BUT GOD...............

So, I know that I haven’t been writing like I had promised when I first left for Kenya. Please forgive me. I have really been busy in the ministry and trying to get things to going here. Secondly, it has been quite an adjustment in just about everything. But I believe I have adjusted well and that issue is starting to slow down. Then to tell you the truth, there have also been some bad things happen here that I just couldn’t bring myself to share with everyone. But today we had a miracle aside from some of the healings we have seen, and we saw the hand of God working a miracle over a period of time.

When I first arrived I was very excited to share my visions of empowering women with some minor domestic skills and/or potential small business opportunities by teaching them some crafts, knitting, sewing, beading, etc. To my surprise, the church I am living/working with had the same vision along with other ideas to transform this entire community. To add to my excitement was the opportunity to create a 5 year “business” plan for the church, a job which was my passion in the corporate world. Yes, I actually was able to use the skills that I have a degree in and I couldn’t believe it was in another country getting paid absolutely nothing. Ha! I also had the opportunity to create and design a website for the church. It is attached below and you can learn a little about the slum community I am working in that has been oppressed for almost 20 years due to tribal wars, the political uprising, and many other horrible conditions some which I will have to explain later.

Anyway there are many things that I need to write about with pictures, but I need to share the news as of late. It begins almost a week before Christmas for me. Every Friday they have what they call home fellowships, which is very similar to what many churches in America practice. We have to rent the “home fellowships” as nobody here has a home that can seat up to twenty people, still the concept is the same¸ smaller groups of the church in environments that are more intimate. This particular fellowship Pastor Joseph wanted me to attend was in the neighborhood called the “Deep” which is one of the more depressed areas of the slums. Mind you, areas of the Deep still look like a war zone to me when we walked through it. But appearances didn’t matter to us or God because we had our fellowship, and it was wonderful. After the fellowship, one of the women asked the entire group to go with her to her friend’s house to pray over her friend’s baby who had been sick for a couple of months. So we did just that, then the Pastor gave the woman some money to take the child to the doctor. He had diarrhea and vomiting for almost two months, which was a direct result from not having clean drinking water. We left and I felt like everything would be ok.

Two weeks later, the first week of January, we had an amazing missionary team from Australia volunteer to come give a conference on breaking generational curses and strongholds. The first night I was walking home from the church and the Pastor stopped me to introduce me to the father of the little boy we had prayed for as they were having a conversation by the gate. He had died, and the father was asking the church to provide funds for the family to take the body to a rural tribal location and bury his child. The pastor could not provide the funeral costs, but was trying to consol him and offer him wisdom about burying his son locally.

I was crushed in so many ways when I found out this little boy had died. I cried in my bed and questioned God. I knew in my mind this child would be OK even if God chose not to immediately heal him, it was a simple visit to the doctor as they told me. Then things turned around and he died. God had healed a couple of other people on some other serious issues, malaria without medications, and now this? WHY?

I even got kind of angry at God a little because it seemed so unfair. It felt unfair to me that something that is taken for granted so easily in America as water is such a precious commodity over here and people are dying because of the lack of it. It actually made me sick to think of all the water that companies, apartment complexes and homes waste watering their lawns. How many mornings did I see it just running down the gutters. I actually felt guilty about purchasing cases of bottled water when I was home instead of using tap water. I could have saved the money and sent it to a country that needed it desperately. Now, out of all things, water is the one thing I miss the most. It is strange not being able to go to a faucet and get a glass of water.

Then I found out the truth....

The boy died because the parents decided to use that money for food instead of going to the clinic. Oh how this news made me sick. Then to know how much it cost to go to the clinic, about 350 shs (about $4). I guess when you haven’t eaten in a while sometimes your decisions are swayed. Fortunately, I have never had to be in one of those situations. The church tells me this happens all the time. Oh Lord please help me remember this verse:

And we know that all things work together for good for those that love the Lord, and to those that are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Well I am not telling you all this sadness to make you sad. There is an awesome ending to this story, just be patient with me and I promise my next story will not be as long. In the budget I helped the church develop we had visions of many things, a water project, a feeding project, a school, and a clinic among many others to change the lives of the people in the community. As of late we have had a couple of American churches that have wanted to help with some of the projects, as some of them really aren’t all that expensive. But for various reasons, they have been delayed and we haven’t really been able to start on any of the projects. So I started getting a little discouraged.

