Daphne, Chuck and I went to Mbuyuni Church on Sunday morning. This was also the church that Chuck and I would go to each morning to meet up with the pastor for evangelizing in the nearby villages.
The church was very nice compared to some I've seen. It had a tin roof (some just have a thatch roof), a chalk board, rock walls and even some concrete.
I was in love with the church the minute we got there. All of the children were eagerly waiting for us to get there and I couldn't get out of the van fast enough myself. We met Harrison, who is the pastor of the church. His wife's name is Florence and they have seven children. I loved his family immediately. Daphne and I were asked to teach Sunday school, which we had not prepared for. Things like that are very often sprung on you and you just have to go with it. Communication there is a little different than here. But they are always so excited to have visitors and consider it such a privilege to have what they call "teachings" from other people. So Daph and I just went with it and taught from Matthew 14 about Jesus walking on water and Peter's lack of faith. After the lesson we had the children act out the story.
I learned my first year in Kenya that they LOVE to do that! We asked for a volunteer to be Peter and one little boy stood up real fast and said he'd do it and that his name was actually Peter. Turns out he was one of Harrison's sons.
After Sunday school Daphne and I were asked to introduce ourselves and share our testimony. And after almost an hour of singing and dancing, it was time for Chuck to bring the sermon. Shortly after he began preaching I noticed all of the children looking up in the rafters pointing and laughing. For children there to make a peep, you know something is up. Welp, this is what it was...
Needless to say that guy didn't make it to the end of that day.
Monday Daphne went back to Mbuyuni with us because the Holiday Bible Club team didn't need her until Tuesday. The team was actually doing HBC at Mbuyuni that day too so I was so excited that Mom would get to see the church and meet the people I'd be working with all week.
Harrison and Andrew, who is a church member and youth leader, were our translators for evangelism all week. I got to do village evangelism last year but not as much and not with Chuck. I was super excited about this week. Chuck witnessed to the first few people and then Daphne and I would split off from Chuck a little bit so we could talk to more people. We had come back together at one point and we came up to a village with several older children and adults. We noticed that a really old man was lying on a bed (not the kind of bed you and I have) outside of their hut. We as asked if we could come talk to them and of course they were thrilled to have us and ran around getting benches and water buckets for us to sit on. We asked about the old man and his family told us that his back was injured and that he could not even walk. You could tell he was in so much pain and it just broke my heart. It just hit me that right that minute in my book bag I could choose from about five or six different medicines if anything in me started to feel bad. This man had nothing. He just laid there in misery. So I pulled out my medicine bag-I wanted to give him everything I had. We decided the Excedrin body pain would be the strongest and I had a full bottle. We were explaining to the old man and his family what it was and how often he'd need to take it. All we could say was "when the sun comes up and when the sun goes down" because they don't have watches or clocks for telling time. My heart continued to break as we handed the medicine bottle to one of the family members and she had no idea how to open it. I quickly realized that they may have never even seen a pill bottle before. It took several times of her practicing and us showing her how to open it before she could do it by herself. Meanwhile, Daphne had taken the older boys over to a tree to do a little devotion with them while Chuck and I talked to the old man. He became a Christian right there on his bed outside of his tiny hut. We prayed with him and asked for healing. We told him that if God chose to heal him, he would know who to give the credit to. It was such a special day. As we were leaving we told the old man we'd be back tomorrow to check on him.
After evangelizing all day, we would go back to the church and Chuck would have a "teaching" every afternoon. Daphne and I played with all of the children for about an hour while we were waiting on everyone to come for the teaching. All of Harrison's children were there along with lots and lots of other children from nearby villages. I felt a special connection with Harrison's oldest son Thomas. He is 15 years old, or so they think. Most people have no definite idea of when their birthdays are. I can't really explain what it was about him but he was so good with his younger brothers and sisters and all of the other children. He was so kind and serving. I just could tell he was a very special young boy. I was so excited that I would get to see him the rest of the week too.
That evening when we were all back at the hotel my mom and I were sharing about our day. Since they had done HBC at Mbuyuni, she had met Florence and all of her and Harrison's children. I asked her if she knew which one Thomas was. She absolutely did. She said before they left from doing HBC that afternoon, she asked if there was anything or anyone she could pray for. Florence walked up to her and asked if she could pray for Thomas because he had a growth on his throat. As my mom understood it from the conversation being translated, the growth on his throat was cancer and they didn't know if he would live. I was just in tears listening to my mom tell me this. She said his family could not afford for him to have surgery and that it had already eaten a hole in his throat. It was often very painful for him and at times food would ooze out of the hole. Florence said he loved to sing but that singing was very painful for him. Unless he tilted his head back it wasn't very noticeable which is why I had not seen it. My mom and I talked and cried just thinking about Thomas. There was just something so special about him and it killed us to know he might not be ok. We talked to Daphne about it later that evening and we all decided we wanted to pay for him to have surgery with part of the money we raised from the yard sale. The next day I was going to ask Harrison if he could come back to the hotel with us in the afternoon so my mom, Daphne and I could talk to him more about the surgery...
Thankfully, the story gets much better from there. More to come. Paul and I are off to Raleigh to see JOURNEY!!!
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