This was the third day of training. On Monday, only half of the students were there to start. Several came later, two came the next day and one more today. We must work with them on the importance of coming at the beginning and staying throughout the meetings. One didn’t show up today and no one knew why.

On Monday, the training went well although the students had not done their pre-assignments mostly because they did not receive them in time. It is difficult to distribute the assignments when no one has mail service or email. We will try to give out the assignments for the next training at the end of this one.

It is quite hot and humid here and the students lose their ability to think well by mid afternoon. We have had to adjust the schedule to present more interactive materials in the afternoon and thinking materials in the mornings. This is par for the course in cross cultural training, always adjusting to the circumstance. We covered the topic of world views on Monday and Tuesday and it was a real struggle for them to understand the concept but I think we finally got through.

Today, Wednesday, was especially frustrating. Several factors contributed. Our main translator brings her 2 year old boy with her and he is a typical 2 year old. He runs all over, gets into the markers, books, notebooks, etc., and cries, pushes chairs around, etc. all during the teaching. At times she nurses him during translation. It really is a challenge all in all. Today lunch was two hours late, throwing the schedule all off. We couldn’t find the marker so the students took forever to write out their presentations. In general there seemed to be a lot of confusion and their work was disappointing. I think it is partially a warfare issue so we talked and prayed together about that. It is really a pleasure to have Eric my partner to talk to and to strategize with. Our Kenyan leaders also are very helpful. In the end, after a very hot and frustrating day, I think we accomplished a lot in the last session. We are cancelling one topic tomorrow and adding a new exercise to help with an area they are struggling with. I trust the Lord to help us make progress tomorrow and Friday. Thanks for helping us in your prayers as we battle for God’s purposes here.

Al

Sunday in Kenya

Saturday was a quiet, restful day for me and was much appreciated. I enjoy getting here a couple of days early so I can adjust to the 9 hour time change before going to work. On Sunday morning, I traveled about a half hour to a local country church for services. It is always a joy to worship with the believers here. They are so open in their worship. I estimated that there were well over 100 people in the small building with over half of them young children. The service started around 10 am and we had singing, praise, prayer and more of the same for over an hour. Then small “choirs” as they call them, sang special numbers, starting with the little kids first and working up to the young people and finally the adult women. That took another hour. Then I preached with translation for about 40 minutes and the pastor added on to the end his own comments for another 15 minutes or so. Then, they had announcements and some more singing for another half hour. We finished around 1:30 pm. That takes some stamina. I was very impressed with the fact that many of the younger children, 8 to 10 year olds, were still paying very close attention to the end. Obviously their attention span is much greater than that of our children. I am forced to wonder if television and video is one of the main culprits in this difference.

On the way home, after dinner under the mango tree, I rode back to the highway on a motorcycle. Then I hitched a ride with two guys in a small truck back to town. They asked if I was a pastor, since I was carrying my bible. They said one was a Christian and one a Muslim and that they worked together in this small business they had. Life continues to be interesting on the road.

The pictures are of the church building, the inside before the service, during the service while a children’s choir was singing, and the pastor’s wife counseling a woman before the service.

Thanks for your continued prayers,

Al

Arrived Safely in Kenya

Thankfully, I arrived at my guest house in Kenya just after 2 am local time, around 11 pm Central time. Only 34 hours from Des Moines this time. I got about an hour of rest from Detroit to Amsterdam, and another hour on the way to Nairobi, and felt like that was enough to get me by quite nicely, although I was glad to see the bed when I got here. I had some significant conversations with a nominal Christian American, a good Christian brother, and a Muslim man from Mombasa.

It is the middle of summer here, high 80’s every day and quite humid. I walked into town today to get money exchange, and to get minutes for my computer modem, and on the way home it began to pour. I was soaked by the time I got home, a good cool shower that I know I will pay for later as it continues to heat up and steam.

I feel so privileged to be here to serve and train these men and women in the Word of God. Pray for us that this week will be significant to their progress, and for their transformation through His Word, and our transformation as well, of course.

