Our Kenyan Team
The conference with the Maasai women in a rural area of Kenya was truly an answered prayer. The advanced group, those from last year who were sharing the stories, did all that team member Jolene Balazs of the E3 Orality Team hoped. They spent 3 mornings learning God’s big story from Genesis to Revelation, as well as how to take the stories of Scripture and determine how to best craft the story in their own language so the hearers get it. They learned to teach others the way they were taught and practiced it on Friday with the beginning group. We have launched them to train the other women.
The new women were a super group. Although it was not quite ideal when one of the three translators ended up in the hospital, Cindy and I had a very sharp group of eleven women who accomplished all we had prayed for. We had a great time together as they acted out the stories from Mark 4 and 5–over and over! (They loved being various growing plants for the parable of the soils, the wind and waves when Jesus calmed the storm, the demon cast into the pigs, the crowd bumping into Jesus when he healed the bleeding woman, and the wailing crowd at Jairus’s home when Jesus raised his daughter to life.) We expect them to tell the stories, and they went home each night and did it.
One older illiterate woman shared that her grandchildren were impressed with her ability to know and tell the stories. Another woman is a teacher at the school and said that she would begin teaching her students the stories this week.
We have equipped the entire group to move forward on their own. They are not dependent on us or our help, and that is the purpose of training–to equip others to work with God’s help and then train others to do the same.
In addition, as a gift to the community BOW provided over 60 books for their 5 levels of school at that site. We presented them at church on Saturday to a couple of teachers and 1 student in each level group. The pastor and our guide Michael Omega seemed overwhelmed with the gift.
About a week before we left, it became clear that the Pastor Julius felt the need for more water filters. These filters are not dependent on batteries of electricity but filter the water naturally. We received last minute designated funds to cover the costs. There are 2 filters now operating at the school we used for our conference.
The group of men from the church who built the filters have several others to sell to people or hospitals, etc. in the community. These men are now trained and ready to make water filters and make it a business. Our expert Vincent taught them how to invest some of the income back into more filters and use some money for their families. Thus, they can help provide food at home while also helping people be healthy.
The conference, the water filter, and the books are all not given to individuals but to grow the entire community to be more educated, evangelistic, healthy spiritually and physically. Good mission work should give them opportunities to become more independent rather than dependent on Americans. Unfortunately, that was the way missions was done there for a couple of centuries. It didn’t help them take responsibility for helping themselves and sharing the gospel.
After the conference our team of three was blessed to visit the Masai Mara for 2 nights, only 3 hours away. Seeing God’s created handiwork of animals in their natural habitat was truly awesome–in the true sense of that word! We are so grateful that we individually had the money and time to go while we were so close. It was a truly spiritual experience to watch these animals as we saw the wildebeests and zebras in their yearly Great Migration following their God-given natural instincts.
Thank you for praying and giving to this cause. To God be the glory!
