Reflections on Kenya

I've been back for a few weeks now and I'm still processing what happened to me in Kenya and Uganda. We worked with two sets of missionaries: Frank and Bernice DeNike, whose focus is going into the far reaches of rural areas and setting up schools to train pastors, and Michael Aganda who is the creator of Life for Children Ministries. Their focus is to take orphans and place them with next of kin while sponsoring them through various donors.

I guess the reason I'm still processing is, 1) because there is just so much need over there, everywhere you look. But honestly, the other reason I'm still processing is because they seem so much happier than Americans do, and they have so much less. They live with far less than what we consider poverty status here.

We drove for hours at a whoppin 20 mph (generally on the left side of the road, but sometimes the right as well) trying to dodge potholes the size of Texas, and sat amazed that there was no road rage. I was freaking out just as a passenger watching cars, vans, tuk-tuks, and motorcycles swerve around us and us around them with only inches to spare between us. Drivers merely nodded and waved at each other and went about their way. In the U.S. there would be some words of anger and maybe some hand motions to accompany.

We traveled a to many sites that in the States would have only taken an hour or two, but in Kenya because of the horrible road conditions, it took five to six hours. I think God took me to Africa to slow me down. I'm used to getting things done as quickly and efficiently as possible, and when things don't work out as speedily as i would like, there is a constant frustration, an irritation just beneath the skin. Even sitting at a stop light for more than 30 seconds drives me crazy....maybe to the detriment of relationships all around me.

How often do we zoom by people at ninety miles an hour, alone in our iron boxes of comfort, with little to no regard to the souls around us. It's not that we're intentionally being evil, maybe we're just distracted. We spend our whole lives trying to make things work better, more efficiently, progress progress progress. We try to find ways of eliminating pain, reversing age, working hard now so we don't have to work at all later, doing whatever we have to do to avoid awkward situations which can get a little messy. And we all know life is messy....these are just things I'm pondering, not preaching.

So after having to literally get knocked senseless by bouncing over potholes from unkept roads for two weeks, I decided (out loud) that i would never complain about road construction ever again. That was the day we traveled way out into the bush of Kenya, far from Kisumu (our home base). That day I had just reunited with the rest of the team because Pastor Rich Jones and I had been in Uganda for two days preaching in the bush. The rest of the team had been working hard at building a church with the African nationals.

The women walked about a mile down a cliff to fill 5 gallon buckets with water, place them on their heads, and balance them there as they walked all the way back up to the work site. We used this water to mix the concrete. Our girls gave it their best go, to the numerous chuckles of the nationals. One of the girls on the team said, "Man, if we just had a water hose, this would all be so much easier." and then she thought about it and said, "But we wouldn't have had so many laughs together. We wouldn't have built community like we did. We depended on each other. We needed each other, and we all knew it."

When i arrived at the work site, our guys and the national men (the nationals wore suits the whole time by the way) were using pickaxes to dig a trench around the church. I didn't last too long at it. The group of ladies cackled at me as i did my best. I must have brought much joy to their lives that day. They killed a chicken and fed us with it.

Then the rain came pouring down in torrents. We seemed to take our time eating...because that's what people do in Africa...take as much TIME as they want! I started to wonder how we were going to get our huge bus out through the miles of stretch that had once been a dirt road.

And hours later as we pushed and heaved that bus down those muddy roads I couldn't help but laugh. I laughed because my "out loud burst of praise" to never complain about road construction again, wasn't a praise at all. It was another complaint about the situation we faced with the potholes.

So covered head to toe in black mud, and really having the time of my life, as nationals emerged from every direction to help us push this bus one foot at a time, I decided it would just be best if I didn't complain about anything anymore.

Everyone wore such nice clothes, yet lived in mud huts. Maybe it was their only set of clothes. These men crawled under our bus in the mud to put dry dirt under the wheels and give it traction. These men were complete strangers.

Yet back home, I remember on several occasions, not having time to stop to help people change tires on the sides of roads because what I was doing was so important...to the neglect of souls/lives/people all around me. It was usually not because I'm an evil person, but because I didn't see them until i was already passing them and it was too late to stop and help....because I was driving too fast...because there wasn't any potholes to slow me down.

We did a lot of ministry while there, don't get me wrong, but I believe that God took me to Africa to slow me down, to make me stop and look into people's faces, to really stop and listen. To see their lives beneath the windows of their souls, to examine myself and see what really is deep deep down inside there. I can't say I liked everything I saw in my soul. Let's just say The Lord and I have plenty of work to do.

