Kenya Preparations

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Well, OK; here goes. Our Kenya trip is almost here and this will be the first related blog. Hopefully it will blaze the way for updates every two or three days throughout the entire trip. We are so excited! The anticipation of seeing our beloved Kenyan family is overwhelming. Amma and I are already about 50 percent there. We will begin the packing ritual in just a few days and hopefully not forget anything too important. George has been calling or sending texts and emails from Kenya every 2 or 3 days and it is obvious he is as excited as we are.

There are many things we hope to accomplish this trip and we will need God’s blessing on everything to succeed. Among the first things are; the training of the new men that have begun coming as a result of seeing our wonderful Father changing the lives of their wives, relatives and neighbors. They will need to learn how to take care of these precious women. There have been a number of men telling George that the change in their wives has caused them to believe something very different is happening at Lakeview Village Community Church. One man excitedly stated; “What have you done to my wife? She loves me now!”

The next project is building a ministry for the teenagers in Nakuru. The need is horrendous and the opportunities are abundant. Most teens in the  area we live in, are busy just surviving and have little hope for a profitable future. Our specific area is filled with poverty, child trafficking, drug problems, prostitution, and an Aids epidemic. Crime is rampant and unemployment is out of control.

On our last trip we met with 12 teenagers who truly desired to do something to help themselves and their friends out of the terribly low expectations for themselves and their generation. We agreed to help and asked them to come up with a name for themselves that would reflect what they felt inside. Our request was given to them on our last week there and they couldn't come up with an agreeable name. We told them that if they didn’t have a name by the time we returned in 6 months, we would make up one for them, like the blue tennis shoes or something. Two months after we returned to the States, I got an email that revealed the name they had chosen. They wanted to call themselves the Kingdom Hikers. I asked why they had chosen that name and they said something like … “following God is not a stroll in the park but more like a Hike in the mountains.” We told them we loved it and the Kingdom Hikers was born. So we set to work to come up with coming up with a logo and a plan in keeping with the desires of their heart to hike the mountains of God. 

Jeremiah, one of our artist in the Village, designed the logo and we started to get some money together to buy some Kingdom Hikers T-shirts. We asked people in the Village if they would buy one for themselves for fifteen dollars we could buy one for a young person in Kenya.

Meanwhile the kids in Kenya have gathered close to 40 or 50 kids that desire to be a part of the Kingdom Hikers. They are ready to form an organization that would help their friends and neighbors turn their hearts toward following Christ and becoming good citizens. We are absolutely thrilled. We are planning conferences, meetings, newsletters and whatever else we can think of to help these teenagers help their friends.

There is much more we hope to accomplish on this trip and we feel that God has put together a great team for the month and a half we plan to be there. Amma is working on starting a "well clinic" to educate and help those who cannot afford basic health care. We have two young adults Amy Dickerson and Noah Pavou, coming from the Village to teach the kids dance and how to share your heart with others. We have a wonderful servant of God named, appropriately Joy; who we know will spread the reality of her name to us and all who encounter her. We are going to continue the F.I.S. H. Ministry (Funding Indigenous Self Help). F.I.S.H is a small financing program that has allowed the people of our church to double their businesses and learn how to take care of each other. We are going to need another tent to meet in, because we have out grown the one we bought last trip. The Church is growing, and it seems we have just begun. The video below is a story of how we began a few years back.



We’ll need all your prayers and support but we feel God’s hand going before us already. So keep us in your heart and always keep us before the One who loves us most. Tell others of this blog so they can follow the adventure and join us in this wonderful work.
RCV Grandfather