CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Love

“Yes, but why did you travel across the world to talk to these peo­ple?“
“I love them.“
“But you’ve never met them.“
“Doesn’t mat­ter.“
“You paid for the whole thing your­self?“
“Yep, didn’t mat­ter — I love them.“
“But how can you love them, you don’t even know them?  You don’t know their lives.  You don’t know any­thing but the few days you met.  How can that be?“
“I know them now.  I know they love me, too.“
“It doesn’t make any sense.“
“Is it sup­posed to?“
“Yes!  Every­thing must make sense … to our five senses, to our log­i­cal minds.  Why would you do that?  Was it for the adven­ture?“
“Love told me to.“
“What does that mean?  Love told you to?  That doesn’t make any sense.  Love doesn’t talk.“
“Yeah He does.”

You’re either a leader or a fol­lower.  If you don’t know that you’re the leader, you’re a fol­lower, and that’s ok.  But if you’re a fol­lower and you don’t know what you’re fol­low­ing, then you don’t know what runs your life.  At some point, you have to choose.

I serve God.  I do what He says.  I’m glad I’m liv­ing the life I am.  Are you?

1John 4:8

Heathrow Police

SOOOooo…

Since my life is never bor­ing, I decided to head out of the Yotel and try to upgrade our tick­ets (which was impos­si­ble — they could let me pur­chase new tick­ets for $3k, but that’s just lame).  So, I took a bus from Ter­mi­nal 4 to Ter­mi­nal 5 (wear­ing only a t-shirt because I’m a big he-man Amer­i­can), and went up to the top floor of T5.  Once there, the woman behind the desk informed me that I can’t get an upgrade — and that she was sorry (that seems to be the stan­dard approach for British Air­ways in Heathrow).

I wan­dered off, think­ing about maybe going to get some Krispy Kreme Donuts (which are on the ground floor of T5).  As I’m wan­der­ing, I notice a few uni­formed peo­ple talk­ing to a small­ish African man, there are at least two men in uni­forms, and one woman — the woman is lead­ing the show (and sound­ing a lit­tle bossy).  She says, “…were they going to meet you here?”

I ignore it for the most part and head for the “lift” (because I’m on the Isle of Fear in the house of George Orwell in Great Britain, it’s called a lift).  So the ele­va­tor comes, and I get on with one other trav­eler, a woman.  The lit­tle African dude comes to the ele­va­tor and tries to get on, look­ing kind of fright­ened and sheep­ish … the crowd of secu­rity guards sur­round him, and one of them steps into the door of the ele­va­tor, telling him, “you’re not going any­way, Mate, because I’m stand­ing in the door, so you might as well get off.”

At that point, since I’m on the lift, I fig­ure it’s time for me to get off, so I step through the joy fest, pat the door blocker dude on the shoul­der and head for the hills.

I headed for the other ele­va­tor, and watched as the lit­tle guy walked away, try­ing to walk (not run, not fight) down the up esca­la­tor, while the guards watched him with a bemused expres­sion.  At this point, they’d told him they were call­ing the Police.

So, I get on the other lift, head down to the donut shop and order a chocolate-glazed creme-filled donut.  The guy behind the counter asks if I want any­thing to drink, so I ask if there’s choco­late milk — he says no, but they have a “choco­late chiller” — which is some sort of mys­ti­cal milk-shake prod­uct.  I order that, pay with my credit card and wait for my “chiller.”

A few min­utes later, the guy comes by and tells me they don’t have the cream for the chiller, sorry … so I order 3 more donuts instead (an orig­i­nal glazed, a rasp­berry glazed, and a choco­late cake glazed).  Then I started feel­ing guilty (ok, I had been feel­ing pretty guilty for a while, but it finally hit me at that point).  I real­ized that this lit­tle guy is likely going to get scooped up by the great sys­tem of fear and “processed” before he has a chance to defend him­self.  That made me a lit­tle sick to my stomach.

So I threw up a quick prayer, and God told me to get on a spe­cific ele­va­tor.  I headed for that ele­va­tor, and just as I arrived, the doors opened — so that seemed at least thinly con­firm­ing.  Onto the ele­va­tor I get, jus­ti­fy­ing the trip back to the fifth floor as a visit to see if I could move my seat at least, since I couldn’t upgrade.

