The Lord really taught me patience during the month of August in Kenya. A big part of our ministry this month involved visiting remote villages and tribes and sharing the good news with them as well as playing with the kids and just having a good time with them. Visiting these villages is often a long and bumpy drive away. For the first village, we drove for 10 hours until we arrived and it was a truly incredible experience that opened my eyes a lot to see the way people live. However, in this blog, I wanted to talk about the last place we visited. I wanted to talk about specifically the experience and circumstances leading up to our arrival and the lessons I learned about expectations and being content.
To begin with, our host in Kenya was a pastor with many established connections all over Kenya and this day, he gave over the itinerary to one of the connections he had who was a missionary to the people where we were going. According to the information our host received, we were just a 2 hour drive away from the village we where going to, but the pastor wanted to make a couple stops before. So after, about 45 minutes of driving we stopped at a school that his church was involved with and I am not really sure why we stopped there, to be honest. As the day goes on, more and more miscommunications happen and for most of the day we don’t really end up knowing what was going on. After stopping at the school and meeting all the staff, we pray for them and go on our way. After another 40 minutes of driving, we stop at another church and stop and chat with the pastors for a bit and then finish by praying over them. We hop back in the car and stop at yet another church to do the same thing. At this point, I am slightly confused because supposedly, the place we were going to was only a two hour drive away and we were going to stop at some lake on the way. We had been on the road now for about 3 hours plus all the time we spent at the churches. It is getting to the point where it is lunch time. In addition, riding this van has not been pleasant and my neck was extremely stiff to the point where I couldn’t even turn it.
This is where we find out that the lake is located in a national park that cost like 5$ to get in. At this point we drove well out of the way of where we were going because the pastor really wanted to show us the lake because it had geysers. We all paid to get in and drove for about 2 more hours in that bumpy van. I could honestly say the lake was beautiful and under different circumstances I would have had a better attitude.
However, I was too worried about my neck pain and the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat all day. After, several hours in the park and getting to experience the hotsprings on the lake we started to head back and drive to our final destination. It was about 5 or 5:30 in the afternoon when we arrived after driving way into the middle of nowhere across a river. It’s funny because my host was under The impression that we would be staying at a resort with hot showers and he told everyone riding with him that this was where we were staying. After crossing a river and driving way off road, it became quiet clear we weren’t staying at a resort. I got off the van, furious on the inside. I felt cheated out of a meal, had severe neck pain and all I wanted to do was complain about how nothing went according to plan. It didn’t help that everyone else including our host also seemed grumpy and upset.
However, something happened. I saw something that instantly changed the atmosphere for me. My brother Will immediately started playing and telling jokes to some of the kids. In my head, I thought to myself how could you laugh in a time like this? Then, like a block of bricks it hit me right in the face, I was being an old grump. I had lost sight of the mission. We were only here for a few short hours and only had that time to invest into the kids and the community we were in. I went from I’m hungry and tired and in pain, please take care of me, to I am here to serve you and take care of your needs. God used my good friend Will to remind me how selfish I can be and to focus on what really matters.
That night, they asked one of us to preach. No one seemed like they were in the mood to preach from the long day and I felt a tug on my heart to raise my hand and volunteer a message. So, I raised my hand and volunteered and had no idea what I was going to preach on in half an hour. As soon as I was obedient, the Lord put the story of Jonah on my heart. Poor old Jonah was a grouch too. God told him to do something he didn’t want to do and in disobeying God, he showed great selfishness and pride. He put his needs to be comfortable and his belief that he was somehow better than the ninhevites over the spiritual needs of the people God loved. I looked out at the congregation of about 70 people including children and realized I was just like Jonah and those were people who Jesus loved. I preached a message about the compassion and mercy of God and his call to repentance and that night several people surrendered their lives to Christ for the first time and I realized why we were out there in the first place. I realize in the grand scheme of things the stuff I complain about is rubbish and worthless compared to what God is doing.
Philippians 2:14-15 “Do everything without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and innocen, children of God without blemish in the midst of a twisted and crooked generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.”
