I arrived in Kenya on Sunday morning 12/3 around 2 am and got
to bed around 3. We were up at 8 am and off
to preach at a local church. It was
quite a switch to go from -2 to 88 and humid.
I am trying it adjust. I imagine
88 degrees sounds good to most of you right now, but after a full day of training in the
sauna-like conditions I am pretty wrung out. Yesterday I came down with respiratory problems probably from either
allergies to something in the air here or due to a cold. Either way it will make things a bit more
challenging.
Our first day of training went well, although 5 of the 12
did not make it. Most of those there had
worked pretty hard on their study of Colossians. We did a review of some of the tools and
worked through an overview of the book. Everyone finally arrived and the students began preaching yesterday, the
second day. I was overjoyed and
pleasantly surprised by how well they did.
Everyone had made significant improvement and handled their text quite
well. I think back to where these guys
were just a couple of years ago before we began training them. The growth in their ability to understand and
teach the message of the text is simply amazing. Praise The Lord! This is a real confirmation of our training
program to produce significant results over time.
That is the good part.
On the other hand I am finding that few of the other pastors in the
denomination have taken full advantage of the training as it has been handed
down to them. Only 3 have followed
through on the whole program. The
leadership and organization of the denomination is just not strong enough to
overcome all the issues that keeps pastors from being involved. I am not sure what the solutions are here, but
we will have to think carefully about this in the future with other groups we
work with.
Thank you for your prayers,
Al
