API USA Blog

Sunday December 8, 2024
We concluded our 5th annual Pastors and Church Leaders conference in Matete on Friday with around 150 pastors and church leaders from western Kenya. I had intended to keep you all updated as we went through the week, but the local network once again proved unreliable. I'm writing from Eldoret as I wait to fly up to Lodwar to meet with my API team there over the next two days. I was supposed to fly this afternoon, but I got a call from the airline this morning that my flight had been changed from the afternoon to the morning. Unfortunately this was about 20 minutes before the flight was supposed to leave and I am about 30 minutes from the airport. Only in Kenya!

Most of the attendees have been part of our ongoing trainings held monthly in different locations, taught by our API team of trainers and they were excited to be altogether in once place at last, as we walked through chapters 6,7,8, 9 and 10 of Paul's letter to the Romans. 

Our host again this year was Pastor Moses Biketi (in the red shirt) and we were joined by our API teaching team of Pastor Shadrack Murimi, Pastor Reuben Luvanga, and Bishop Fredick Ndondo.  These men have been training and equipping these pastors throughout the year in monthly trainings held in 8 towns throughout western Kenya. More and more pastors are requesting this training and the pastors now attending have been lobbying for twice a month training sessions. We would love to keep expanding the reach of solid biblical training in more and more places and so I am asking you to participate in the gospel with us by donating to our 'Pastoral Development' fund. You can donate online by clicking here.

We also had pastors from the DNC (Democratic Republic of Congo) who have been students via Zoom of our Biblical Counseling training led by our Director, Jay McBee. They were greatly encouraged to be together with other like-minded brothers and sisters and were effusively thankful for the training they are receiving from API. 

Our kitchen staff outdid themselves in providing breakfast, lunch and dinner for the attendees. I don't know how they do it without modern kitchen appliances! All the wood in the foreground is for the cooking fire and you can see the smoke drifting out between the top of the kitchen wall and the roof. Chimneys are not a thing in Kenya. I don't know how these cooks can even see what they are doing in the kitchen with all the smoke in the room!





As we do at all our conferences, we handed out book resources at the end.  This year we gave out a commentary on Romans, thanks to the generosity of Evangelical Reformed Church in Tacoma. We also gave out copies of R.C. Sproul's Saved from What, donated by Ekklesia Afrika. This year we printed and distributed copies of a catechism written by Pastor Tim Bourgeois of Tree of Life Church. Tim has been a long-time friend and teaching associate of API and he wrote an excellent catechism that can be used for the whole church. We translated it into Kiswahili as many of the churches here don't do as well in English. 

We continued with our clean water initiative by giving out some bucket water filters donated by Surfing Servants

I also want to give a shout out to my media and logistics team of Frank Maina and John Kamau who are so instrumental in our success. These guys always go above and beyond on every mission!



Hopefully I will be on a plane tomorrow morning for Lodwar where I'll be meeting with our Turkana team in preparation for our summer mission conferences. Thanks for your faithful support and prayers for us!

Tuesday, August 6, 2024
After our conference in Kakuma, Tim and Rob returned home and I stayed on for three day of bringing food and clean water to several villages in the bush.  The first day was spent traveling 130 km out into the desert to reach two villages where George and Bonifice had just established churches. Bush travel can be problematic as there really are no roads as such and we are always prepared for flats, getting stuck in the deep sand, or in the dry riverbeds as happened on this trip. There had been a recent rain in the area and the river we were crossing still had a bit of water in it. Undeterred by the presence of standing water, our delivery truck promptly got stuck.  We later found out that his four-wheel drive was not working, otherwise he might have made it to the other side.

We unloaded the contents, taking them to the other side on firm ground and went about excavating the truck. Unfortunately, he was in too deep. 

We worked on extracting him for about three hours and finally gave up, but this spectacle soon gathered a large crowd of lookie loos, more interested in watching than helping.  Some did appear to help every time the driver gunned the engine in an attempt to get out, but I later learned from Paul, our driver, that they were only pretending to push, because no one had payed them. After we left, the driver apparently broke down and payed them something and they pushed him out in no time! Such is life in Turkana.

I want to thank all of you who donated for our famine relief effort this trip.  We were able to give a substantial amount of food to around 1,500 families.  Along with the food, we also gave out bucket water filters provided to us by Surfing Servants to every village. We went through some basic training with each village on the use and cleaning of the filter and explanation on why they should drink only filtered water. Typhoid, dysentary and other water-borne diseases are a fact of life for these people, and a majority of deaths of children under 5, (80%) are from such diseases. 

