Kenya 2024 Day 5

Today we had breakfast with Aaron and Dama. They made a traditional dish that is a sweet bread and beans in coconut milk. The girls showed us that they like pulling off part of the bread and stuffing the beans inside. Dama pulled out jam and powdered sugar because Mike likes to eat it like a donut. The bread was sweet enough I could see why. Church service was at their house today and one of the ladies came early to make the main part of the potluck lunch there. A couple kids, Abby and Tony were the first to arrive. They played with the girls and then we played “taco, cat, goat, cheese, pizza.” There was some cheating happening, but I just ignored it. Unless the girls pointed it out and then I said something, but it never helped. When people had arrived, we started with prayer. For this month, the church is praying for people who have never heard the gospel. It turns out there is an app that you can download that will give you a different people group to pray for every day. We prayed for that people group, local churches, and other things. Then more people arrived for worship to start. We sang 3 or 4 songs together. I knew all the songs except the one in Swahili. After worship, we introduced ourselves and said something we are thankful for and/or a prayer request. Usually they obviously don’t introduce themselves, but because we were there everyone did. Wayne kept track of who was there, the praise reports and prayers. After everyone talked, we all prayed out loud and Wayne closed by praying for the requests. Now it was time for Tucker to give the message and the kids to go to kids church. Aaron asked me yesterday to lead kids, so we went upstairs to meet. There were 7 kids. Per the next lesson they had, we talked about Acts 12 when Peter was in prison. The younger kids were easily distracted, but the older kids paid more attention. There were question to ask for different ages and we went through all of them. After that we had our potluck lunch. All the kids were served first and ate upstairs. Sonja came up with soda for them to drink too. I ate my food fast so I could fill a bubble machine that JoAnne let me borrow. The kids kept wanting to go use it outside, but I kept telling them they could but until everyone was done eating and drinking. When they were ready, I had them take their plates and cups downstairs before I would do the bubble machine. We were outside at the entrance to their yard and a couple neighbor kids looked in because of all the laughing and happy squealing. For that reason, we moved to the road. This was fine as there is almost no traffic on their road and they live in a gated community. The bubble container is small, but lasts forever. I did refill it one time because Zuri requested me to. When we were finally done with the bubbles, I went back inside. The people who were left were practicing worship songs for next week, so I joined singing with them. It was a beautiful time of worship. Dama also tried to teach Margaret, Mike, Tucker, Rudy, and I a couple Swahili choruses. I think we did well on “Oh the Blood of Jesus.” From here everyone went home.

Tucker, Rudy, and I quickly went back to our house and changed before our ride to youth group came. Aaron and Dama had a tuk tuk driver they know take the three of us to the church we went to Thursday night. We met Marshall back at Aaron and Dama’s house and he drove us to church. We met downstairs today. Churchill was leading the group that seemed more like young adults than teens. They were just starting a new book called “Grow”. It looks like a good book that I want to buy when I get home… if I remember. This week he explained how the book works and we went through three of the four sections about sin and salvation. There was a lot of cross referencing and looking a little deeper into the verses to answer questions. At the end of each section, there was a spot to write what you learned. I was actually impressed by how many people read the passages and answered the questions out loud. When we were talking about it at the house, Tucker, Rudy, and I were all saying how we did not want to dominate the conversation at the beginning, but sometimes it was hard to even get in to read before someone else. When study was over, we had chai, sandwich, muffin, and a banana while we  had fellowship. Tucker asked the guys sitting with us what their favorite food is and they all said chapati. Next he asked if they like chai or coffee. They all said coffee. This surprised me. Then Tucker started talking about people in Washington and how they need coffee to wake up and so on. He was making it sound so bad. Rudy and I were chuckling. Everyone slowly left the study and said goodbye to everyone else. Then it was just Churchill with us. I really enjoyed talking with him. He is a wise man and great teacher! He paused in between sentences to say our ride was there, but he talked through the driver, Moses, knocking about 5 different times. That is one thing I love about this culture. They make relationships a priority. At home, we have something come up and just go off to the next thing. He led us out to Moses and his tuk tuk for our ride home. I don’t think I will see him again this trip. I have come to realize that is the hardest part about a 1 week trip is you may befriend someone and then only see them one or two times for a short amount of time. We enjoyed our drive and conversations on the way back to Aaron’s and Dama’s house. They were not back from their event, but had given us a key. We made ourselves at home and were only there for about 10 minutes before the family arrived. They asked how our group was, so we told them and then were able to hear about their event. We were all exhausted, so we did not stay long.