americans all went to bed by 1AM. At 6AM we were up again to watch river baptisms. One of the youth that I met at the Lake Turkana Outreach got baptized and asked me to be his “spiritual parent”.  I met him when he came out of the water and prayed over him afterwards.

I also preached my first sermon in church(1 hr. with translation) about not stopping with Salvation, but growing as a child of God and inheriting the promise that we are Heirs with Christ (Rom 8:15-17)

All in all it was a hard month, but an important month. It was a trial by fire. I was expected to speak, to preach, to share, to step up, to minister. And after a month of it I can truly say that I love sharing the message of the Cross, the message of Reconciliation in whatever way that means.