I get there, and lo and behold, they’ve got the guy in hand­cuffs.  There’s a small crowd of peo­ple around him, and he’s just look­ing like one sad dude.

I head over there — watch what’s hap­pen­ing … and finally say to one of the Police hold­ing him, “Offi­cer, can I say something?”

The cop didn’t want me too close (under­stand­able), so I stepped back and a “Police/Community liai­son” per­son came and started talk­ing to me.

Long story short, they took my state­ment about the entire thing — my sense that he wasn’t a trouble-maker, that he was just a con­fused African that was try­ing to get away when things went haywire.

At one point the Offi­cer hold­ing him made a big show of talk­ing into his walkie-talkie to declare what he was alleged to have done (“big show” isn’t the right term, he was a cool enough cop, but my point is that he was likely say­ing this all so I’d know what was up).  It seems that they were under the impres­sion that this guy stole a pass­port and was try­ing to get to the “air side” of the air­port (through secu­rity) using the pass­port.  The offi­cer said into his mike “in the inter­est of Jus­tice, we should have a CCTV review as well to confirm.”

Well — any­way — another offi­cer came and took my state­ment — I told them what I’d seen, they had no prob­lem com­ing to take the report — I kept apol­o­giz­ing for wast­ing their time.  I chat­ted with the cop who took my state­ment, he was very diplo­matic … the whole group of peo­ple were very non-confrontational, very sedate about the han­dling of the whole thing.  Not sure if my state­ment amounts to much value for the guy — but at least some­one in the world knows he was taken away — which may keep him from becom­ing an “un-person.”

In the tin­foil hat cat­e­gory, while I was sit­ting next to the Offi­cer, giv­ing my state­ment, two younger peo­ple (maybe mid-thirties play­ing as if they were late twen­ties) came and sat right next to me on the other side.  The girl was talk­ing about get­ting high, and chat­ter­ing on and on about inane things regard­ing her pass­port and other such non­sense … but some­thing in my head made me think that these two were a fake — I dunno — maybe I’ve seen too many movies and needed more sleep.

On a goof, just to toss a peb­ble, I turned towards them, not to them — just in their gen­eral direc­tion … in a way that could eas­ily be con­strued as me just mut­ter­ing some­thing under my breath and said, “spies like us…”

They never spoke another word.  Funny, that.

Well — that was my lay­over in Heathrow — never a dull moment with Mal­colm, huh?

Out of Africa

We’re in the Yotel in Heathrow now.  The last day in Africa was a lit­tle intense — lots of adver­sar­ial attack.

The flight was good — we got to Nairobi air­port and asked about upgrades.  The woman first said that it would be $300 per per­son per leg (for a total of about $1200).  We asked if there was any sort of deal we could do … and she came back and said that “if we paid cash” they could likely book us upgraded for $500 per person.

I imme­di­ately pointed out that we’re Chris­tians and asked if this was on the up and up.  She looked at her com­puter and men­tioned that she’d need to talk to the super­vi­sor again (who, pre­sum­ably, was the source of the “cash dis­count”).  She came back and said that the flight was over­booked, so we’d likely be upgraded any­way — and booked us into Busi­ness class “pods” — which were great for get­ting some sleep (they recline com­pletely like a bed).

We made it to Yotel — it was a lit­tle bumpy (wifi issues, room style errors) — but noth­ing dra­matic.  I’m cur­rently here in the Yotel room, enjoy­ing the High Speed Inter­net and gath­er­ing my thoughts about Africa.

I know I didn’t post as much as folks might have liked, and I expect Brett was just post­ing all the time (he spent a lot of time in his room with his com­puter) … but I’m going to try to do a big “wrap up” on the whole thing in a day or so.  There was SO much … and sadly, a great deal of it wasn’t stuff I can dis­cuss online (Mis­sions touched on a LOT of polit­i­cal things — which wouldn’t be kosher to dis­cuss here) … but over­all — it was great.  I’m going to try to make it up to every­one by get­ting videos online, the oper­a­tive word being “try” (they’re HD videos) … but I’m doing that from home with the “good” com­puter, not the itsy bitsy laptop.

