The Humility of Christ

2 Corinthians 8:9
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty (humility) might become rich."

This is a scripture the Lord continues to highlight to me more and more. I think of Jesus, fully God, in heaven enjoying the ultimate pleasures of perfect fellowship with the Godhead. There is no greater joy or experience. Yet, FOR OUR SAKES, He laid aside the perfect fullness of who He was and took on sinful, weak, broken human flesh. All of the sudden God, in the Son, is confined to one physical location, He is subject and vulnerable to the earth He spoke into existence, He allows Himself to possibly catch illnesses and/or diseases. Luke 2:52 says, "And Jesus increased in wisdom..." How does God, who is Omniscient, grow in wisdom?!? Oh, the lengths He went through to have us!!! It is through His humility that there are billions who have received the gift of salvation. Through His humility, He has made billions rich. He has elevated us to a place of glory through His humility.

He gave us an example that we are to follow. As we lay aside our own agendas and selfishness and reach out to all of those around us, we are then able to participate with God in elevating them to a greater place of dignity, worth, and glory. We all seem to have two options: 1.We can live a life in which we are consumed with ourselves. We can maybe even accidentally do a decent job and manage to attain occasional temporary happiness. Or 2. We can lay aside our own agendas, so that we may participate in the higher calling of our lives, by partnering with God in bringing others, and ourselves, into our greater destiny.

I believe this is one of the many things Jesus meant when He said in Matt. 16:25, "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." We can live a life for ourselves and hardly affect the world around us at all, or we can live our life for God and affect untold numbers of people around us. The choice is ours.

The Work Continues...

Things are continuing to go well here. Chris and Lindy left to go back to the States last week to see family, friends, and raise additional support. I have been able to help Chris out by assuming some of his many responsibilities while he is away and seeing that the work continues to go on here with Only Servants. They will be getting back on May 31st.

We are continuing to do evangelism in the three different areas of Nairobi on a weekly basis, while also feeding the street boys in Kawangware. I'm going to be preaching two times this month. Once in Kibera at the celebration service on May 17th and then in Kasarani on May 30th.

My amazing bride-to-be, Shauna, left on Friday to get the many details and preparations taken care of for our wedding on June 20th. I will be leaving on June 3rd. It was very important to us, and our families as well, to get married back in the States. Our visit will be short-lived and we will be back in Kenya at the end of July continuing our work here.

We are now joined with a large missions organization called NICS, whose headquarters is in Mississippi. Shortly after our wedding, we will be going to two weeks of orientation at their headquarters. Shauna has accepted a teaching position at their school here, West Nairobi School, for the upcoming year. Even though we are affiliated with this organization, we must continue to raise our own support. I will still be doing work for our ministry, After His Heart, including continuing evangelism in Kasarani. I will also be helping out at the school in various roles. These are seriously exciting times. Please continue to pray that God will be glorified through us and that all provisions will be met!

Celebration Service in Kasarani

When we do evangelism every week, we provide discipleship material to everyone who receives Christ. The material further outlines the decision they just made and also gives them a more firm foundation of their life in Christ. We have "celebration services" roughly every 6 weeks where everyone who completes the discipleship material receives a certificate and a free bible in Swahili.

Around 2 months ago, God opened a door for us to do evangelism in a third part of Nairobi in Kasarani. We just had our first celebration service where over 30 people received a certificate and bible.

This was an incredibly great day and seeing the smiles in the people's faces was so rewarding!! Some of the people are also joining the church of the pastor who goes out with me. It's great seeing the people not only give their lives to God, but to get plugged into the church and grow deeper in their faith!

Youth Conference in Kericho

Over this past weekend, Chris, Meshach (pastor we evangelize with in Kibera), myself, and one other person hosted a youth conference in the town of Kericho, where Kenya's tea is grown. There were several different churches, and a children's home, that brought their teenagers to the conference. There were only around 120 teenagers, but considering how rural the areas is, the number was really good.
We all spoke three different sessions. Some of the topics we covered were: relationships, deception of sin and the world, tribalism (this is huge in Kenya, yea in most of Africa), among other things. We had notes for the teachings and were able to leave them with the children. They were really receptive.
There was a church that we held the conference at. The pastor, as well as his eldership, were incredibly gracious to us and served us incredibly well. We were humbled with how well they treated us. The pastor has such a heart for teenagers, that he went to neighboring churches inviting their youth groups to come to the conference. We had a great time.

Easter at Huruma

I was thinking about what I was going to do for Easter because Rich was going to be out of town doing a youth conference with Chris and others. Huruma has been on my heart, more than normal, over the past few weeks so I decided to ask Mama Zipporah if it would be ok if I came and stayed Saturday and spend Easter with her and the children. She said that it would be fine. I was very excited to be able to spend the whole day on Saturday and then celebrate the resurrection of Jesus with them. There was no other church I would have rather been or any other family I would have rather spent the day with. I felt like I was back at home when I was there. It was nice not having to rush because there were other things I was suppose to do after. I was able to relax and enjoy the kids. I also was able to talk to mama a lot, which I love because she is an amazing woman. She is such a strong woman, who has enormous faith. I have learned a lot from her over the past several months.
On Easter, we went to church and had an amazing time worshipping the Lord. We sang so many songs and danced. Hearing all the kids singing and praising the Lord is such a beautiful sound. Even after living there for 6 months and going to church with them every week, their singing still brings tears to my eyes. Especially after knowing all that they have gone through and overcome, and that they can still be joyful and sing with all of their hearts. During the service Mama asked Lisa Lopez if she would go and hide the hard boiled eggs so that the kids could go and find them when church was over. The kids had so much fun going around and looking for the eggs. They also really enjoyed eating the eggs. One of my old students, a boy that I got really close to, came to me and gave me one of his eggs. I told him that he should enjoy it, but he said he found 6 and already ate 5, so he really wanted me to have it. I thought that was so sweet. The kids are so loving and giving, they don't have much but they will give you what they have.


