Sunday Worship and Beyond

We had breakfast at 6:30 with the other teams and joined in a group prayer before many of them left for their various destinations.  We loaded a truck with our footlockers and other luggage and then I got a very pleasant surprise.  Allan, our driver from our trip last November, was there to pick us up.  He will be our driver all week.  What a blessing.  I had asked for him and Catherine pulled a few strings so that he could switch with another driver.  He had been slated to go with the team serving in Namonga.  When I spotted him, I literally let out a yell and ran to hug him.  We left for the church in Kiambu around 9:30am and were greeted upon our arrival by Pastor James, who is responsible for the parish comprised of the churches in Kawangware, Kibera and Kiambu.  I am looking forward to working with him.  He has been involved with many of the Vision Kenya clinics in other parts of Kenya with many other teams and he is very dynamic.  We have an experienced group of Nuru (Lutheran Hour) workers and evangelists from other ELCK churches coming to help us.  Also, school is out between terms right now, so I am expecting quite a few of the young people in the congregation will be able to help.  We may have a pretty incredible week ahead of us.  Michael, the lay pastor of the congregation was there early to greet us too.  He was grateful that I had kept my promise to return to Kiambu someday.  It will be a joy serving with him again.

We had a wonderful worship service, following the liturgy in Swahili, their choirs singing for us and we returning the favor.  Jane led us in singing a song for the congregation and we followed up with the Doxology in 4-part Lutheran harmony, always a favorite everywhere we have been in Kenya.  Pastor Kevin was asked to preach and he gave a sermon based on 2 Kings Chapters 6 and 7, using my travel Bible as a reference.  Although it was not the appointed reading from the church calendar, it was a very special message, the main theme of which was that it’s not right to keep a gift as precious as the Gospel to ourselves, but instead are called to share it.   I had the pleasure of introducing the team and said a few word to the congregation.  That wasn’t quite enough for Pastor James, so he had each team member say hello to the congregation.  It was fun.  After worship, we got the schedule down for the first day of the clinic with Pastor James and Michael.  We unloaded the footlockers and stowed them in the church, where local security will keep an eye on them until our return on Monday.

We went to Africa Heart, the lodge we will stay in all week, and checked in before finishing our day by going to the Java House Café, a really nice restaurant that you can think of as half Starbucks and half restaurant.  Regular Java House coffee shops are as prevalent in Kenya as Starbucks, but this is the nicest of them in all of Nairobi.  Everyone loved the food, we ate in an open air section of the café and the weather was perfect.  I bought 500 kilograms (about a pound) of Nairobi coffee beans for approximately $12 and had them ground and bagged.  My mornings will be getting off to a better start for a while!

We returned to the lodge, everyone checked out their new rooms, some showered, others took a little nap.  While waiting for dinner, I met two very interesting guys from a church in California.  One was their Music Director Reggie (are you listening, Rob?) and the other was a dentist.  The dentist had been doing dental missions to Kenya since 1990, and in that time had been put in the position of having to assist in several births, perform operations and do all kinds of things that only God could enable someone to do.  Reggie confessed that he was roped into injecting novacaine and on occasion, doing an extraction or two himself.  We laughed about what most people would call a comfort zone and admitted it's much more fun to live life without one.  They encouraged me greatly, seeing such strong, joyful men of faith pressing ahead in the race.  We met for dinner at 6:30pm and had a very good buffet with lots of veggies, chicken and potatoes.  I led one of my favorite devotions based on the writings of Oswald Chambers, we had a brief discussion of it and then Pastor Kevin laid out the plan for opening the clinic on Monday.  We all called it an early evening, knowing we would need our strength for tomorrow.  Another very full day had come to an end.  Thank you, Jesus!