“Asanti sana. Squash bananna. Yellelolalaloo…”
It’s amazing how the only framework I’ve ever had for what Africa would be like is based on Disney’s “The Lion King.” Embarrassing actually. Well maybe you could throw in “Hotel Rwanda” and “The Invisible Children.” But beyond those films, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. This giant, mysterious continent on the middle of the World Map. I pictured it to be full of AIDS, orphanages, monkeys and lions, savannahs, and grass huts. I pictured a helpless, hopeless population, full of sadness and poverty.
While some of my perceptions about Africa have proved to be true, I have found that they were only a mere spec of light from the bright sun that is this beautiful continent. I am learning more and more each day, but thus far I have found this place simultaneously simple and strangely complex. Big in space, but cozy in heart. Things run deep here: Pain. Joy. Worship. Loss. Hope. Fear. Peace. They experience life strongly. They laugh loudly. Sing with confidence and harmony. Offer their hand and open their door, no matter what their personal mood. No matter their momentary affliction, they love with all that they can possibly offer.
This month my team has been working with Deliverance Church in Kachibora, Kenya. It is a small village nestled below the Cheringanya hills, 27 km outside of Kitale, on the Northwest side of Kenya. This church is vibrant and growing, certainly a light to Kachibora. We are living in the Deliverance Church/ school compound. Meaning each time I walk the 200 yards to the squattie to go to the bathroom, I end up shaking no less than 35 tiny black hands of children who are fascinated by the color of my skin and the softness of my hair. We have been working closely with Pastor Nicholas and Pastor Joel, who are over both the church and the school. We start the mornings with warm water bucket showers, breakfast, and team prayer. Then we head out with Joel, Pastor Nicholas, or Marilyn to do house visits to people in the community. We come back around 1, and do a lunch time service, where one of us preaches. We rest for a while in the afternoons, and then do an evening service around 5. That’s right: our team has been responsible for 2 sermons a day. Good times. We have team time, feedback, watch movies, play cards or bananagrams, and just enjoy each other in the evenings while we wait for dinner-which comes between 8 and 930 at night. We’ve even started doing P90X at night in the church, just because Europe is still with us in the flesh.
Hands down, my favorite part about this month has been the house visits. I know. One hears house visits or “door to door” and they immediately think creeply white men on bicycles, dressed in white dress shirts and black ties. But for some reason its not like that here. It is a huge honor and blessing to people to gets visits, much less by the “Mzungus,” or white people visiting the town. Most of these people have never seen a real live white person, which kind of makes us instant celebrities. We get stared at everywhere we go, mobbed by uniformed school children, and recieve more invitations for tea than we could fit in in a whole year. But when we show up at a doorstep, we are welcomed right in.
Now. The things I am about to tell you are going to sound strange. The things that happened in these homes this month have completely transformed my faith. I do not tell them to you to freak you out, or make you fear that I have turned into some kind of Christian coo-koo bird. It’s still me. Just an empowered me. A me that has encountered the Holy Spirit in ridiculous and amazing ways.
The first day we went out, we just went to the cell groups that people meet in after church on Sundays. We did a bible study, prayed, and then went to each person’s home that was there. Except one member was missing. It was a lady named Carolyn. She had miscarried a baby at 8.5 months, just the day before. She was a mess. I don’t know that I have ever before seen someone that sad before (which says a lot, coming from the PICU). Beks and I, and the cell group prayed for her. For joy. For peace. For life and hope to invade her and her home. The next day, our whole team came back to see her and pray for her again. But she looked completely different. She looked alive. Joyful. Ready to take the world on. You would have no idea that she had just lost a baby two days before. Her face gave an easy and sincere smile. Laughter came freely. It’s like the oppression of sorrow that was heavy upon her the day before, had packed its bags and went to the other side of the equator.
After that, our group split up and I went with Garrett to talk to a lady whom I had also met the day before. We walked in and just started chatting, asked her about her life up to that point. She began to tell us a very sad story of poverty, death, and pain. Two years previously her 17 year old daughter died of undiagnosed disease that plagued her for a very long time. She said that the day that daughter died, the disease jumped from her 17 year old to her 4 year old daughter. She was at her wits end. This lady was not a Christian, and really had no context for anything overly spiritual. We asked her if we could pray for her, and she agreed. I just started praying for healing, peace, and freedom. I asked the Holy Spirit to show up in her life, to fill the house, her daughter, and her body. As soon as I said those words, this woman started convulsing violently and threw herself to the ground. She had a very glazed look on her face and was groaning a deep eerie groan. So Garrett, Joel, and I just started going nuts in prayer for her for about five minutes. And then, like a rushing wind, the most undescribable peace fell upon the room. The woman stopped convulsing. She sat up, and looked like a completely different person from who we saw when we first walked in. Her voice had a new calm and tambre to it. I am not really sure exactly what happened in that room, but I know something deep and dark disappeared, and was replaced with lightness, peace, and joy. We sat before a transformed, free woman.
Although this was the most dramatic of our house visits, this story was repeated time and time again during our time in Kachibora. BIG STUFF happened in that town this month, some of which I may only be able to describe to you in person, over dinner of coffee when I get back to the states.
But I can tell you that I saw people who were bound by rejection, sadness, illlness, lies, purposelessness, and a motley crew of other oppressions get set free and walk into new identities. We would step into their homes, explain to them what the heck we Mzungos were doing there, and then dig into their life. We had no money, aid, or bags of supplies to offer them. We weren’t building a school or a church, or digging water wells. But we brought them the Water of Life. We told them the truth of who they were created to be. We told them who God is and wants to be in their lives. Which is better. Much better. Africa doesn’t need more bandaids. It needs the Truth and Hope of our Creator: Who is the actual solution to a continent of sorrows deeper and wider than any of us will ever even grasp to comprehend.