C.S. Lewis, the great author, once penned, "I've never met a mere mortal," meaning, no person on earth is unimportant, unworthy of our time and energies. We were all made in the image of God, whatever that means. Every person is important to our Creator. And oh the TIME He must spend on the edge of His seat like I do with my daughter Maci, watching every move we make and listening to our every thought we think, every dream we dream, every desire we urn for, every hurt that holds us back, every quirky thing that makes us laugh. Our great Father has the time to do this, and yet I have been too busy to take His lead.

Isn't this what life is all about? It's not the lack of great accomplishments a man grieves on his deathbed, it's the time spent on everything besides what really matters: creating deep relationships with God and the people around him, living life with others in community, even getting a little messy in the mud with strangers.

Before he died, Johnny Cash remade a cover song from 9 inch nails called "Hurt." I encourage you to watch the video on YouTube because it nearly reflects the words of King Solomon as he laments that getting all this stuff and having all these comforts is merely grasping for wind, worthless. In the song, Cash calls it his "Empire of dirt." The things we've accomplished is not what really matters. It's the people we spent it with.

I've decided that this is one thing that must change because I must agree with Mr. Lewis. When I look back, I too must agree that I "have never seen a mere mortal."

This is Cari (Mikey's Wife)

Mikey is in Kenya as of the 16th of July!!! Woohoo! I have received a couple of updates and things are going very well. Mikey left today for Uganda to preach at the minister's graduation and will return to Kisumu in a couple of days to do more work there. They were able to feed a lot of boys who were living on the streets and took lots of goodies and necessities for the children at the children's home they are helping at. I don't want to spoil too much, but I wanted to give everyone an update on the trip and let you all know they made it there safely! Thank you for your continued prayers!

Blessings,
Cari

The Mission of the Church

John 20:21 So Jesus said to them, "...As the Father has sent Me, I also send you."


We are nearing the send off date rapidly. We're leaving on July 14th to embark on our great mission to the African Continent.
I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on the mission of the church. As I've been traveling to churches all over the northern panhandle of Texas, the message I have been challenging them with is that we (the church) are the force that stands in the gap between God and the world. Ezekiel 22:30 says "So I sought for a man among them who would make a wall, and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found no one."
A few hundred years later Jesus, the great mediator, stood on the Mount of Olives before he ascended into heaven, and handed the baton on to Peter and the boys and said, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15.
As history revealed, these firebrands then took this transforming message into a lost world and shook the foundations of civilizations.
Some have attributed the fall of the Roman empire, in part, to the rise of Christianity. Nero sought to stamp out the rise of the church, but his empire ultimately fell and the church rose again and again.
And now we find ourselves in the beginning of the 21st century, where the greatest attack on the church is not from outside force of arms, but from the lips and pens of politicians, media, professors, and well meaning people, who have convinced the church as a whole to "sit down," and "be nice." American Christianity, over the past 30 years has become somewhat chameleon and hidden within the walls of buildings called "churches," but we all know that the church is the people of God, not buildings.
We, as humans, have a desire to fit in and to have favor with all men, but I find myself and my culture (Christian culture in rural West Texas) going up and down on the teeter totter saying, "Be among the people, so you can reach them" and then "Come out and be separate from them."
The question is not, "Can't we do both," because we already know that we can. The question is, "how well are we doing at riding that balance?"
I find some obstinate people, with a great lack of wisdom, ostracizing those on the fringes or even the far reaches with crazy gimmicks, or a one-size-fits-all approach to the Gospel. I often think, "Whatever you do, don't do that." But on the other hand, many times I hold back, not wanting to offend people with the truth.
One thing will not change. As the Father has sent the Son, He is also sending us. The method may change between rural West Texas and Kenya, Africa, but the message will never change.
We must assess our missional quotient often to gauge how we are doing on reaching beyond our safety zones and walls of our churches. And when we do, may we have the wisdom to know how to stay on the road and not fall into the ditches on either side.
I've linked a video from a famous magician named Penn, from Penn and Teller. He is an atheist and he talks about how someone gave him a Bible. Watch his reaction to proselytizing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhG-tkQ_Q2w&feature=related

God Bless all of you out there. May we rise to the challenge and be missional, stand in the gap for this world, and love them as Jesus would.