God Bless, all — it’s been a real Bless­ing to receive all your prayers!  Can’t wait to be home in a few hours (God Willing)!

In Uganda without a charger (Update)

[UPDATE: I bought a charger — I’ll be able to post again from Uganda.  Yay!]

Ok,

I know that I’m a ter­ri­ble blog­ger — it’s not com­pletely my fault — the net­work con­nec­tion in Kenya has been atro­cious — any­thing I’ve wanted to say has been either too large for the con­nec­tion (like “hey, check out this video from the safari”), or just com­pletely blocked because I can’t log in.

The teach­ings in Nairobi went well — I was strug­gling with the idea that peo­ple weren’t get­ting it — maybe because they are more estab­lished in their busi­nesses and didn’t think they needed any­thing new under the sun.  But at the end of the day, a large num­ber of peo­ple told me they liked the teach­ings and were talk­ing with each other about it … so that was encour­ag­ing.  I really do feel pretty good about it, espe­cially the third day when I got down to brass tacks with them.

Mean­while, we’ve made it to Kam­pala.  We had sched­uled to go to the smaller town of Mukono while we are here, to visit the Uganda Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­sity (UCU), but the Vice Chan­cel­lor, my only dis­tant con­tact there, had to leave unex­pect­edly to the US.  I got an email yes­ter­day from his wife that had that hec­tic “we’re so sorry he’s not here, but we can still show you around” tone to it and I just felt like it would be bet­ter to skip it; first, I didn’t REALLY want to go and be toured around like a vis­it­ing dig­ni­tary any­way, and sec­ond it would be a huge “polite­ness­fest” in both direc­tions between peo­ple that don’t know each other at all.  That’s a lot of awk­ward ten­sion in exchange for a pretty long drive out of town.

My con­fir­ma­tion that we’re doing the right thing came when my friend John Long, the hacker of world fame, told me (well, his wife told me — what’s with all the wives doing the com­mu­ni­ca­tions in Uganda?) that they’re going to be in Kam­pala today vis­it­ing the US Embassy.  It would be SO much eas­ier to see them here than any­thing else — so I con­sider that a good plan.  I’m await­ing their call, and will try to reach them locally here as well.

Mean­while — I for­got my charger for my lap­top.  I cur­rently have 21 min­utes of power left — so I’m typ­ing REALLY fast.  I think I’ll be able to find a Mac charger in Kam­pala, it’s a pretty cos­mopoli­tan place — but still, that’s a drag and I wanted to use the energy to tell all of you about it (awwww).

The big adven­ture today is that we made it to Kam­pala Ser­ena, a very posh hotel.  If I get a charger, I’ll try to upload a photo of my mea­ger mis­sion­ary dwelling.  We got here last night, and all is well — except…

There’s a five foot fer­til­ity god­dess in my room… it’s a stat­uette and well… it’s quite graphic.  I was too tired to deal with it at mid­night last night, so I just put my Bible near it and went to bed   … but this morn­ing, I called down and asked that it be removed.  They said that it would be no prob­lem (in fact, it sounded like peo­ple ask this all the time — there are “arti­facts” every­where).  Well, a very nice house­maid showed up to remove it and said she couldn’t be cause it’s bolted to the floor.

“Ok”, said I with a smile, “I’ll just need to move to another room.”  (Brett had con­firmed no idol­a­try in his room … leave it to the adver­sary to put a statue in my room).

She smiled and headed out.  Instantly, the phone rings, and they tell me they’re send­ing main­te­nance to remove the idol.  A guy shows up and lit­er­ally unbolts the thing and takes it away — not too shabby.  Way to go Serena.

So now, the only things in my room of any note are some sort of gourd over my TV, and a Kikuyu Tribal Shield over my bed.  I think the Kikuyu shield is awe­some — the Kikuyu are Utugi’s tribe — so I con­sider that a neato thing to have “pro­tect­ing” me over my bed … kind of like have a fam­ily pic­ture over the bed or some­thing (no, the shield doesn’t really pro­tect me … calm down … I’m just saying…).

