That was fast.
Seems like yesterday we’d just gotten to Kenya and now it’s over. To say it’s been a busy month would be an understatement. We’ve been going since day one, not that that’s a bad thing, and now it’s time for a few days of rest between Nairobi as well as a debrief in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
This past month we’ve helped lead a pastors conference, worked with kids here at the orphanage we’ve stayed at (Grace Family in Kaptagat, Kenya), evangelized and preached all over the region (we’ve literally covered almost the whole western part of Kenya), and gotten to make incredible relationships with people from all over East Africa (my favorite was getting to speak to a group of Kenya’s most elite youth athletes); I could write a dozen blogs to detail everything we’ve done. I do want to tell one story though:
Our host had set up a super busy last week here which had us covering around 300-plus miles over four days (which is a crazy long distance here where it takes around an hour sometimes to cover less than 20 miles). During these four days, which usually began around 7am and lasted till 11pm, we went on home visits, preached every night to large crowds, played with kids, led small groups and taught during the day, and ate mainly Ugali (Kenyan’s favorite food – literally flour stirred into water till it’s solid) and Chai Tea. We slept in tents, on the floor, or in the car, and to say we were tired afterwards would be a massive understatement.
Now, halfway into this trip we were already starting to burnout. We’d had no rest, and since we have white skin and hairy arms (white people are called Mzungus here) we hadn’t had a single moment of privacy. All this coupled with some miscommunication and other circumstances led us into the third day as we traveled to our third church deep in the middle of nowhere.
The pastor hadn’t communicated anything with us or our host, and even though we were supposed to have that morning off, we ended up visiting a large school and touring it followed by visiting a separate church. On top of that, we also had been promised hot showers (something I’ll never take for granted ever again) and because of our stops, that fell through.
Fast forward a little and we got to the host church worn out, dirty and smelly, and very frustrated and burned out. We all had nothing left in our tanks. We still had to preach that night though, and African church services are not short, to say the least.
I remember sitting there, angry, frustrated, and tired, crying out to God for strength because I had nothing left to give. I was more physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted than I’ve maybe ever been.
But that’s what God had planned all along.
Backtrack a couple weeks earlier and I’d been talking with a pastor from Tanzania about healing and seeing God move like in the Bible. I mentioned to him that I really hadn’t seen anyone healed in front of me, even though I’d heard of it happening with others on our squad, and he spent a couple days just pouring into me. One thing that really hit home was that, a lot of the time, both people, the person praying and the one being prayed for, need to be ready to experience God. He said that in the past it may’ve been just that I or the person I was praying for weren’t ready to handle and experience that yet and that God has a plan for every healing and lack thereof. This was all so encouraging, and it gave me a fresh mindset to go out into evangelism and ministry with.
Back to the village we were at now.
The service that night was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been a part of.
We were still extremely tired and frustrated, but my friend and squad mate, John Sanchez, got up to preach the story of Jonah to a crowd of around 75-100 people, followed by some extra prayer and worship; and that’s when God started to move. What happened next blew my world.
Our host started calling for people to come to the front either for salvation or prayer and so many people made their way up. Several of us got up to pray for people (keep in mind it was now 10 O’clock at night) and a lady walked up to me.
Her right leg had been in pain for a long time, and it was hard to walk sometimes she said, as she stood there massaging her thigh. I honestly didn’t expect much, and I was also dead tired, but I gave it all up to God, prayed for her, and then asked her how she felt. To my delight (and a bit of surprise) she said the pain was totally gone! She even started jumping and dancing and went back down the aisle praising God!
The next lady in line came up and told me she also had pain in her leg (I later found out she had a tumor). Again, I started praying and gave it all to God; totally surrendering everything in my exhaustion. When I finished, I asked her how she felt and again, she said the pain was totally gone!
Now I was awake and my mind was back on. That’s when one of the men we traveled with pushed a young man at me. I immediately could smell alcohol on his breath (a HUGE no-no for Christians in Africa), but I asked him what he wanted and he replied with, “Salvation.”
I immediately got excited as I’d never led anyone to Christ on my own before, but even more so, I was pumped because he hadn’t been turned away from the church. Many churches would’ve kicked him out for being drunk, but for some reason, he, as well as two others, had been let in and had heard the message that night. After asking him a few questions to make sure he understood what he was doing, I got to pray with him, and heaven got three new believers right then and there (John as well as another friend, Will, prayed with the other two).
This capped off maybe the most incredible night of my Race.
It was like God was waiting for me to hit my breaking point. He was waiting for me to absolutely and 100% run out of energy in every aspect, and that’s when He brought me to the point where both I and the people I was with (like I said earlier) were ready; and that’s when He decided to move.
Looking at it in hindsight, I think what God really wanted to show me was that people coming to know Him and being healed is fully and totally His power and choice and His alone. I know we hear this all the time, but sometimes we need to actually see it and live it, and that requires bringing us to our breaking point so that we truly know, like Paul mentions several times, that what happens can and is only God and not of ourselves.
That was almost a week ago now and I can tell you that the end of the trip, even with everything that happened, wasn’t much easier. We were still exhausted but at the end of the day, we all knew that it’d been an insanely productive trip with many people getting healed and coming to know Christ; and even though in the moment it can be tough to see, what really matters besides that?
God is so good guys and will meet us wherever we’re at. Every day I continue to learn even more about Him and His incredible love and passion for us. He truly is a relational, compassionate, and amazing God, and I can’t even begin to describe how much my love for Him has grown over the past year.
If there’s anyone reading this who hasn’t accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, please consider making that decision today. If you already have, but like me a couple weeks ago, haven’t seen God move in big ways, ask Him! Jesus says that if we continue to come to the Father in prayer, if we continue to knock, the door will be opened to us.
He wants to show Himself to us. It just sometimes takes us hitting empty.
“Praise the Lord! Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever!” Psalm 106:1
God Bless!
-Ben
