To retain the continuity of the journal, please scroll down to the entry entitled How it All Began, and work your way up, reading each post that begins with Kisii Orphanage.
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Journal Entry – November 18, 2017
This morning I am
awaiting the arrival of Pastor Joel. I am fairly certain that he will come,
because since my arrival in Kenya, I have talked with him a few times on the
phone.
Nevertheless, I
cannot seem to progress beyond the feeling that this entire trip is all one big
journey of folly. What man in his right mind would go off and do such a thing
as I am doing at this present moment?
If I had been
seeking an adventure – then perhaps.
If some mission
organization had first made a study of the area and its needs, and then had
asked me to go – perhaps also then.
But as it is, I
am going solely on what I believe the Lord is telling me to do.
But calls to adventure
will not carry one far, and as my past experiences with mission organizations has
shown me, they are also not infallible. I have had a couple of them fail me
quite seriously in the preparational groundwork that they had conducted prior
to getting me involved.
Vivian is
supportive of me in this endeavor to Kenya, but I think few others actually
think that this is a sensible thing to do. People want to be kind of course. They
do not tell me this. Also, it is true that they know that I am not a naïve high
school or college-aged kid chasing a dream. I do have a history of doing things
in the past that first raised many eyebrows, but in which God has shown himself
always to be faithful.
It is that
faithfulness of God that I am counting on right now, since my own faith in this
endeavor is found wanting.
This morning I
have been thinking about the words that Moses said to Joshua when Joshua was
about to lead the legions of Israelites over the Jordan River and into Canaan:
“The Lord himself
goes before you. He will be with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.
Do not be afraid or discouraged.”
Certainly I do
not compare what I am doing with what Joshua had been called to do. I think
what must have weighed upon Joshua was the enormous responsibility of what he
was about to undertake.
But what I have
in common with Joshua at this point where I am is that I am beginning, as he
also was beginning, something that is by-in-large unknown to us. We are both setting
about our tasks based upon little more than God’s word to us.
I wonder how
certain Joshua was concerning the direction of God in what he was about to do.
It actually seems to me that Joshua had few doubts as to what God’s will was in
this. God’s word to him were clear. Joshua’s doubts, if there were any,
probably came from his own sense of inadequacy and from the immensity of the
campaign that he was about to undertake.
My own doubts
come from both sources. I also have doubts concerning my adequacy for this
task. I do not know Africa. I do not know anything about running an orphanage.
I do not know the culture of Kenya, much less the people of Kisii. I have not
even a foggy notion of the requirements involved.
In addition, I
still find myself questioning God’s leading in this. I am acting based on a belief
that God has spoken to me on this matter, and I do have some confirmations, but
I am far from certain of my actions.
But Paul has
written that since we live by the Spirit, we must also walk in step with the
Spirit.
At the end of it
all, I am here in Kenya. My own steps did not lead me here. I am walking in
what I believe are in the steps of the Spirit of God.
I pray to God
that I am correct.
Journal Entry – November 19, 2017
It is Sunday. I
am waking up this morning in the town of Kisii. Pastor Joel showed up at the
hotel in Nairobi yesterday in the morning. I expected him closer to noon, but they
had driven through most of the night to reach the city earlier in the day.
I say “they” because
he and the driver, plus three others from the church came to the hotel to meet
me. I again was sitting in the dining area when they walked in, and I will not
deny that it was in some ways a relief to see them. After all of my questioning
and doubting over the months about their very existence, it was good to see
them physically and in bodily form. Strange that I should feel that way, but
that is the way I felt.
We had a little
breakfast, and then we all six men piled into the midsize sedan for what I
thought was to be a seven-hour ride to Kisii.
I was
comfortable—they gave me the front seat, but I can imagine it was not the same
for the four guys in the back seat. Happily however, two of them had come to
Nairobi for work, so they stayed behind. It ended up only four of us to make
the rest of the journey.
What the
Englishman told me a couple of evenings before was correct. Our route was to
take us through Great Rift Valley. This largest valley in the world is about
3,700 miles long, beginning in Lebanon, running down through the Dead Sea of
Israel, along the bottom of the entire length of the Red Sea, into the curious and
even bizarre Afar region of Ethiopia, down through that country, Kenya, Tanzania,
and finally ending up in Mozambique in southeastern Africa.
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| By Redgeographics - Map produced from scratch using public domain source data, CCBY-SA4.0, https://commons. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57359214 |
As the three men
from the church in Kisii and I continued on in our sedan, we were to drive
through the part of this great geological feature of our planet that runs
through Kenya.
The broad valley
was very beautiful as we began the descent, but the bottom of the valley is a
wide, flat and treeless plain. It is also almost waterless, making living there
difficult. Many of the people that do live there, I think are nomadic goat herders.
In places we
also see many cattle, and I think that these must be in the regions of the
Maasai tribe. There are at total of forty-two tribes in Kenya, the Maasai being
one of these and the Kisii another.
The Maasai are
probably the most widely known of these tribes, since they have resisted
modernization forces from the outside and have stuck more closely to their
traditional ways, both in dress and in customs. They are known also for their
large cattle herds.
But the
Englishman at the hotel was mistaken in his assessment that I might see
wildlife in this area—at least mostly mistaken. We saw no lions, elephants or
giraffes. The only wildlife that we saw were baboons, of which I have a similar
opinion as do I monkeys.
I did notice
however, several safari outfitter and guiding resorts along the way. I assume
these are the places most westerners go to get their rides in Land Rovers
through the area to see the lions, elephants and giraffes.
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| Kisii County |
After driving
for hours across this almost barren plain, ahead in the far distance we finally
saw the green hills of our destination. It was the province of Kisii. The dry
flatlands soon gave way to fields growing with almost every type of agricultural
crop, including coffee and tea. The tea hills looked to me like well-manicured
gardens, which in a sense they are.
Glad to finally
be near my destination after the long journey from home in Wisconsin, I was not
the only one who was dead tired from lack of sleep. The other men in the car
had driven through the night and now through the day.
But weariness be
hanged, we went first to the church, where the people were waiting for us. As we walked off the dirt roadway down the
hill to where the church is located, I could hear the people while we were
still quite far from the church.
I did not know that they had planned a welcoming
service for us even that day. We were about two hours later than what had been
arranged the previous morning, but no one had gone home. They remained at the
church to await our arrival, but they had not been simply waiting around
looking at the time and getting impatient. When we arrived, they were singing
and had their own worship service well underway.
As we walked into the church, everyone burst out
in every form of emotion. There were shouts of joy, there was clapping, some began
to sing, many were dancing.
There is one lady at church, quite elderly, whose
expression of high emotion is to make a very distinctive sound that is unlike
any other. I have heard this sound many times before as I have watched the news
on TV. It is the sound that the women of the Middle East make when they are
learning of the death of their loved sons in a war. The term for the sound that
they make is called ululation.
Ululation is a vocal expression that is somewhere
between the sound of singing and one of screaming. It is made by emitting a
scream (of sorts), while at the same time rapidly moving the tongue back and
forth, touching in succession both of the inner sides of the teeth.
It is a piercing sound, and if you have ever heard
it, you know exactly what I mean. If you have not heard it, then there is no
way to describe it. For the war widows and mothers of the Middle East, it was a
lamentation. For this lady as we entered the church, it was an expression of
great joy.
Someone else called out, “Our daddy has come!”
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