Firtst day

Sunday, October 12^th, 2008

When we came out of the airport Charles and Paul were waiting for us outside. We were also introduced to another man named Titus who was working in one of our newer churches in Nairobi. As soon as we had our bags loaded into the boot (aka: trunk) of the car we were on our way. We did not go directly a local hotel to get a good night sleep – we made the long trip up to Nyahururu just across the equator. This is one of the congregations that I visited last year where the members of the church did not have Bibles. They are not in the same place they were last year. They were not able to afford the small building they were renting, so they are meeting at the pastor’s home. They have quite a few more members this year though, and are in need of more Kikuyu Bibles. While some of the people understand Swahili, they are Kikuyu people and understand their own tribal language the best.

Because of delays in our trip we were not able to make it to Nyahururu in time for the morning worship service. I was really looking forward to being there too, especially since they were going to be performing the baptism of 8 children during the service. So many of the members came back in the afternoon to meet us. When we pulled up to the house where the members were gathered, the people came out of the yard and greeted us with singing, eager to welcome us. We shared a short gospel message with the 20 adults and 25 children from Ephesians 6 on the Armor God gives to us through His Word.

There were also a very large number of children at this congregation. Sadly, we found out that many of these children had been deserted or orphaned, and were being cared for by some of the ladies of the congregation. This seems to be a real problem in this part of East Africa. Some of the children have lost their parents to sickness or accident, others have simply been deserted. The people of the churches here are often stepping in to help these children. Of course many of these people have little themselves.

We had only a short stay in Nyahururu because we had to get back on the road again for our drive south to the large city of Nyeri. When we drove from Nairobi to Nyahururu in the morning, we came on a road which was West of the Aberdares mountain range. On the way to Nyeri we took a road which took us to the East of the Aberdares mountains, between the Aberdares and Mt. Kenya. I was looking forward to seeing Mt. Kenya again, but it was completely enshrouded in dark clouds. Russell remarked that it reminded him of what the children of Israel might have seen as they looked up to Mt. Sinai in the book of Exodus.

We made it to Nyeri in the late afternoon and check in to our hotel – ready and very eager to get some much needed rest. We calculated that by the time we went to sleep on Sunday night, it had been over 60 hours since the last time we had slept in a bed!

We stayed at a place called the Green Hills Hotel, which is where Dave, Larry and I stayed last year when we came through Nyeri. The first thing I wanted to do was take a shower after our long flight and road trip. Imagine my great dismay when I discovered that there was no hot water! After taking a cold shower (which was better than none at all), settling into our rooms and getting something for supper we returned to our rooms. With only a few short naps in between, we didn’t care that it was 1:00 in the afternoon back home (9:00pm Africa time) - we were ready for bed! My body clock was so mixed up on the trip over here that I have really had no trouble adjusting to Africa time. I am thankful for that.