Ok — well, any­way … I have 12 min­utes left on my bat­tery, so I’m gonna fin­ish this post.  The Inter­net here at the Ser­ena is pretty tasty — so I hope with the free time I have to get some­thing sub­stan­tial posted — I feel so bad that I haven’t been able to put much else up.  Some of it isn’t for pub­lic con­sump­tion (mis­sion stuff) — but a lot of the prob­lem has been the con­nec­tion … it’s just not con­ducive to cre­ative thought.

Yes, Brett has been post­ing all his thoughts and all that — but he has a desk at home … I have a bed and have been tired.

Ok, enough whining.

Today, we have a poten­tially rest­ful day in Kam­pala, then a teaching/Communion ser­vice in the evening.  Tomor­row I meet with Arch­bishop Orombi, which will be really nice — I like him, he’s cool.  Then after that, another teach­ing for about an hour — then, God Will­ing … we go home on Fri­day morn­ing (at 6am, ugh).  Then it’s a day or two of pure rest, hugs and good­byes, and we’re headed home to the US!

Love you all.

Mission Status Report

Hi all — I’m a lit­tle rested now, and the Inter­net is faster — so I thought I’d write up a bit of what’s going on.

After arriv­ing in Nairobi, we headed over to Kisumu, as I men­tioned before.  When we got there, the first day had a sched­uled meet­ing with the local Pas­tors in order to present an overview of our teach­ing series.

At first, I was dis­ap­pointed at the turnout, I had expected about 40 peo­ple and there were maybe 20 or so.  Then, as an opener, we went around the room intro­duc­ing every­one.  Each per­son stood up and said either “I am the Sr. Pas­tor of this church”, or “I am the Bishop of this region.”  I real­ized I was in a room with peo­ple who rep­re­sented a large body of Chris­tians in the region (one side note — Kisumu hands out the title “Bishop” pretty freely — so while it sounds excit­ing that I would be talk­ing to so many Bish­ops — basi­cally Bishop just means “pas­tor of more than one church.”).

So I got to it and started jet­ting through the two day teach­ing and the Holy Spirit took over.  It was a really great teach­ing, and I got intro­duced to my trans­la­tor for the rest of the time in Kisumu (Bishop Sebas­t­ian).  He’s a great guy — I’ll try to post pic­tures of all these peo­ple on Face­book later.

We taught on the theme that Stew­ard­ship is Faith­ful Sac­ri­fice towards Suc­cess — then we went into def­i­n­i­tions on each of those keywords.

The core read­ing was Psalm 112 (thanks, Kathy) — which goes into great detail about the nature of a right­eous man.  For us, the teach­ing involves out­lin­ing how God speaks to us in every day life — how Stew­ards can focus on that rela­tion­ship directly, and then by seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion through Scrip­ture, Fel­low­ship and a few other prac­ti­cal points (it must point to the Sov­er­eignty of Christ, it must be ful­fil­l­able to the Glory of God), these Stew­ards can then walk with a Sac­ri­fi­cial heart to seek Suc­cess — defined as seek­ing the Favor and Plea­sure of God (not a “quid pro quo” type teach­ing — where peo­ple can “buy” God’s favor through offer­ings (also known as the basi­cally false doc­trine of “name it and claim it.”)

By the time the teach­ing was over, two hours later, the room was full — and all of the Pas­tors and Bish­ops had vowed to come to the entire two-day sem­i­nar … we’d “passed the test.”  It seems that if we’d been shar­ing some mun­dane or non-sensical teach­ing, they’d have likely politely ignored us and not shown up the next day.

The next day, we had about 125 peo­ple.  That was awe­some.  We taught that day on a very pow­er­ful Word from God regard­ing Sac­ri­fice.  That the way out of Poverty is through Sac­ri­fice from Poverty — that’s a tough mes­sage to serve as a fat Amer­i­can — but they got it 100%.  We talked about how Sac­ri­fice in giv­ing can be mon­e­tary, phys­i­cal, or spir­i­tual — peo­ple can sac­ri­fice their anger to God, for exam­ple.  We talked about how being sac­ri­fi­cial with the things that impov­er­ish you (lack of money, lust, lone­li­ness, etc.) is the way to become free of those things — that teach­ing was very, very pow­er­ful!  We were in awe of what God was shar­ing with us!

