A usual day in Kenya
We’re staying at Pastor Joesph’s house with his beautiful wife, Mercy,
and his precious daughter, Patience. Joesph is the Pastor at
Deliverance Church Southlands (DCS) in the slum of Southlands Kiji.
Living with Joesph and his familly has been the biggest blessing. I
love learning about their culture and immersing myself in it!
We mainly eat rice, various kinds of beans, vegetables, chipatti; a
Kenyan tortilla, and ugali; a traditional Kenyan dish made of cornmeal.
We eat mandazis which is like a sopapilla and drink tea with milk in
the morning and at night.
There have been some challenges we don’t face in the States that we’re
getting used to. We only have running water about 3 days a week. This
means we have to bath with a canister of hot water and a bucket. We
scoop water out of a bucket to flush the toilet, but sometimes it
doesn’t go all the way down. The mosquitoes here sometimes carry
malaria so I wear a mosquito hat every night to bed and cover myself
head to toe. If you know me bugs love to eat me! (Before I did this one
bit my eye and it swelled up) These are all minor challenges and in the
grand scheme of things nothing to complain about.
We normally wake up around 8am, eat breakfast, and then head off
to the church. At 9am, we meet church members for outreach in the
slums. We tell people about the church, about God’s love, play with
children, get to know the community, and find people in need.
the neighboring slum. Lucy is Anderson’s niece. We met a lady named
Caroline and she invited us into her home. The house was as big as my
bedroom with two small worn couches. I shared my testimony and we
prayed for her.
good English so it was easy to start up a conversation. We sat down to
eat chipatti and drink tea just so we could spend more time talking
with her. We found out that she has 3 children and an ex-husband who is
Muslim. She was Muslim, but when they divorced she became a Christian.
She is looking for a church so we told her about DCS.
appointment with Faith. It was no accident that we met her. It was no
accident that we sat down for tea or that she came to church. God
already had it planned out and we were just a part of His master plan.
We don’t want to aimlessly walk around. It’s awesome to see God put the
puzzle pieces together in ways that we would have never imaged by
ourselves.
Next my group started talking to people on the street and 3 little
girls came up to me. They were so interested in the Mzungu which means
white person. They just looked at me with their big brown eyes. So I
introduced myself and began to teach them songs. We sang “He’s got the
whole world in His hands”, “Father Abraham”, “Hokie Pokie”, and any
song I could think of. By the time I left there was almost a dozen kids.
Every Monday-Friday, we have Lunch Hr Prayer Meeting. One of the World
Racers speaks, we sing worship songs, and pray. Worship night is every
Thursday and church is every Sunday. People are very faithful in coming
throughout the week. I hope that people in America can learn from their
dedication and desire for more of God. Many times we (myself included)
don’t even take the time to pray and read our Bible for a few minutes a
day. It’s not a chore to talk with God, it’s an honor.
We also go to Fellowship, which is like House Church, Mondays and
Tuesdays. Mondays and Wednesdays we teach children at schools and I
teach English Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays to adults. We stay busy, but I wouldn’t change a thing!
We end the day with a Bible verse and prayer. Then we do it all over again the next day.