Very often, the same water used for bathing is collected for use back in the village for drinking as well. Water is life in this part of the world and in a land where water is scarce, sometimes you can"t be too picky.

Our demonstrations of the filter system we always highly entertaining (and I trust educational) for the people.

We would take some of the local water (this happened to be from the Turkwel River) and then filter it into a clean plastic bottle.

The transformation of the brown sludge into crystal clear water was always a highlight of the demonstration.  However, any final reluctance was overcome when the mazungu (white man) drank the transformed water!

We did the demonstration in each village with my faithful interpreters, George and Boniface. That was my way of training these guys to hand out the rest of the filters to some other villages I was not able to visit. I would really like to see each family in Turkana have the means to have one of these filters for their own use. But the Turkana are a very community minded people, willing to share their resources with each other, so the village headman, or church pastor, would appoint ladies in each place to be the water filter guardians for the whole community.

These are the ladies responsible for the care and cleaning of the filter and making sure each village has clean drinking water.

At the conclusion of each visit, Boniface would teach the village some English.

Monday, August 5, 2024
We began our conference in Kakuma last Monday at the Solid Rock Church in town. This was our fourth conference here and we had a great turnout for this event. We had over 130 pastors and church leaders gathered here as we studied through 1st and 2nd Peter, most of them from the refugee camps in Kakuma. 

As a result, we had pastors from many different countries, including Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. All of the pastors I spoke to who live in the camps were incredibly effusive in their thanks to API for bringing solid, biblical training to them year after year. Several of them spoke of how this training has really transformed their preaching and their churches in the camps and begged us to continue as this was the best biblical teaching they have received.

In addition to Tim Bourgeois and myself, we had Boniface Lokuruka as part of our teaching team again. 

We want to thank the Evangelical Reformed Church of Tacoma for providing a commentary on the book of Romans for these pastors, the Rafiki Foundation who provided Bibles for them, and Ekklesia Afrika who donated other book resources.



As part of our famine relief effort, we gave every attendee some food to take home to their families. The U.N. is supposed to provide food for the refugees, but in reality, hunger is everpresent in the camps. George Lokwawi (red shirt and smiling) is the API Famine Relief Director in Turkana and he really enjoys his work!

A big thank you as well to those of you who gave to our Famine Relief fund and to those who donated to our pastoral development fund for this summer mission!  We greatly value your partnership in the gospel with API as do your African brothers and sisters!

Sunday, August 4, 2024
I'm sure many of you are wondering what's been happening with us in Kenya as our last blog post was a week ago, and I can only blame it on a sketchy internet and a lot of work.  Seems like every time I sat down to post a blog, the power would go out or the network would fail. But I'm back in Nairobi with reliable power and network so I'll try to post a few more times before I leave to come back home. We finished the conference in Lodwar on the 26th and spent a good part of the next day at the home dedication for Bishop Lokuruka. We were prepared for a modest housewarming celebration, but this was far more. There were probably 200+ guests at this event which turned out to be quite a big deal

Several separate church choirs sang songs of blessing for the family, as well as combining together for one or two. And we got to sit in the VIP seats.

Pastor Tim gave the dedication message out under the blazing sun while the rest of us were under cover.

After the singing and some speeches and the message, the whole crowd danced their way to Lokuruka's home. I'm sure Rob got a video of this spectacle but as I was in the middle of the crowd, (actually dancing right behind Tim!) I didn't have the opportunity to use my phone. There was singing and a lot of laughter as we danced our way to the house. Most of the merriment probably had to do with how the two white guys were dancing!

Once there, Tim was given some scissors to cut the ribbon and open the house.

What followed was a big feast and many more speeches.  However, Tim and Rob and John and I ducked out after we had eaten and chatted with many of the guests.

Sunday morning we spent at the Apostolic Faith church led by our friend Daniel Njuguna.

Tim gave the main message this morning.

Sunday afternoon we spent getting ready for our next conference in Kakuma, and the famine relief and clean water project to follow.  John Kamau and our driver Paul Matoki and I worked to get out bucket filters ready to go.



Thank you to all of you who have been praying for this ministry and especially those who were praying for me specifically. God has certainly answered your prayers. I hope to post again tomorrow on our Kakuma conference.