By the end of day two, we had rounded out the study with some dis­cus­sions about the idol­a­try of money.  One of our most pow­er­ful dis­plays about how sac­ri­fice can save you from the idols that bind you was when we shared with them how pow­er­ful the idol of money is in all our lives.  The pre­sen­ta­tion was a big hit, and peo­ple truly learned from it.  The Bish­ops and Pas­tors were all in atten­dance, and the con­ver­sa­tion through­out that time was about the teach­ing and how it would change people’s lives.  That was a Bless­ing to hear and a joy in which to participate!

The next day, we headed out to the Siaya region in the coun­try­side.  This is a small vil­lage.  The peo­ple are very poor, but they know and love the Lord.  We had a won­der­ful teach­ing time, talk­ing about the walls between us, how to tear them down Sac­ri­fi­cially, and how to be Stew­ards to the Lord.

At the very begin­ning of the teach­ing, in a small church that was about 10 x 20, I had a strong Word on my heart to go to a cer­tain older man sit­ting in the front.  As we began, I could no longer ignore this Word in my heart, so I inter­rupted the teach­ing and asked Bishop Paul if I could go to the man — he seemed sur­prised and smiled and said “go ahead!”  So I went over to the man, knelt beside him, and asked him to pray for me as I began the teach­ing.  After he had done that — I stood up and Bishop Paul pointed to him and said, “this is my father!”   That was pretty cool.

So — we had a great time teach­ing there — and then on the way out of the vil­lage, Paul lead us to his mother’s house, so we could pray over her, which we did.  She was hav­ing trou­ble with her feet.  Paul was with her, loved over her, tended to her, and we had a visit.

We got home, rested, and then had the Bap­tism fes­ti­val in Lake Vic­to­ria on Valentine’s day.  It was amaz­ing.  I’m des­per­ately try­ing to get the slideshow posted to you all — it’s awesome.

Then there was a rally that same day.  All the churches arrived, there were quite a few peo­ple, and we had been planned into the sched­ule to give a teach­ing.  What’s funny is that by the time we got there, we only had 45 min­utes before we’d planned to leave to get Utugi to the air­port.  Peo­ple knew that — but in a some­what “African” way of treat­ing time — they still had two more churches to rep­re­sent with a song.  So each one came up and spent 10 min­utes lead­ing the rally in song.  So now we had about 25 min­utes.  Then the orga­nizer got up, greeted every­one politely, then intro­duced Paul — who was called up to intro­duce us so we could teach.  He got up (know­ing he had to drive Utugi to the air­port) and pro­ceeded to greet all the dig­ni­taries in the room (the larger Bish­ops of Kisumu, e.g.).  By that time, Brett and I were just bemused.  We had no idea what he was think­ing — we now had about 10 minutes.

So Paul then intro­duced Brett so Brett could intro­duce me   Brett got up and basi­cally said some­thing like, “Hi!  Here’s Mal­colm!”

I got up and had seven min­utes to teach.  I went to the inter­preter (who was not Sebas­t­ian at that time), and told him “Brother, I’m gonna go fast — you’re gonna have to go fast too.”  He said “Ok!”

I then told every­one “I only have seven min­utes, but that’s ok, I’m Amer­i­can, it’s enough time.”  They all laughed and I pro­ceeded to give the seven-minute ver­sion of Sac­ri­fic­ing your way out of Poverty — they loved it — Brett gave it a “9” and we raced out.

That was essen­tially the cul­mi­na­tion of the teach­ing for Kisumu.  We headed out to Safari the next day (an adven­ture in long dri­ving, I assure you) — and Paul and Rose came with us.  They had a lovely visit with us in Mara Ser­ena (the hotel in the Mara where we were stay­ing, it’s some­what lux­u­ri­ous)… but sadly, the day they left, they learned that Paul’s mom died.