Last week I started researching grants that we might qualify for assistance in our vision, and if you feel led please pray God connects me with a 501(c)3 organization so I can start applying for many of them. I have read many Grantor mission statements and I know without a shadow of a doubt that we would qualify for some which would make a huge difference in this community. Since I really didn’t have a church sponsor me over here, just prayer umbrellas of many churches, and I didn’t have an extra $2K to start my own 501(c)3 organization, once again I started feeling like I was up against a wall and felt more discouragement.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come pray to me and I will listen to you. Jeremiah 29:11

You know I thought I had faith, but the faith these people are teaching me, I have never experienced. I know everything is going to work out, I mean it IS God that is in control, right? Still at times it can get very discouraging, and you wonder why you are here and if you are even making any kind of a difference. So I start making plans for the easiest target to try and raise money for, the water project for a mere $2K. Then fear started to come in, I really hate to ask people for money. Kind of a bad quality for a missionary, huh…. lol

BUT GOD…..

For NOTHING is impossible for GOD! Luke 1:37

But God had other plans. Little did I know that He wanted one of the most difficult projects to be completed first before all other projects. The one project Bishop and I both KNEW would take at least 3 to 4 years to finish, He would put together in five months. Then to top it off, He took $8K out of my budget. HE ORGANIZED the project faster and cheaper than what we planned.

GO GOD! (As one of my dear mentors would say, *sigh* I miss her.)

Anyway we had planned to provide a scholarship for a nurse and a pharmacist to go to college and get the necessary education to open a free clinic. Then we would need some funds to construct a clinic. We knew it would take 3 years to complete because of the education piece.

He goes before me and after to prepare the way as we are taught in the old testament... “My Angel will go before you, and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittes, Perizzites, Cannonites, Hivetes, and Jebusites, and will wipe them out.” Exodus 23:23

Back in September, a young American woman named Haley held a free clinic on the church compound and since then she has been creating an organization to have mobile clinics all around Nakuru west and some of the more rural tribal areas. Since then she started a not for profit organization in honor of her brother so that she would be able to provide some medical assistance to those who can’t afford it.

She and her native nursing assistant must have really noticed the spirit within the pastors and the church here because they were looking for some land to put up a headquarter nursing station and YESTERDAY they came to ask the church I was working with if that would be something they would be willing offer in exchange for the ability to provide free services for their community. See when they had met with some of the other churches, they had given them the impression that the churches would try to make some money on the clinic, instead of offering free services.

This young woman has been in Nakuru, Kenya for two years. She has done all the ground work necessary to run the type of an organization she is going to run. For instance she will be getting all of the drugs needed for a clinic for free from the government. Which to me is absolutely amazing in it’s own right. See the government doesn’t assist any of its people in ANY sort of ways. It is completely different than America here. There is NO ASSISTANCE FOR ANYTHING. But the ministry (department) of health has a stock pile of medicines, because they are supposed to be sending out teams of people to distribute them. Because the government is so corrupt, they have chosen to pocket the money that is supposed to be used to send out the teams, and the medicine/vaccines are sitting there in warehouses expiring in their usefulness. When she went to the Ministry of Health to ask them about medicines and vaccines, they said “Here take them before they expire and you can come get more”. PRAISE GOD! We have a means for free medications!

GO GOD! Once again Romans 8:28…..Once again, GO GOD!

She has organized a whole list of volunteer nurses and community workers that are ready and willing to come to Nakuru West. The community workers do all kinds of things like help with family planning and nutritional follow ups. If the family does not comply, the community workers can actually report them up their chain of command, almost like a social worker in America, to the police who would force a mother to continue to take her child to a nutritionist if needed. In addition a nurse can distribute medicine without the need for a pharmacist.

PRAISE GOD! We have workers!

Now all we need is a building and believe it or not it isn’t going to cost much more than the water project. I can’t wait to see how God is going to play this one out!

So God willing we are going to have ourselves a free clinic in February!

I just can’t thank God enough. I can’t find the words to thank Him that I will not have to know of any more stories like the little boy from the Deep, because we can just tell a mother come to the church clinic for free.

Praise GOD!!!

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move, nothing will be impossible for you. Mathew 17:20-21