SUNDAY IN KENYA!
Monday, February 24, 2024—CORAT Conference Center, —Karen, Kenya Like you, I live in a mansion. My lights come on when I turn the switch. I drink water straight out of my tap. My toilet flushes every time. My room stays exactly the temperature that I set on my thermostat. When I go to bed I set my security alarm. And, when I walk into my spacious shower, I turn on the hot water and take as much time as I want to. There is an “endless supply” of hot water at my demand and command. Those sentences are the narrative that explains the difference in life in America and life in so many third-world environments.
This morning, the shower was hot. It has been hot every morning since I arrived in Kenya. So, I decided I needed to say thank you for that. So, I did. I wrote it on my mirror as the steamy mist caressed my tired old body.
It’s Monday morning in Kenya. I didn’t write last night. I was too tired to get my thoughts to the keyboard. That’s how you know you had a great Sunday in Kenya…You finish empty!
The team had their first experience of Sunday worship in Kenya.
I describe on our Kenyan churches as “Bapti-costal”. The doctrine would be comfortable for anyone reading this writing. The worship style?….Well, it ain’t what you experienced yesterday morning.
As I stood to preach yesterday, I asked “have you HAD church today?! Have you… had….church?” I said, “put your hand on your neighbors back between their shoulders and give them a little rub. Now, is your hand wet from their back? If it is… we’ve had church!”
Kenyan love to dance. A Congo line broke out at one point. I experienced my first police whistle in the worship band yesterday.
And although the conservative, white, baptist team from Tennessee would probably faint if this worship broke out at home…they, like me, realized that it was worship! And if we are worshipping, I don’t think God stresses over how we express it, do you?
Every preacher, teacher, and those who testified from the U.S. team yesterday brought pure Biblical manna to these hungry hearers.
When I preach in Kenya, I feel as though I am dipping a sponge in the sweetest of mango juices and squeezing into parched, open mouths. Pens ready. Notebooks open. And the verbal affirmation when God does speak through you and His Word is like a tympani roll in my soul. My faith has increased. My strength is being renewed. I have seen it with my eyes. I have touched it with my hands. I KNOW what the Lord has done!
Preaching here as ruined me for preaching there.
I will continue to preach in the U.S. (And, anywhere else God places on my calendar.). But, it will be days like today that will fill my mind and heart as I rise to the pulpit in your beautiful, air-conditioned sanctuary. I will have missed the dances. I will have missed the shouts of joy and the rolling of tongues from women thanking God for sustaining them yet another week.
But, I don’t have to worry about missing any of that today. Because I and the team are headed back to the church in Tasia (Nairobi slum) to preach and teach all day long. Pastor Harrison has assembled the leadership teams from his 26 churches. Correction: 27 churches. They commissioned a brand new work in yesterday’s service.
I am seeing the Lord do it. He is multiplying the workers. He is calling out laborers into His fields. And, the harvest is plentiful!
I saw folks saved yesterday morning as I preached. But, the dozen or so who met Christ yesterday are but a drop in the bucket that the Kingdom will see at the hands of these 150 (or so) servants of God we minister to today.
Pray. I plan to wring every ounce of God-knowledge out of this team that has been entrusted to me on this trip. I imagine we will smell a little “Kenyan-ie” when we sit down at dinner at the Java House tonight. Not sure we’ll ever get used to that smell. But, it is taking on a new meaning for the team.
Pray. FULLL DAY!!
Your prayers = our fuel.
By, grace, your brother, Mike Curry
Eph. 6:19-20