Saturday July 27, 2024
I had intended to start this blog last Monday but when we arrived in Lodwar on Sunday, I was starting to fight off a summer cold and opted for rest and trying to stay healthy enough to begin our conference Monday evening. After that my days were full with teaching and meetings and organizational issues. But I've recovered (thanks to many of you praying for me) and the conference is over and I've got time and energy to let you know how this trip has gone so far.

It did not start out well at all.  Rob and I arrived in Nairobi on the 18th late in the evening. I was bringing some clean water filters given to us by Surfing Servants to distribute along with our famine relief we intend to do in Turkana. However, the bag with the filters was assessed a tariff by the customs authorities at $800 which they wanted us to pay to bring them in country. After a couple hours of negotiations, we left the airport $240 poorer.

Pastor Tim from Tree of Life Church in California arrived the next day and Frank and John and Rob and I enjoyed a team dinner at our favorite Chinese restaurant the night before we left for Lodwar.

Frank and I connected with Pastor Reuben at our storage facility to give him books and bibles to take with him to Uganda. He and Pastor Moses and Pastor Fred are partnering with Gospel for Africa for a pastoral training mission to Uganda where they are right now. We are excited to see our API Associate teachers being used by other organizations to help train pastors in many other African countries!

This past Monday evening, we kicked off our 11th annual Pastor's and Leaders Conference at Maranatha Church in Lodwar town. We had 155 registered pastors and church leaders attend this year, with another 30 or 40 who were not registered but attended.

The theme this year was The Righteousness of God in the Gospel as we finished the book of Romans that we began last year. This year, in addition to Pastor Tim and myself, we were grateful to have two other speakers.  One was a local pastor and Bishop, Boniface Lokuruka, who is also an API teaching associate, and a special guest from Karura Community Chapel in Nairobi, Bishop Ngari Karithi. (Bishop Ngari is on the left in this photo)



A special thanks to our Conference Director, Pastor Shadrack, who keeps us all on track.

Here are a couple of shots taken during lunch time. 



Our tech team of Rob Hostager and Kamau Njenga kept everything humming along as usual.

A special thanks to Surfing Servants who provided us with clean water filters to give everybody clean water.



There is a lot more to tell but we'll be putting up another blog shortly. Tomorrow we leave for Kakuma for a three-day conference in the books of 1st and 2nd Peter. For now we'll leave you with our group shot we took yesterday with all the conference attendees.

Thank you for your prayers and support for this work!

Saturday, December 9, 2023

I am back in Nairobi and in the land of reliable internet so it's time for a post.  Last Sunday, Pastor Boniface, John, Frank and I traveled to Baringo County to begin our conference in Churo.  This is the home of the East Pokot tribe where we started pastoral training almost two years ago. Above is the Churo AIC (African Inland Church) where we held the conference with 110 pastors and church leaders this past week.  Since there are no accommodations in Churco itself, we stayed at a Catholic mission lodging facility in a slightly larger village called Tangulbei, about 17 km away. So each morning and evening we jolted our way to and from Churo on some of the rockiest, roughest roads I've been on for a while; which ultimately had some unfortunate consequences I'll get to in a bit.

Frank handled our registration table, as well as his driving duties and emergency vehicle repair jobs. Some of which involved duct tape!



John handled all our media needs magnificently and creatively, as in Churo, we didn't always have access to proper electrical connections. 

I was told that this is the correct,Kenya-OSHA approved method of getting power from the generator to our equipment.

Like in Matete, these pastors and church leaders were dialed in from the first to the teachings presented by Boniface and myself, as we taught on a biblical understanding of the church. 

This is a vital topic in Kenya where almost anything goes as it relates to churches.  One of the resources given to the attendees was Pastor Conrad Mbewe's book, God's Design for the Church: A Guide for African Pastors and Ministry Leaders in Kiswahili.

Pastor Boniface and I shared the teaching responsibilities with Pastor Musa Maklab  and Pastor Julius as the interpreters.



Thanks to Crossway and Ekklesia Afrika, we were able to hand out bibles and two other book resources to all the attendees, R.C. Sproul's, Saved From What, and Mbewe's God's Design for the Church.

The joy on the faces of those who received their first ever bible was something to see!

We also were able to give those who attended food, including maize, flour, beans, salt and cooking oil, to take home to their families, thanks to the generosity of our API Famine Relief doners! The climate and the economy have conspired to severely affect the ability of these people to feed their families and so this generosity was greatly appreciated.