Mikey

Shack-A-Thon

Back in April the WT Alliance (7 of the WTAMU ministries)sponsored an event to raise awareness of poverty in Southern Sudan and raise money to buy goats. GOATS? What? yes goats. What can a goat do?
Many organizations like Heifer International have caught onto an amazing tool to fight poverty and hunger. They raise money for goats or cows or chickens to send over seas. With the whole ARK principle, the natives can mate a couple of them to multiply a herd and give away the offspring to others in their village. They can use the milk from these goats for all kinds of things. They usually don't slaughter the goats, but rather use the goat's milk.
Well, last year we held the 1st annual Shack-a-Thon. Over 150 students came out and built shacks out of cardboard, pallets, and duct tape on the lawn east of Old Main. All seven ministries were represented as well as other student groups. News stations came out and interviewed us. We were on all the radio stations around here, and we ended up raising over $21,000.00 to buy these goats.
At the evening service, the president of the Christian Relief Fund, Milton Jones, spoke about what that 21,000 dollars did last year. It bought over 300 goats which were dispersed across the Southern Sudan region around Nimule. The money paid for the goats, vet shots, and herding them into the villages by strong Christian evangelists via motorcycle.
Milton told of one family who received three goats last year. Those three goats multiplied into seven. The family then gave away the four new goats and STILL HAD THREE!
This year we raised about $16,000.00 for goats between all the students that came to the Shack-a-thon!!
This year a friend of mine named Majur, whom i met at our free lunch that we host on Tuesdays at the Wesley, came and spoke of his experience in Southern Sudan. He was one of thousands who have been deemed the "lost boys."
Lost Boys were children during the civil war between northern and southern Sudan, Muslims and Christians.
He came by the Wesley shack as we were finishing up and i invited him in. he said, "wow, this looks just like the shack i used to live in." I told him to take a seat in one of our lawn chairs and began to ask him about what it was like to be a lost boy.
He told of how the shack we'd build was about the same size (10ft by 10ft) as the one he'd lived in with various other kids, about 10 to a shack. He wasn't sure how old he was, but he was told that he was about 6 when he and other children in his village had to flee their homes during an air strike. He saw the mortars exploding all around as he fled into the jungle with these other children.
This group of children fled together to the border of Uganda, but were turned around and sent back home, so they fled to Kenya where he lived for 10 years in an IDP camp, and thus they were deemed the "Lost Boys." The United States funded relief for Internally displaced people or (IDPs), and the Red Cross helped get him and thousands of other Lost Boys to the U.S. with refugee status.
Amarillo Texas was one of the refugee receiving centers and thus many ended up here. He worked at a meat packing plant until he had enough money to go to college. He didn't know that his parents were alive until recently. he hadn't seen them since he was 6.
At Red Cross Stations in these IDP camps they have huge walls where families can put up pictures or letters for lost relatives. These walls are covered for miles with un-opened letters and pictures that never found their loved ones. His parents found a picture of him and the Red Cross gave them his address in the States. They sent him a letter after nearly 20 years of not knowing if he was alive or dead.
It was incredibly surreal to sit in a shack, like the one he'd lived in, and hear the the story of a Lost Boy, but yet be on a lawn at WT. It was like two worlds had collided.

I've always had a heart for Africa. As I prepare for Kenya, my heart breaks more and more for the Lost Boys, the IDPs, the starving, those who've lost their parents to AIDS only to find they have the virus themselves. I'm not sure what seeing this with my own eyes will do to me, but it's something I think I need to see.

So Pumped!!!

I have such an amazing opportunity to go to Kenya this summer for missions with some of our Wesley students and members of St. Stephen's church in Amarillo. The trip will take place from July 13th through the 23rd. We will be helping out at orphanages and ministering to those children who have lost their parents to aids and other causes. I am really excited about a unique opportunity I will have on this trip to travel, with another minister on the trip, to speak at a seminary in Kenya. Isn't that awesome!! This trip is costing $4500 per person, total. I have been blessed in that a $1000 of that will be taken care of for me. So, that leaves about $3500 left for me to raise. I will be doing lots of fund raisers and other things to raise the money for this missions trip. I have decided to start this blog so that those who are supporting me can follow along with me in this journey and see what my needs are in getting to Kenya and also share (through pictures) and posts, in the missions work that will be taking place in Kenya this summer. If you have not had an opportunity to give yet, my contact info is in the 1st box to the right of this post. Thank you for your support through prayer and/or finances! I pray you have a blessed week!

ps. I will try to update on here at least once a week until I leave for Kenya, letting everyone know prayer concerns for the trip and where I am at in raising the funds. While I am in Kenya and afterward, I will post pictures and details about the trip so you will be able to see first-hand how your giving blessed me and so many others!