Ethiopia, Kenya, and India
From August 19 to September 19, Noah and I were on a trip to Scotland, England, Ethiopia, Kenya, and India. It was an excellent learning experience and a wonderful opportunity to meet people who are making a difference in the world.
Our trip began with a flight to Edinburgh, Scotland, which I found out is pronounced Edin-boro. Edinburgh is a beautiful city. Its buildings, cobblestone side streets, and parks are all equally beautiful to me. Noah snapped many pictures of the double-decker buses, the statues, and the spires and grand buildings. I had lived in Europe for nine years. Edinburgh is beautiful even for a European city.
We didn’t go to see Edinburgh, however; which is good, because it is as expensive as it is beautiful. Instead, we were going to visit the Northumbria Community just over the border in England.
The people in Northumbria were nice and certainly hospitable. Theirs is a small, liturgy-based community. It’s nothing I would recommend to anyone, though it’s a wonderful place to de-stress. The English countryside was very green and beautiful, and the community lives in a large stone manor with many hallways. The setting was a dream.
We were only there two days before returning to Edinburgh to catch our flight out to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the original main point of the trip. Indigenous Outreach International (IOI) invited us to come out to Ethiopia to see the work they were doing there. We met enough wonderful people there that I’m afraid to mention them for fear I’ll forget some. Patrick Beard was our guide, and he had traveled to the Northumbria Community with us as well. We stayed at the house of Ben and Pepo Hickey. Ben is an American, affiliated with IOI. Pepo is Ethiopian, the daughter of the IOI director there in Addis, whose name is Negash. Negash is a devoted and driven man, tirelessly working to support the churches and the poor there in Ethiopia. We were very impressed by this godly man.
We saw many things in Ethiopia that I won’t have room to tell you about. Africa was much different than the USA. Poverty was rampant, and it was real poverty, with danger of starvation, not the ridiculous “poverty line” of America, where you can own many luxuries that even the rich of other countries don’t have. TV’s were rare in the homes we were visiting. Luxuries there included things like beds, chairs, a table to eat at, a front door that closes and a roof without holes in it. If you manage to be wealthy enough to have those things, then the next “luxury” would be a floor! Every house I visited of people that IOI is helping had dirt floors. Even the “wealthy” landlord we visited, whose house actually had a separate kitchen and two benches to sit on in his large living room, had a dirt floor. Many houses we saw had sticks stood up and tied together for walls, a stick door, and a thatched roof that was impossible to keep leak-proof.
Nonetheless, the people of Ethiopia were happier than Americans. We saw smiles everywhere, and even the children who begged from us on the street were quick to smile and joke with us. We did see poverty so great that it had driven the happiness from the eyes of people, especially among the crippled or mentally ill who will never be able to support themselves.
IOI does things like support missionaries and provide schooling and supplies for needy children. Watching the fellowship between Patrick and Ben in the evenings at the house we stayed at was particularly pleasant for me. We stayed up late into the night several times just talking and enjoying the fellowship that only God can create.
From there we flew to Nairobi, Kenya, where we were picked up by Lonnie Hatfield of Kentucky, who feeds and schools street children in Nakuru, Kenya. It was a five hour drive across the most awful roads I have ever been on to get to Nakuru. With Lonnie was pastor Shadrach—I’ve forgotten his last name—of Agape church, and George Olendo, a delightful young man who served as our driver and mechanic for most of the journey.
I first have to tell you how beautiful the drive to Nakuru was. We stopped and looked at the Great Rift valley, which is said to be where man’s beginnings lie. It is exceptionally beautiful. I’ve seen the Grand Canyon, which is simply awe-inspiring. The Great Rift valley is even more breathtaking. Kenya looked nothing like Ethiopia to me, though they border on one another. Ethiopia was trees and fields, while Kenya had the savannah look that you see on all the African wildlife films. Wide expanses of plain with the odd-looking acacia trees across them. It amazed me how many trees looked like they’d been painted by Dr. Seuss.
We had only four days in Kenya after our week in Ethiopia. We went first to Kisii, which was another five hour drive from Nakuru, again bouncing all the way. We twice hit potholes so big that the bumper scraped the lip on the way out of them. Keep in mind, we didn’t drive through those potholes on purpose. We were avoiding bigger ones! Many of those potholes were on “deviations,” which is what the Kenyans call detours, apparently. We did have stretches where we were able to drive on reasonably paved roads, but they were more the exception than the rule. In three weeks of travel in Ethiopia, Kenya, and India we never once exceeded 50 MPH.
By the way, Ethiopia, which is the only African country never to have been colonized, drives on the right side of the road, like we Americans. Both Kenya and India drive on the “wrong” side of the road, like the British.
