Kenya Journal August 2022 Edition 1
THE HARDEST PART In order to go…you have to leave.
It’s time. Time to go.
The bags are packed and loaded in the car. Teresa and I just had our last meal together for the next 22 days. The piles on my desk have gradually found their way into their proper places. Everything is done…except…the going.
The last night before a mission trip is always a strange night. I find my mind and heart flowing in and out of home and the mission field ahead. I never want to leave Teresa or home. Who would?! I am blessed with an amazing wife and a wonderful home. Like you, I live in the lap of luxury, by world standards.
But, there is another part of me that needs to leave, even, wants to leave. I need to be on the mission field. Not because God needs me there.
But, because He is already there and I need to join Him in His work. I can’t wait to preach the first sermon. To attend the first prayer meeting. To sit over the first meal with my Kenyan colleagues and listen to their heart’s cry for God to move in East Africa.
If Teresa could go, the leaving would be easier. But, that is not to be on this trip. Hopefully, her health will allow her to join me in early 2023. But for now, she must stay behind to pray and take care of the office and home. I would not want to know how many nights she has locked the doors and turned out the lights…alone. But, she is as called to this work as I am. That is because, it is not a job that we do but a joy that we share. We learned years ago we don’t do ministry for God. We do ministry with God. Semantics you say? I beg to differ. One is performance in order to. (be accepted, loved, be significant, etc.). The other is obedience from a position of acceptance and love because of Who He is and who we are in Him.
So I leave and go in order to join the One who has called me to Himself. Not in order to get to a different spot on the map. And Teresa stays behind, praying and supporting, to enable me to do what I am called and gifted to do. Just, as you sent me once again, to go where you can’t and do what you are not able to (at this moment). I have learned to watch for the real ministry on trips like these. The real ministry tends to take place as I go. In my youth, I missed some very important ministry waiting for the plane to pull up to the gate or the wheels to
stop rolling on my LandCruiser. I am learning to watch and pray. Not just to pray. I am learning to listen more then I talk. I am trying to develop my spiritual peripheral vision to catch that one in the crowd who has caught the eye of the Father. It will be a long trip. Around 28 hours before I fall in to my hotel bed in Nairobi. I don’t want to waste these travel hours. Sleep when I can. Read some. Pray, hopefully a lot! And watch. God knows my flight numbers and itinerary. I doubt He is waiting until the plane pulls up at the gate in Nairobi for the ministry starting gun to sound beginning this great God-adventure. Your prayers = my fuel. Thanks for sending me. Thanks for joining me through these journals. I can’t promise a journal everyday. But, as God gives time and energy, I will try to capture the highlights from my perspective each day of this mission trip. This should arrive in your inbox as my first flight is scheduled to leave Little Rock.
Let the prayers begin!
By grace, your brother,
Mike Curry
Eph. 6:19-20