What's Happening

There have been many good and wonderful things happening here in Kenya. However, most of them are not easily described. I have been too busy experiencing them to write about them. God is working both inside and outside our church touching people’s lives and reviving their hopes. Through many and varied circumstances God is taking us deeper into people's lives. In the midst of tragedy He is bringing joy, in the midst of pain He sending comfort, and in the midst of adversarial attacks …He is bringing victory.

Probably the best approach to communicating everything that is happening would be to take each thing separately and describe what we are seeing. If you don’t already know about Amma’s blog, here’s the link    http://haviylah.blogspot.com/  ; she does a much better job at keeping everyone up to date than I.

                                                  The Church                                                  

                                                  

Much has happened in and surrounding our little church family; even the location of our meeting place has changed as reported in one of Amma’s blogs. Truth was that if God hadn’t stepped in and revealed our new meeting place we would have been “placeless”. But, as always, our good Shepherd had already picked a new and better location before we lost our old one. Moving was easy as we, like the Israelites of old, just pulled up the tent stakes in one place and put them down in the next. Then we celebrated! 

Our new place has opened up a complete new neighborhood and we already have new people coming to visit. In fact the nice lady who owns the property and leased it to us lives in Nairobi and was with us on Sunday.At the gathering she was saying when she is in town she will always come and be with us. She then stood to her feet and told us that she could have gotten more money from other people who wanted to rent the land, but she felt the Lord told her to rent it to us for less. She said after the gathering this morning she now knew why.

                                             Gideon, Robert and Adrian

Among the new people who have come to be with the church are a number of talented and personable young men and women. Three of the young men that particularly stand out are Gideon, Robert and Adrian. All three young men are musically gifted and have added a whole lot of life to our praise and worship. More about them can be found on the latest installment of my blog about the Kingdom Hikers. Here is the link… http://kenyakingdomhikers.blogspot.com/ .

Other people who originally attended our fellowship and left are returning. Two of them some might recognize are nice young man called Dickson and a lady named Alice.

                                      

                 The Kingdom Hikers

Speaking of the Kingdom Hikers; they are working together on a small talent show that will target the teenagers in our area. They already have a couple of dance groups and two bands committed to play. Please keep the talent show in your prayers that the Lord will bless it and encourage their hearts.

By going to the KH blog you can  learn about the band ‘Tamasha’ (celebration). Two of the three previously mentioned young men Gideon and Robert are members of the band. To get a small taste of their delightful music you can go to my web album at https://picasaweb.google.com/abbanoah  where I have placed a small delightful video of them singing a wonderful folk song called ‘Jumbolia.’

                                             Tamasha

 Our Hiker meetings are becoming more organized and are slowly starting to ‘run’ themselves. It is our hope that one young student called Johnny will begin to work the Kingdom Hiker blog.

After the two or three hour Sunday gathering is over we are having an hour long men’s meeting. This is the first time there are men coming who are genuinely interested in growing spiritually. There are about twelve counting the older teenage young men and they are really starting to ask some great questions. They seem to be sincerely grateful for the teaching and are starting to feel like their lives really matter discovering that Christ has something for them to do.

   

                                                The Pastors                                                 

"The Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West." 

- E. Stanley Jones

Another encouraging happening is with our meeting some the pastors around the Nakuru area. The first week George invited four of his pastor friends. We met at the Kokeb restaurant and talked for almost 3 hours. Their hearts were precious and quick to acknowledge the disintegrating condition of contemporary Christianity. Among the problems they spoke of was the terrible deficiency of love and spirituality among  members of their respective churches, worldliness and unbelief among members, gossips, rebellion and people not wanting to ever to be corrected. Sound familiar? As they spoke of the despairingly vivid difference between what is seen in the scriptures and what is now being practiced in Christianity, some of these precious men begin to tear up.

George and I began to speak of recovery and what it would take to wake God’s people up; of how only by the power of God could things be stopped from their downward plunge. And if anything was to be done the work had to begin with them. As we spoke you could visibly see the hope returning in their eyes. At the end of our talk, all of them were excited and committed to meeting every week for more discussions.

The next week there were ten pastors present and the meeting was a repeat performance of the first one. All decided to make meeting once a week together a priority and to seek God for meaningful changes. As you might imagine George and I are excited. Please pray that God protect this little band of men who want to find the truth about what it means to lead God’s people in an authentic faith.

                             Saying Goodbye

Lastly; we had to say good bye to Tabach and Chloe. Tabach was not only his usual "rear guard" wonderful self, but became, all over again, one of my best friends. I don't think I would have come through some very unpleasant situations without his compassionate, calming presence being there. Everyone here loves him and wants him to return whenever he can. 

Same with Chloe. She has a way of getting in there with people that's wonderful to watch. My favorite thing was to pray with her. When all of us prayed each morning I witnessed a side of Chloe that I wasn't fully familiar with but grew to really love. I really believe she is beginning to know God. Yet, alas, they have both flown away. Take good care of them both, we already miss them.

Since we have arrived in Nakuru, we have experienced losing our luggage for almost a week, losing the only place we had to meet in, with little or no hope (outside of God) of finding one, the tragic and unexpected death of Mary’s husband, a blown engine in our only means of transportation, and a major attack of the devil to try and divide the church through carnal men here in the church. But there are many more good things happening than bad. I don't think I have ever felt God's anointing stronger.

                              In Conclusion...

We are rejoicing, not complaining, because similar events and much more difficult situations than ours are happening in Mexico, the Village in Tennessee, Kerala India and all over the earth where men and women of faith are committed to establishing the Kingdom of God and not their own kingdoms.

 I know that in all these things we will prevail; that these difficulties and the attacks that accompany them are but signs that we are having a fair measure of success.

Bwana asi fiwi.