Al

A Good End To Kenya Training

We finished the training in Kenya today and were overall satisfied with the results. The pastors we worked with started right away organizing a training session for other pastors, to be held in about 6 weeks. They are very serioius about their responsibility. The week has been up and down. On Wednesday we had a lot of spiritual opposition, crying baby, hard rain, tired pastors, etc. They didn't do too well that day, but bounced back the next. We could really see progress in their presentations over two years ago. It has been good to work with Wes and we have had a lot of good talks planning for the future and discussing things we can do differently.

I am really excited about the whole church organization here and the growth we have seen over the past 4 years. This is my 5th trip to Kenya and the changes are dramatic. The Kenyans are now strategizing about reaching far off places in their country, and in a couple of weeks will be sending two of the men we are training to Tanzania to help with the mission work there and to do training for two years. This is what we mean when we say develop, empower and release nationals to do ministry, multiplying our efforts. Four years ago they had no training at all and were not anywhere near as healthy as they are today. Praise the Lord! Every time we come we take baby steps with them but they add up to giant gains in the kingdom. Thanks for your help in getting us here to do this training. The Lord is blessing our efforts!

Al

Leaving Uganda and Beginning in Kenya

The training ended in Uganda for me on Thursday evening. I was greatly encouraged by the response of the pastors and how the training went generally. We think this could be a possible future training site with great potential. It is possible that leaders from here will join me in Kenya in December to experience the training there and consider a similar training process for themselves beginning sometime next year.

I left Mbale, Uganda at about 5 pm and started the long 5 hour trip to a hotel near the airport in Entebbe where I was to spend the night. I wish it had been a bit earlier when we crossed the headwaters to the Nile, it would have been fun to see that before dark. When we reached Kampala, about an hour before the hotel, we stopped to eat. I put my debit card in the ATM machine and must have done something wrong because it captured it. I needed the card in Kenya to get cash for expenses there. We had to travel on to the hotel and then come back during rush hour to the bank the next morning to retrieve my card. Thankfully the bank eventually cooperated, returned my card, and we were on our way back to the airport. Such fun! The rest of the trip to Kilifi, Kenya was routine and boring and therefore great!

It was good to be in the worship service on Sunday where I preached. Their worship is quite different from ours, but still very honoring to the Lord. Even though I usually do not know what they are saying or singing it is beautiful to watch them love the Lord. One of the pastors we have worked with in the past gave a testimony that last January some men planned to kill him one night. Some dogs outside his house scared them off and he was spared. Unfortunately, they then went to his elder brother’s home and killed him. We do not know what these men face on a day to day basis and yet they have such commitment and joy.

We began our first session this morning (Monday) with only half of the students we expected. A couple could not come because of work including our best translator. One pastor found out just before we started that his father died and he had to leave. We started late to allow a couple more to come and then our translator struggled a bit as we taught. Our one woman student, who is a great translator, arrived so we were all relieved. Soon we found out that she had her 1 year old son with her and he wanted to be with her. So part of the time she translated with him on her lap, at other times while she was nursing, and once while I held him on my lap, although he had enough of that after about 15 minutes. We sense a bit of opposition here, but we won as the men made good progress and really enjoyed it. My partner Wes did well for his first try at cross cultural training and I am enjoying working with him. We are looking forward to a great week.

On a personal note I am so thankful for the privilege of representing the Lord to these people as I train them in studying His Word. It is a great blessing to me. On this trip I feel that the Lord is really ministering to me personally in special ways in spite of the various challenges I have faced. Thanks to you who are praying.

Al

Uganda Surprises

The Lord never ceases to surprise me! This trip to Uganda is just one more example of His surprising ways. The teaching has gone very well with the students listening well and making good progress. They are perhaps the most enthusiastic learners we have had yet. They love to ask questions. It has been fun to teach them, in part because they come from so many different denominations. We are working with a group called Impact Ministries and they obviously have a vision to serve pastors who are not from their association. I had an opportunity to meet with their leader this afternoon to discuss his vision and to consider whether we can work together in the future in the training of pastors. As he discussed his passion to train pastors in the Word he talked about his vision for the effort, describing a process he would like to see. It was almost identical to my vision for training, including decentralizing the training through trainers that are sent out to various parts of the country. I was amazed. As I told him what I was doing elsewhere, he immediately saw that it was what he would like to see here. Certainly we have much more to learn about each other but the future looks promising. He is already working in nearly half the states in Uganda, so the potential for training pastors here is great.