The news was a heavy blow to him, and we offered our sup­port in every way we could.  In a bit­ter­sweet way, we thanked God that Paul had had a chance to see her right before she died — and Brett had taken pic­tures.  So Brett sent those to Paul and we returned home with that news on our hearts, but still sat­is­fied with the rest, the safari and the work we’ve had a chance to do so far.

We are now in Nairobi again, teach­ing the study to the Van­guard Min­istry and their guests.  Thus far we’ve cov­ered Stew­ard­ship in a gen­eral way, Sac­ri­fice gen­er­ally, and Sat­is­fac­tion.  Peo­ple have been enjoy­ing the study and we hope that they will be there tomorrow.

That’s the sta­tus thus far — do pray for Pas­tor Paul and his fam­ily — pray for us that we will do a good work here for God — pray that we remain under God’s wing and pro­tec­tion please, we love you all!

Dinner with friends

We had a sweet time at din­ner, here in Kiboko Bay.  Inter­est­ingly — God made it a Divine Appoint­ment, how­ever subtly.

Dur­ing the two days of teach­ing, there were two men who stood out greatly.

One was Bishop Sebas­t­ian, who is the Pas­tor of an out­ly­ing church near the Ugan­dan bor­der.  This dash­ing young man accepted the man­tle of being the trans­la­tor for the teach­ing over the two days.  He and I worked very well together — I had imme­di­ate and com­plete trust in his inter­pre­ta­tions — he is a won­der­ful man of God… and he worked just as hard as I did, if not more so.

The other man was Pas­tor Nicode­mus, who is also from a coun­try­side church out­ly­ing Kisumu.  This was an older man who asked the most pow­er­ful ques­tions.  He was absolutely fear­less in describ­ing the prob­lems he was fac­ing in his church, with his peo­ple, with his own fam­ily — I was (and am) in awe of his humil­ity and God given Grace.  He stood up, as a Pas­tor in front of many peo­ple who knew him and talked about his trou­bles with his sons — with his strug­gles to help one of his parish­ioners in her mar­riage — things most peo­ple wouldn’t reveal in pub­lic.  It was like watch­ing a sin­gle blade of grass stand up to a hur­ri­cane — his sweet humil­ity and Grace against a storm of pride — I was just awed.

Well — as we were leav­ing, Pas­tor Paul (our local host) got a call from Utugi (our national host) that she really wanted to meet Pas­tor Sebas­t­ian — she knew him for other rea­sons and had wanted to con­nect (she did not attend the teach­ings, this is a retreat for her to rest in prepa­ra­tion for upcom­ing work).  So unknow­ingly, she invited our own inter­preter!  Then, when we got there, Nicode­mus was wait­ing with him

So of all the peo­ple in a crowd of over 100 — these two men were invited by God to have din­ner with us … and while I would have been hon­ored to have din­ner with any­body from the con­fer­ence — it was sweet Joy to have din­ner with these two par­tic­u­lar men.

On another occa­sion, Pas­tor Sebas­t­ian told Brett and me some­thing funny.

In the church, in the mid­dle of the day, it was likely close to 90 degrees.  As charm­ing as I am, it was too much for some peo­ple, and they’d nod off (yes, I bored them to sleep   (no I didn’t — you wouldn’t believe how hot it was)).  Well, dur­ing lunch on the sec­ond day, he explained some­thing to us.

Every once in a while, I would say some­thing very short, and he would say some­thing incred­i­bly long.  It would be like:

Mal­colm: “So it’s a door…“
Pas­tor Sebas­t­ian: “Na ike no membe shi atta no fen­geri ji naba ki noko fa sana.  Sha ki noko lessa fe paka sipe ni na kappa to moke shi gana ki nopo.”

…and I’d kinda look over at him and he’d have this oh so inno­cent smile on his face, and a few peo­ple would be chuck­ling in the room.

What he was say­ing was:

“So it’s a door… hey, if the per­son next to you is sleep­ing, give them a pinch, this is impor­tant.”

God Bless you all.

Mal­colm

Kisumu Teaching Seminar

We had a great two and a half day sem­i­nar teach­ing on Bib­li­cal busi­ness prin­ci­ples.  We taught on:

• Stew­ard­ship: Faith, Sac­ri­fice, Success
• The Per­son of God in Christ
• Sac­ri­fice as Freedom
• The idol­a­try of money

and many other things.  It was a pro­found time and the Lord moved in a Mighty, Mighty way.