In Kisii we met pastor Nicodemus, who had contacted us across the internet. We had some concerns about the meeting. How likely was it that some pastor from Kenya who contacted us through our web site would turn out to be leading a legitimate church or be open to our message of unity, love, and absolute submission to Christ? As it turned out, however, Nicodemus is an awesome man, and his church is devoted to God. We were only able to spend a few hours with the church in Mogonga, now called Rose Creek Fellowship of Kenya, a name they chose to honor us (though it ought to be us honoring them). We were treated like celebrities wherever we went, speaking at many churches on our trip, by some truly wonderful people. We were humbled, and we pray that the things we spoke are helping them, so that we might repay some service to such people as we met.
We spent the night at a hotel in Kisii, as the church in Mogonga didn’t want to put us up in homes with dirt floors (and dirt walls), despite our assurances that any home good enough for them was good enough for us. We kept Nicodemus and his two sons at the hotel with us so that we could talk more. His son Jamleek speaks excellent English, as does Nicodemus, and we had a delightful time together. It was heartbreaking that we didn’t have more.
I shared a room with George, our driver, at the hotel, and that conversation was one of the highlights of my trip. He asked me how to begin something like the life we live at Rose Creek Village. It turned out that he was not making small talk. He had once been involved with a few other believers, sharing lives and even income, but it had not lasted. Even in Kenya the western model of church, focused on meetings with members living separate lives, was leaving him alone and hungry for God. By the time we got done talking, he was excited and committed to seeing something built in Nakuru, where he lives.
The next morning, at breakfast, was where we found out that George has malaria. Those who get it once face relapses the rest of their life, assuming that it does not kill them the first time around. There was no complaining in him, however. He was cheerful even while fighting off the fever, chills, and pains of his malaria relapse there in Kisii. After we returned, I received a letter from him talking about finding fellowship with other believers and the victories the Lord was giving him, despite some unfavorable circumstances. Only from someone else did I find out that his “unfavorable circumstances” included a bout of Typhoid fever and his wife losing their first baby. There will be great rewards in heaven for such as George.
When we returned to Nakuru, we were able to help feed children and to speak briefly at pastor Shadrach’s church. Since this is an American-sponsored church, it has the same “meeting mentality” that American churches have, where church is seen as something to be “attended.” We took the opportunity to briefly exhort them to care for one another as a real family of God, not just one in name only.
I want to take a moment here to say that the problems of most churches cannot be solved with a 30-minute sermon, nor can they be prayed away at an altar call at the end of the service. On our trips, we are often called upon to pray for people after church services. Sometimes, though, the problems they bring to us are not matters of a one-time prayer. They are matters that require work. Yes, that work can be prayed over, but it’s useless to pray where a worker is needed. Jesus instructed us to pray that the Lord would send laborers into the harvest. The harvest can’t happen on its own. So, the problems in many houses require a worker being in that house often enough to see husbands and wives interact, to see parents interacting with children, to talk for long periods with the people in that house, and to know them, so that real advice, counsel, instruction, and rebuke and admonishment can be given. So often, even good advice and prayer is not enough. It takes the rebuke of men and the discipline of God for the saints to carry out the things they may want to do, but are not finding the power to do.
We went from Kenya to India to spend a week with Pastor Daniel of Voice of Gospel. If you know anything about Rose Creek Village, then you know our fondness for his Mercy Home ministry. The poverty and the children begging on the streets that we saw in Africa aroused an intense desire to see Mercy Homes extended to Ethiopia and Kenya. K.V. Daniel was only too glad to be a part of that. We discussed and made arrangements to pursue such a ministry together, beginning with Kenya and the church in Mogonga.
This was our second trip to India, and we saw several Mercy Homes. We also participated in two “Mercy Home Meets,” where children from several Mercy Homes came together to perform and share a meal. It’s a delightful time to meet the children, who are the main reason we are so excited about this ministry. The children are wonderful, healthy, godly, and happy, filled with a desire to grow up and help others, either as Mercy Home directors themselves or in some other are of ministry or public service.
This time, however, we also got to participate in the baptism of 25 new believers, converts from Hinduism. It is an exciting thing to see people come out of the service of multitudes of false gods and their shocking and evil caste system into the service the one true God. I know the baptisms were the highlight of the trip for Noah, who got to participate with Daniel in baptizing the new converts.
There’s not time for more, though I could write pages and pages of details. We are very excited about our newfound sister church in Kenya, about the possibility of beginning Mercy Homes in Africa, and about all the doors our Father is opening up for us both here in the USA and around the world.
Posted on Oct 31, 02:51 PM | Categorized under Articles—