The elderly and the widows were those served first and they were overjoyed to have food to take with them.



On Thursday morning we headed off for Nakuru where we would spend the night before reaching Nairobi on Friday.  All went well, we dropped Pastor Boniface off in Marigat to catch a shuttle home; and we were about 80 - 90 km into our trip when the engine of our vehicle simply shut down. It turned out that a sharp rock had penetrated the oil sump and drained the oil at the same time the turbo somehow allowed water into places it shouldn't be in the engine. The result was a a blown piston and a dead vehicle.

We ended up having to have our vehicle transported to Nairobi for repairs.  John and Frank went with the car and I hitchhiked a ride to Nakuru for the night, and arriving in Nairobi yesterday.  I guess it wouldn't be a mission trip without some difficulties!

Thank you all for your prayers and support for this ministry.  You have to know that these pastors and church leaders are so incredibly thankful to all of you who make this ministry possible. I'll be flying home on Sunday and for those of you signed up for our newsletter, you'll be receiving a full report soon. 

p.s. This is NOT the ride I hitchhiked to Nakuru.

Saturday, December 2, 2023

It has taken a week to get to a place with reliable internet to even begin this blog so I'll be giving you all a recap of the week we/ve just had.  I got into Nairobi late last Sunday evening and the next morning, Frank and John and I drove to the place we booked to stay for the week. Our conference was in Matete at Pastor Moses Biketi's place but we were staying about 15 minutes away in a town called Webuye. We chose not to stay in our usual hotel called Downhill Springs because, well, it has gone downhill over the years and we needed a new place. So we booked a place called Falls View. It was actually a nice place with good food, service and comfortable rooms. But as with nearly everything in Kenya, there were challenges. I was confronted by the first when I walked into the bathroom.

I'm not sure what the thinking was here, but it required some athleticism to use the toilet. Maybe that was the point. But we've learned to roll with the punches as it were and I made some creative adjustments!  I also reminded myself I wasn't here for comfortable amenities.

The week of teaching through the first five chapters of Romans was planned for 100 pastors and church leaders, but we ended up with about 165.  I suppose we shoudn't be surprised. This was the fifth year of this winter conference and the word has gotten out about the value of this trainng. Additionally, Pastors Moses and Reuben have been holding trainings throughout this year in villages close by and all those they've been teaching are coming and bringing their pastor friends as well.

We were most impressed by the way all the attendees seemed to be focused during the teaching time, and absorbing the material. There was little to no getting up and moving around during the hour and a half sessions, with all those attending concentrating deeply on listening and taking notes.

During the break times, you could see dozens of small groups gathered together talking, not about the weather, but the most recent session. 

I broke in on some of these groups just to find out what they were discussing and found they were really engaged in the Romans material. Everyone I spoke to told me how blessed they felt to be under this teaching. One pastor told us that he had been preaching through Romans for the past month, but now realized how much richer and deeper Romans was than he had thought.  His eyes had been opened, he said, and thanked us repeatedly and said he could hardly wait till next year when we would be going through chapters 6 - 11 of Romans.

Of course we have such a great teaching team with Reuben Luvanga, Moses Biketi, Shadrack Murimi, and adding this year, Pastor Boniface Lokuruka from Lodwar.



Our Q&A sessions at the end of every teaching day provided us the opportunity to add more depth to the day's teachings and those times are always enjoyable as well as enlightening.

Thanks to the generosity of Crossway and Ekklesia Afrika, we were able to give these pastors some bibles and other great resources.

As happens almost everywhere, I get some children who are curious about the mazungu and are facsinated by my white skin.

We left for Eldoret today, to spend the night and take off for Churo tomorrow morning.  But before we left Webuye, we stopped by Nzoina Falls that we could see from our hoter for some close up pictures.



We were truly blessed to spend a week with these brothers and sisters, and are looking forward to being back with them next year as we continue in Romans.  Thank you all for your prayers and support!

Monday, September 4, 2023
It is Monday evening and we just arrived back in Lodwar from spending a couple of days in East Pokot.  We were there to attend the dedication of the new church building for the village of Kresia. API, through the Brad Pederson Memorial Building Fund, partnered with the AIC (African Inland Church) of Kresia to erect a new church building in the villiage.

Although you might think it would be unbearably hot inside, we were surprised at how cool the interior stayed even as the sun rose high during our three-hour service.  There seem to be some fairly strong prevailing breezes that flow through the generously sized windows on each side.