I’m very tired, so I’m going to just say good­night to every­one — we are Blessed to have the Inter­net to reach you all — I hope that per­haps soon I’ll have the energy to write up a bet­ter report!

God Bless, all.

Mal­colm

Burst Report — Kiboko Bay, Kisumu

We are cur­rently stay­ing at a very nice resort in Kisumu, it is named Kiboko Bay resort.  I’m stay­ing in a tent — but it’s a really nice tent (it has a fridge and a shower, for example).

We are prepar­ing our first teach­ing on busi­ness and have learned that the pas­tors in this city have been anx­ious for our arrival because there is a pow­er­ful teacher con­vinc­ing peo­ple to join his cult by mak­ing some wild state­ments (like God the Father is telling him things that He is not telling Jesus, and so forth).  A foun­da­tional stone in his plat­form is around money — so we’ve arrived in the midst of some­thing.  Suf­fice to say — prayer cover is requested.

Mean­while … here’s a brief recap.  We left Lon­don, the flight was pretty good.  The plane was newer, and our sec­tion was some­what empty, so Brett and I got to spread out and use the chairs next to us for our stuff … which was nice.  We used my “spread­sheet method” for beat­ing jet lag and it seems to have worked pretty well … the hard­est part was the last three hours on the plane into Nairobi.

Faith met us at the air­port, drove us to Utugi’s house and after a few sin­cere “Hello, I love you so much, it’s so good to see you again!” greet­ings, we headed to bed.  It was night-time — we got up at 7am and are on the cor­rect clock.  Woot.

We took it very lightly the first day, went into Nairobi to get a few things and let Brett see some Africa.  We walked around town, took a Matatu (my first, believe it or not (a Matatu is a pri­vate bus — their ver­sion of bus trans­porta­tion)), and had lunch.

I’d been stress­ing about assem­bling the teach­ing because, even though I had the whole thing “writ” in my head, I was strug­gling to get it to a place where it was acces­si­ble to Brett (you know … like on paper?).  He and I talked it out and he really dug in to help me just talk it out while he jot­ted it all down.  What a bless­ing he is to me on this trip … he truly car­ries that weight (more on that in a minute!)

We vis­ited the Van­guard, where our host Utugi is the Sr. Pas­tor — and said hello to old friends, includ­ing my dear friend John Kamau, who is the Stew­ard of the Van­guard min­istry.  We dis­cussed ful­fill­ing the non-profit sta­tus for Tan­gu­lia (the US branch of Van­guard) and oth­er­wise just vis­ited.  He is cur­rently rais­ing 500 chick­ens, but they are not laying.

The next day was really the day that Brett and I dug in on the teach­ing prep … it’s in good shape and he has it into a pro­jec­tor ver­sion in Pow­er­Point … which is wonderful.

Our biggest “thorn” has been the Inter­net — or lack thereof.  We grap­pled with the “gad­get” as they call it (a USB cel­lu­lar modem), and even vis­ited an Apple store to get it work on my Mac­Book Pro … it did work … but in the house, the con­nec­tion is weak and we strug­gle to get through­put that doesn’t make us want to pull my hair out (I lend my hair to Brett for pulling when he’s frus­trated ).

This morn­ing, we got on a plane, headed to Kisumu with train­ing in hand … and as we were leav­ing the house, God told me I had bet­ter let peo­ple help me or I was going to hurt my back … some­thing I don’t like to do (let peo­ple help me … or hurt my back for that mat­ter).  Brett then lit­er­ally car­ried that weight and became like a pack-horse with both our back­packs and all the other stuff … I felt like a big namby-pamby … he’s such a won­der­ful Brother in Christ!