Perhaps it is a small thing but our accommodations here have also been a surprise. Usually spending two weeks in Africa is a bit of a challenge due to the housing and food. It is usually adequate but tiresome. I was anticipating enduring two weeks during my training and thinking I would be ready for my own bed and some good American cooking when I got home. I am sure that is still true but the housing and food have been very good here. We are actually enjoying our meals. I consider that just one more of God’s gracious gifts to me to prepare me for a little more austere living in Kenya next week.

Al

Safe Arrival in Uganda

Our ministry time in India ended well and we were encouraged by the prospect of future training in the area. We become close to the three leaders there who initiated the training and treated us so kindly. We look forward to working with them in the future. We had a relatively uneventful flight from Trichy to Chennai and on to Mumbai. At Mumbai we got our luggage very quickly this time and then waited in line for the bus to transfer us to the international terminal. We loaded our luggage under the bus and headed around the inside of the airport to the other side. Half way around the bus stopped and other buses started going around us. One of the passengers asked the driver what was going on and he said we had a flat tire and would have to wait for another bus. Sometime later another came and we had to transfer to it. It was raining and Edie rushed over to the other bus, leaving me to carry 4 suitcases in the rain. She wondered why I was being so slow. She didn’t realize that we had to transfer the luggage ourselves.

Once inside the terminal we began to have problems. Because she was going home to Minneapolis and I was going on to Uganda we had different airlines to get boarding passes with. My flight was 2 hours later than hers so my ticket booth was not open. We had to sit for two hours before she could go into the area where the eating places etc. were. She finally went ahead alone and I went to get my boarding pass. I then found out that my flight would be 2 1/2 hours late, leaving at 5:30 in the morning instead of 3 am. This meant I would miss my connecting flight in Nairobi to Uganda. When I finally got into the terminal and found Edie, I had misunderstood and could not find my gate. The had told me they put me on another flight, but I didn’t realize it was on a later flight from Nairobi to Entebbe, Uganda. When we finally got all that straightened out I waited with Edie for awhile until her flight left for MN, and then waited two more hours until my flight left. I was thankful that I was able to move to an exit row seat so I had more leg room for the nearly 6 hour flight to Nairobi.

In Nairobi, I just missed the original flight to Uganda and had to wait three hours for the next flight. When I finally checked in and went into the waiting area, they came in and said the flight would be two hours late. I had no way to let the people in Uganda, who were to meet me, know any of this. I finally arrived in Entebbe around 5 pm, or 8:30 pm India time. The driver had been at the airport since 9 am and I do not know who was more glad to see that I had arrived, me or him. He gave me a big hug and was so warm and welcoming that it eased some of the hangover from the day. He joked that he was worried that he had somehow missed me and “let a big fish” get away. We drove then about 6 hours to my final destination in Mbale, Uganda, arriving around 11 pm, nearly 44 hours after I had gotten up in India. Needless to say I slept well. I arose still tired but the Lord was with me as I preached this Sunday morning. It was interesting to me that Edie arrived in Minneapolis about 3 hours before I arrived in Uganda, which is about half the distance. Again, traveling is part of the cost of ministry. Thanks for praying for us as we travel as it can sometimes get to me. Praise God for His abundant grace.

We were blessed with the people here at the service and are expecting a good week training pastors. The service this morning was very dynamic, with lots of singing and dancing in the African style. The pastor asked how everyone was doing saying, “In Africa we ask ‘how are everyone’s chickens’”. We got a laugh out of that. I am staying in a nice hotel with a beautiful view of the mountains and greenery around here. The hotel has internet service but it is down today, so I am writing in hopes that it will be up tomorrow. Maybe, as the Lord wills. If it comes I will write more about the ministry here as the week goes on.

Al