The church was overjoyed to have their own building after years of sitting under trees and other temporary structures. Because this ground is infested with termites, the church made the choice to use steel construction throughout.

We were met by the women of the church singing their welcome and blessing to us as we arrived. And then we were all led in procession to the building entrance where we held the dedication service.

Friday, September 1, 2023

We left Lodwar on Sunday afternoon on the 27th and traveled to Kakuma for our 3rd annual Pastors and Church Leaders conference. The picture above is of what is supposed to be a water fountain on one of the round-a-bouts in Lodwar, but hasn't been quite finished yet. We call it the Leaning Fountain of Lodwar.  And it's been there a while.

We had 100 pastors together in Kakuma for this conference on the book of Ephesians and they were dialed into the word. They rarely got out of their seats during the sessions despite the temperature inside the building reaching well over 100 degrees. Rob said he was going to bring a thermometer next year to find out just how hot it was.  Last year some of his electronics bit the dust because of the hit, but we had no problems this year.

Many pastors from the Kakuma Refugee camps attended this year.  We had pastors from Ruwanda, Burundi, Congo, South Sudan, and Ethiopia attending.  Most of them I talked to were intent on returning to their home country when they could and expressed their great appreciation for the training they were receiving. 

We held Q&A sessions at the end of the teaching day and we were impressed by the quality of questions and the level of understanding among these pastors. 

We closed out the conference with our resource handout, including food. I was told by one of the pastors from the refugee camps that what they received from us in food was more than they received in a month from the U.N.  Part of the problem with food distribution in the camps is that although the food is given free by western nations, including the U.S, the camp administration is run by the Kenyans and is very corrupt.  We have seen barrels of rice, corn, wheat and beans being sold in local markets even though they are clearly marked as U.S Aid.

All of these pastors were so grateful, not only for the resources, but for the word they received. Pastor Ben of Elim Pentecostal church sent me an email yesterday that read: "Thank you so much it was such a blessing to have you in Kakuma for three days.  Have been blessed by the solid teachings from the book of Ephesians. I am  considering by the grace of God to start teaching the book of Ephesians in our church in series.I am fired up!"

Yesterday, Rob and Tim returned to Nairobi to fly back to the U.S. tonight.  But Pastor Boniface, Paul our driver and I are on a road trip to East Pokot.  Tonight we are in Eldoret and then we travel tomorrow to Tengulbei to spend Saturday night. We will be in Kresia on Sunday to dedicate their new church building.  Please pray for us as we travel and minister.

Sunday, August 27, 2023
We finished our conference on the first eight chapters of Romans Friday night and it was a great week of teaching and learning, fellowship with all the pastors who came and connecting with longtime friends, like Pastor Daniel Njuguna of the Apostolic Faith church in Lodwar. I've known Daniel from the first time we came to Lodwar back in 2013 and he is not only a great friend but a great interpreter.

At the end of the night we handed out the resources to the pastors provided by Crossway and Ekklesia Afrika. They each got a study guide for the book of Romans and Conrad Mbwewe's book on God's Design for the Church translated into Kiswahili.

We also gave all the attendees some food to go along with the books. Many families are hurting right now as food prices have skyrocketed.  Everything they need to survive, especially the basic things like ugali flour, cooking oil and salt has doubled, tripled and in some cases, quaddrupled in price.  We want to thank all of you who provided famine relief funds for these people!



Saturday was our rest day so we visited the home of our API Associate teacher, Boniface Lokuruka.

Clean drinking water is hard to come by in Lodwar so we brought the family one of the water filters provided by Surfing Servants, an organization based in San Diego.  They provide water filters to communities in third world countries all over the world and they were kind enough to give API some to give out.

One of Boniface's sons, Kevin, set it up right away and was impressed by how simple and easy they are to set up. Here he is reading the instructions on the bag. Many people in this area are subject to Typhoid because they have no source of clean drinking water.

Today we travel to Kakuma to hold our conference on Ephesians.  Thank you for praying for us! God has kept the team healthy and strong thus far and we thank you for holding us up!

Wednesday August 23, 2023

We began our 10th annual conference in Lodwar Monday night. We are going through the first eight chapters of Romans and it is a challenging task.  But fortunately we have Pastor Tim Bourgeois from Tree of Life Church in Chatsworth, California with us to help break it down for us.  It is also challenging because the temperature is in the high 90's and there is no air conditioning in the venue. However, that doesn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the participants and we have 175 pastors and church leaders attending from 8:30 in the morning till 9 at night.