We met with Bishop Paul and his wife, Rose — and they drove us to the resort.  It was funny because the car was slightly small in a Euro­pean way, and with five adults, two of whom are Brett and me (we’re not small men), the car had lit­tle room for lug­gage — so we kind of packed it all in like a clown car and headed on our way.  The car was heavy enough with all of this that it would bot­tom out on big bumps … not totally funny, but still a lit­tle funny

We got to the resort — it’s by the lake­side — and started check­ing in.  There was some con­cern over whether we should stay or not … but after some prayer and dis­cus­sion — we all feel it’s a good place to be for rest.  It’s pretty neat — the “rooms” are large mil­i­tary size plat­form tents that have been com­pleted tricked out with tiled bath­rooms and elec­tric­ity and every­thing.  The area is nice and we’re rest­ing right now in prepa­ra­tion for the meet­ing with the pas­tors this evening… a pre­cur­sor to the train­ing tomorrow.

I’m going to live on the edge and try to upload a photo with this post.  God Bless you all … if there’s a photo, it’s of me in my “tent.”

Oh … one last quick story.  At lunch, I ordered the “Kiboko Prawns” while we were sit­ting at the table.  Pas­tor Paul was with us, and he sud­denly started talk­ing quickly in Kiswahili with the wait­ress.  She smiled and answered and they both laughed.  It went some­thing like this (this is fake Swahili, don’t try to trans­late it, I’m mak­ing it up):

Bishop Paul, in a slightly pro­tec­tive tone: “Muzeme tum­beka no swaka kiboko na kana do moke ni tara?“
Server: “(smile) Na na … no toka ni bwane ni fora ka take kiboko kwa prawns.“
Both: “hahahhahahaaha”

(btw — much of day is lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sa­tions like this)

He then turned to me and said, “Kiboko means hippo in Swahili… I was afraid you were order­ing that.”

Ok — here’s a pic­ture — God Bless you all.

If you’re try­ing to cal­cu­late what time it is here from the US, sub­tract an hour and flip the clock — so my 10pm is: 10 — 1 = 9 … pm becomes am = 9am.

Love to all.

Possession and Poverty

So, I’m prepar­ing the teach­ings, and the Lord gave me this.

One way to catch a mon­key is to put a date in a jar and tie the jar to the ground.

The mon­key comes along, reaches into the jar, and grabs the date — but now it can’t get its hand out because its fist won’t fit through the hole.

It works and works to pull its hand out, hold­ing the date tighter and tighter — but the fist can’t fit through the hole, the jar is tied to the ground, the mon­key is trapped.

Even when the man walks up, to grab the mon­key and take it away — the mon­key can­not get its hand out of the jar — it will shriek, and jump around, but it can’t let go of the date.  It is chained by its own desires.

In our lives, we have things we won’t release — things we must pos­sess. These things — houses, cars, jobs, money, pres­tige, opin­ions, rela­tion­ships … they bind us to the ground because we must have them in our lives.

Peo­ple trapped in any sort of Poverty, whether it is mon­e­tary, lust­ful, rela­tional or oth­er­wise, can­not let go of some­thing — and most often, what they can­not let go of is exactly what defines their Poverty.

The only answer to Poverty is sac­ri­fice, because sac­ri­fice is let­ting go of what you value most.

But it is because the idea of sac­ri­fic­ing from poverty is so alien, that so many peo­ple are trapped within it.

If you see any form of Poverty com­ing with a chain to bind you — find your idol and let go — release it to God, or if you can’t even do that — just release it and no longer try to con­trol it.  Alco­holics know this as avoid­ing “doing the same thing over and over and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results.”

We Chris­tians … we sac­ri­fice in order to be free.

God Blesses us that we are not called to phys­i­cally deliv­ery more than we can han­dle (He asks for the Tithe, which is 10%) — but He demands that we emo­tion­ally give everything:

Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eter­nal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the com­mand­ments.”
“Which ones?” the man inquired.
Jesus replied, “ ‘Do not mur­der, do not com­mit adul­tery, do not steal, do not give false tes­ti­mony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neigh­bor as your­self.’’”
“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be per­fect, go, sell your pos­ses­sions and give to the poor, and you will have trea­sure in heaven. Then come, fol­low me.”
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Then Jesus said to his dis­ci­ples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the king­dom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is eas­ier for a camel to go through the eye of a nee­dle than for a rich man to enter the king­dom of God.”
(Matthew 19:16–24 NIV)