Ecclesiastes 3 says that there is a time for everything
under the sun. There is a time to plant and a time to uproot, but we found out
last month in Kenya that there is also a time to water. On the World Race we
have gotten very used to planting seeds and leaving them to grow, knowing that
we will probably never see the fruits of our labor. We have also had the
occasional chance to harvest the results of someone else’s planting. But last
month, we got to do the middle step. We were there for the season between
planting and harvesting-the season of watering the seeds.
In January of 2010, the K Squad came to Kenya, and a team
stayed with Pastor Patrick and his family for the month. They developed close
relationships with him and eventually came back for their ATL month. During
their ATL month they helped him start Releasing Destinies Ministries. RDM is a
church designed to help people with broken hearts heal. Its vision is to
attract the people who have been hurt by the church or who feel like outsiders
and to give them a place to experience God’s love.
As the church grew and solidified its presence in Eldoret,
Pastor Patrick volunteered to host another World Race team, this time from S
Squad. The S Squad team came in January of 2011 to spend a month in Eldoret.
During their time with Pastor Patrick, he decided to record an album of some
praise songs he had written, and he asked the team to sing the background
vocals on his recording. They spent a good part of their month in the recording
studio with him making the album.
Because of the great experience he had had with those two
World Race teams, Pastor Patrick decided to host us. When we arrived we were
not really sure what the month would look like or what ministry we would be
asked to do. We expected door-to-door evangelism, ministry with street kids, or
possibly some sort of compassion ministry to the poor. After a few days in
Eldoret, we were starting to feel disappointed. All we seemed to be doing was
visiting church members’ houses and talking with them. After a few days of
this, Pastor Patrick explained his vision for the church to us. He explained
that most of the members of his church had at one point been really hurt by the
church or by Christians and that he just wanted us to encourage them and give
them whatever words from God we were hearing. We continued to do this whenever
he asked, but he also gave us another challenge. He explained to Joel one day
that even though his album was finished, he still had to record music videos
for the songs, but that it was far too expensive in Kenya to pay for them to be
done professionally. Joel told him that he and I love making videos, even
though we don’t have any formal training, and volunteered us for the job. We
spent the next week out in the fields shooting take after take of Pastor P
singing a song that had S Squad in the background. Then we edited the video and
got it all put together the night before we left for Uganda, just in time to
burn him a copy.
As we looked back on the month and wondered just what we had
accomplished, I realized that this month was different from the rest. This
month we didn’t plant new seeds, and we didn’t harvest anything either. This
month we watered the seeds that former World Race squads had planted. We encouraged
the members of the church that K Squad planted, and we took the next step
toward helping Pastor Patrick publicize the album that S Squad helped him
record. For our team, Kenya was about learning that there is not just a time to
plant and a time to uproot-there is also a time to water the seeds that people
before you have planted in preparation for someone else to come reap the
harvest.
This is our team with Pastor Patrick at the church.
This is Pastor Patrick
Shooting the music video with some kids who volunteered to dance in it.
Here is the music video that Joel and I shot and edited with
help from our teammates.
