Real Life Leading. (“Real Life” is the name of this short term trip)
Being back in Kenya is exciting. East
Africa was one of my favorite places from the race and to come back
and visit a different continent and be familiar with it is an
exciting thing. We landed in Nairobi and a guy that I had met the
last time I was here came to pick the 14 of us up. It was good to
see a familiar face in a crowd of eagerly waiting Kenyans looking and
waiting for their friends at the airport.
We made the flight directly from the
states, and entering this culture straight out of America, not having
the segway of Eastern Europe, is a much different experience. This
place is still the same, now its just at a higher contrast. We
stayed the night in Nairobi and took the night bus the next day to
Mpeketoni, where we are for the two months. The buses here are an
experience in themselves. There are two different kinds of buses to
take, the quiet bus, or the regular bus. We were on the regular bus,
and here I guess its normal to play music non stop. Our bus ride was
about 13 hours, and for 13 hours all through the night was loud music
playing, loud African music mixed with a little 80’s early 90’s pop
from the states. They love Celine Dyon.
The bus took us directly to the church
in Mpeketoni. Bishop, our contact, and a beast of an African man,
was there to great us. We live in his house with his family; his two
sons are old and moved out but has a daughter that lives here, and
one in secondary school where she is a board-in. Mpeketoni is a
small town about a 20min. drive west of the Indian Ocean and a 4 hour
bus ride north of Mombasa. Its is almost literally in the middle of
nowhere. Google map “Mpeketoni, Kenya” and you will know. We
work here with Bishops church doing door to door visits and some
manual labor putting up a fence around the church, visiting
hospitals, and doing a bit of preaching.
There is much more to leading this
trip than I thought, and that was expected so its no surprise, but
the things that are most wearing I didn’t expect to be. I knew I
would be tired coming off of the race and going straight into this
trip, but Im glad I did. I think if I would have waited then I
wouldn’t have wanted to come. The Lord was asking me even before I
decided to come on this trip to find my rest in him. Im having to
learn now how to do that, and its going decently well.
Im learning a lot about leadership and
how to be proactive with this group in the free time we seem to have
during the afternoons. There are two other guys on the team that Im
grateful to have, but it can be hard learning how to lead them well.
The Lord is doing some good things with and in our team. Everyone is
being pushed in some way and some are being pushed in big ways
causing them to seek and find the Lord in ways they haven’t before.
Last week our group saw 6 people come to the Lord during our door to
door visits and one other guy that a few people just met in the town;
he was a Muslim guy who knew there was something greater. I don’t
think that group that met him ever said that they were Christians,
but the man just knew and the Holy Spirit had been working on him far
before we ever met him. The Lord says he goes before and behind us
(psalm 139:5) and that really showed here.
So thank you all for continuing to
read this blog and to support me in prayer and financially. I still
have a bit of money to raise for this trip so if the Lord leads you,
please consider giving. You can do that on this page on the left
side of the screen with the “support me” tab. It will walk you
through how to do it and for the program, you can just put “support
a world racer” and that will go to this account.
I am doing well and have a great co-leader Logan. If you want to read blogs from the participants you can find them at http://www.kenya.adventures.org
Thank you again.