After church we all got together to celebrate the 1st anniversary of Mr. Kwaka and Dorcas' wedding. Mama was so happy to celebrate with the kids. She had the top part of their cake in the freezer and she got it out to serve Kwaka and Dorcas and the kids. The kids were so happy to get a piece of cake. She also had bananas and soda for each of the kids. We had a lot of fun singing and sharing in this experience with them. Kwaka and Dorcas are also expecting a child in June. I am so happy for them, I know that they both wanted to start their family early.

Street Children of Kawangware Update

We are going to be reaching out to the children of Kawangware on a regular basis now. I like to be able to add pictures everytime we make posts, but due to the nature of these children and the life they are living, they get very angry with pictures, please refer to two posts ago to see them.

Their "camp" is about a quarter of a mile away from where the bible college is so we walk over to where they are to gather them to come back with us. When we got to their camp yesterday, we noticed there was an outline of a body among a big pile of trash and clutter that was covered with a disgusting piece of cloth, maybe what used to be a blanket. I noticed the body wasn't moving, and given these desperate circumstances, I honestly wouldn't have been suprised to see one of them covered up dead. It turns out it was the child in the second picture I posted of these children with the bottle of glue in his mouth. He has a severe case of malaria and they said he has been under that cloth for three days without being able to hold down any liquid. We sent one of the people with us, and him, to the doctor.

Our plan yesterday was to gather them, bring them back to the bible school, feed them, love on them, and begin sitting down with them one on one to get their stories, i.e. find out how they got on the streets, see if we can contact anyone in their family, and to see ways in which we might be able to help them.

When we met with them at their location, we told them up front that all of them are welcome, but they would be required to leave their glue at the door and that we would not tolerate any fighting or yelling. Believe it or not, there were several that didn't come with us because of these guidelines we set. It bothered us, but because we have such limited resources, we want to be able to help the ones who truly want help. We had 18 that came back with us. One of the guys on staff gave his testimony, that is similar to where the children are at, to impart the message of hope to them. They were actually well behaved and you could see they really appreciated it. We interviewed 6 of them and found out that all they want is to be able to go to school and have a place to sleep. There is no such thing as public/free education in Kenya. All schools charge school fees and you cannot go to school if your parents don't have the money. School is a privilege not just a given like in the U.S. The glue they sniff takes their hunger away and helps them escape from their desperate situation temporarily. They didn't request stupid things such as a big amount of money, car, house, etc. They just want what every child seems to have, more or less, in the U.S. Please continue to keep praying for them, and us, as we reach out to them.

One last thing, before we left yesterday, the child with severe malaria was at the center. A doctor came to the center with all of the antibiotics, medicine, etc. for this child to be well. He was going to administer all of the medication right there. Even though this child couldn't stand because he was so weak and sick, he refused the medication to make him well because he is part of a tribe in Kenya that will not allow their blood to be seen. They will not allow any needles to pierce their skin. This child may very well die in the next day or so. Please pray that God will break in and save this child!!!

Trip to Western Kenya

Over the past few days, Chris and I went to western Kenya to help pastor Indiazi (who we work with in the Kibera slum weekly) put up a fence on some property he has in Busia, which is on the Kenya/Uganda border. It was nice to be able to help him and see alot more of Kenya. We saw so many beautiful places that it's painful to pick and choose which pictures to put on here.After getting about an hour outside out of Nairobi, we had an amazing overlook of the Rift Valley as we descended into the African plains. Once we got down to the valley, it was very dry but we passed by big groups of gazelle, zebra, babboons, and warthogs. We noticed for a couple of miles that all of the babboons were sitting on both sides of the road and didn't understand until we stopped to take a picture of them. The moment we stopped, this guy darted from across the other side of the street to where we pulled off in half a second. They wait on the road because they get their food from people passing by.
Another 100 kms later, we ascended into the mountainous town of Kericho, where we are doing a young adult conference next weekend where I will be preaching a couple of sessions. Kericho is where the famous Kenyan tea is grown. This is a picture of the tea fields which went on for many miles. The tea fields and operation is so large that the owners provide housing for the tea laborers. We saw three different places scattered throughout the fields that consisted of a few hundred really small houses that the laborers live in. Kenya is also a big producer of sugarcane and rice and we drove by big fields of both of these as well.

This is a picture of Lake Victoria. We spent a little time there and went down to the water, but I wanted to include a far off shot, which I didn't take many of.

Close to our destination, we passed by this rock they call "The Crying Stone." This is a rock somewhere around 70 ft. high that has water pouring out of it year around, both during rain seasons and dry times. It's kinda mysterious to Kenyans because there is no visible water source anywhere around it.

This is Busia, where pastor Indiazi has his property and where we helped him put up his fence. Busia is far away from civilization and this is what types of homes you see off the main road. This is a picture of his neighbor.

Once we saw the property, Chris and I thought that there was no way we could get the property fenced in the small amount of time we had, but literally two minutes after getting there, half the village showed up and began grabbing every tool we had and did the work with us. They were the most incredible people. Below was the end result. Kenya is a beautiful country!