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Sunday morning.

I wake up at 7:30am, throw on the long skirt I had to borrow from a teammate since I foolishly decided to butcher the only missionary skirt I brought and cut it too short back in Thailand. At 8:00am, we pray, eat, and head out for a mile long walk to church. We spend the next four hours leading children’s church, Sunday school, preaching, and worshipping. By 2:00pm, we are back in our hosts’ home and devouring our long-anticipated lunch of rice and potatoes. A little afternoon rerun of Oprah from 2007 before a short siesta.

3:30pm, it’s time to go again. We are getting ready to head out for “house fellowships”, which is basically door-to-door ministry. Jared and JD bail to go watch a soccer game at the only TV in Isebania that gets the sports channel, so I’m the only “muh-zoon-goo” (white person) in my pastor-appointed group. Two young boys, maybe 16 years old, come to our hosts’ house to escort me to the home where we are going to meet up with the other people I’m told are going to be in my group.

Two miles later, I take a seat in a little mud hut. For the next fifteen minutes, me, Jared and Vincent (by now I have learned the young boys’ names), a mother, and at least half a dozen kids under the age of three sit in complete silence as I stare at the opposing red-dirt wall. Finally, Mama Sarah, the woman we have apparently been waiting for, shows up. We pray for the mother and her abundance of children (and by we, I mean that I prayed while everyone stared at me) and then head out. We leave the first house with five in our group, by the time we get to the next house, which is literally 100 yards from the first one, there are 13 Kenyans following me. I am taken by the hand by Jared (the young Kenyan, not my teammate), who has now become my translator, and escorted through a gate made up scrapped tin once used for roofing into a small community of what can only be described as clay and concrete, single-roomed, townhomes. The first door I’m pushed through, I find myself standing in front a mother breastfeeding her three day old newborn. As I try not to make eye-contact with the partially nude young mother, 13 Kenyans pile in behind me into this 8x6foot windowless room that serves as a house for four. Jared tells me that I need to pray for health and school fees, so I do.

 

The moment I say “amen”, I’m swept out the front door and taken to the neighbors. Here I find another young mother sitting in her doorway while her toddler plays around her legs. Not thirty seconds later, before even asking her name, I’m told she wants to be saved. “Never done that before,” I think to myself as my heart skips a beat and my palms start to get clammy. I stumble through a bit of my testimony and try to explain the unexplainable grace of God; yep, she still wants to be saved. I try to stutter through the salvation prayer with the help of my translator but am failing miserably, luckily, Mama Sarah steps in with her graceful Swahili tongue. Salvation. I invite this new Christian to church as I’m being pushed back through the tin gates and on to the next row of red clay homes.

Jared and Vincent lead the way as I stick close to my adolescent guides, trailed by 11 other Kenyans in a Peter Pan, follow-the-leader-esque parade. We shove into another tiny room with little lighting and find one older woman who would like us (well, me) to pray for her family, so I do. “Amen.” “She also wants you to pray for school fees,” Jared interprets, so I do. “Amen.” “She also wants you to pray for love in the house,” so I do. “Amen.” “She also wants you to pray for health,”… “anything else?”… “no that’s it,” so I do. “Amen.”

Sometime between my third and fourth round of praying for this woman, another woman adorned in a faded Bob Marley tshirt walks in to see what’s going on. About 3 minutes of me staring awkwardly at the crowded room of Kenyans seemingly yelling in continuous fluid Swahili, Jared tells me she wants to be saved. There goes my heart again. This time I skip the testimony and get straight to the point. Again, I trip over my words as I try to explain God’s love and forgiveness. This time I tell her that she should pray with her own words to ask God into her heart, or I try to through Jared, we have a little bit of a silent stare down before someone from the back chimed in with something I couldn’t understand. She prays, I pray, salvation. “Bwana ah-sah-fee-way” (“praise the Lord”) comes from one of the older women as the group responds in sync, “amen”. Next house.

 

Two more houses of 15 or so people jammed into a tiny room while I pray for school fees and families as 14 of them listen intently to my English ramblings which few understand. At one point, I opened my eyes mid-prayer and wished someone was there to take a picture of this little white girl standing in a crowded sea of older African women, ah well, next time.

5:30pm on the dot, done now. On the way back out of the maze of row homes as we head toward the main road, we stop in at Jared’s grandmother’s house, all 15 of us. I am welcomed with open-arms, she already knows everyone else. The entire posse piles onto the excess number of couches in this woman’s living room and the uninterpreted chatter between all the women begins as I sit back laughing at my life. “She wants you to pray for her family,” Jared chirps at me unexpectedly; who doesn’t? So I do. More chatter about God knows what. Time to go.

The group disperses from here with five Kenyans left to escort me home. Jared and Vincent lead the way while I spend the next two miles meandering with Grace, Janet, and Faith (three young women I met days ago) listening to Celine Dion’s “I’m Alive” on repeat on Grace’s phone the whole way home. My watch beeps 6:30pm as I walk through the door of my host family’s home and my Sunday finally comes to an end.

 

What a day.