Here are are few shots from the first two days.

Tim and I each have our own interpreters that we have been working with for 10 years, and these guys are really good. Pastor Daniel Njuguna translates for me and Pastor Boniface Lokuruka translates for Tim. Translation is an incredibly difficult job, but these guys make it seem effortless and we have the confidence that they are getting the message across.

The conference is hosted by the Lodwar Pastors Fellowship in concert with API School of Ministry.

This is Paul our driver while we are in Lodwar. One of the best drivers we've had apart from our API driver, Frank Maina. Paul is a joy to work with and he anticipates our every need.

Each day at 4 pm we have our Q & A session, allowing the participants to ask questions and get clarification on the material we have covered. These are very helpful, not only for the teachers but also for those who are attending. 



We will keep you up to date on what is going on over here but the conference so far has been very helpful, encourageing and stimulating for those attending judging by the interactions we have had. The conference runs through Friday night and then on Sunday we move to Kakuma to begin a three-day conference in that city in partnership with the Kakuma Pastors Fellowship. Thank you for praying for us as we move through this week and next.

August 21, 2023
Rob and I arrived in Nairobi last Friday night after mildly eventual trips.  Rob flew to Amsterdam to Nairobi, and I flew to Paris and then Nairobi. We were supposed to arrive in Nairobi at the same time but both our flights were delayed by different things and I arrived about an hour later than he did. On the first leg of my flight, the person sitting next to me lost her lunch in the seat in between us and I made a hasty departure to another seat. My flight from Paris was delayed by a medical emergency after a boarding passenger fainted as he was walking to his seat. He revived with the help of some doctors on board, and then was checked out by a Dutch firemen paramedic team who okayed him to continue. However as we taxied out to our take off point, he fainted again and we returned to the gate and sent him off the plane. By this time we were two hours behind schedule and so arrived in Nairobi at midnight. But Frank had already collected Rob and we finally got to the hotel around 1:30.

Tim arrived the next evening from Dubai and we left Sunday afternoon for Lodwar with John Kamau. Frank drove us to the airport for the flight to Lodwar which was thankfully uneventful. 

We had a few too many bags and boxes to fit inside. Fortunately we have a roofrack on the vehicle.

Our flight to Lodwar ran through Eldoret where we picked up two more members of the team - Pastors Shadrack and Reuben.





We held our firsr session tonight and began a week of studying the first eight chapters of Romans.  More to come.

Saturday May 13, 2023
After the rest of the team left for the U.S., Frank and I traveled to Nakuru where we met the team from Lodwar and Eldoret and we traveled to East Pokot.  We stopped in Rumarumti where we loaded up with famine relief supplies before going on to Tengulbei where we roomed for the next four days. 

On Sunday, we visited Amaya to share Sunday services and distribute food.  I found out when we got to Amaya, that this village had been one of the last places of ministry for Linda Wickman and her husband in Kenya. I got to meet many who had been young children when Linda and Wickman (as they referred to her husband!) were there, and they told me how they had come to Christ through the Wickmans. I felt priviledged to meet so many who were the fruit of their ministry in Amaya!

Musa Maklab, and his brother, Meshack (Musa with red tie and Meshack with whom I am shaking hands), who had been young boys when the Wickmans were there, showed us around the mission station.

Here is the clinic building Linda, a nurse, worked out of while she was in Amaya. Musa, Meshack and Peter.  Peter couldn't stop talking about 'Mum' as he referred to Linda and told me endless stories about growing up under their care.

The site still had the house built by the first missionaries, the Davis', to the area. 

And the first pit latrine built by them, still functional!

After the service, we ate lunch and distributed the food among the five churches that had gathered this Sunday.





Sunday afternoon we began our pastor's conference in the village of Churo, about 17 kilometers from Amaya.

We spent Sunday afternoon and all day Monday with about 100 pastors and church leaders from many churches around the area teaching the Foundations of the Faith.

The afternoons were especially challenging as the roar from the brief but intense rain on our tin roof made any attempt at speaking fairly fruitless - so we sang and jumped until the rain abated!
Thanks to Ekklesia Afrika and Crossway, we had Bibles and other great resources to give to the pastors.



We also had food to hand out to these pastors and their families thanks to the generosity of many of you.

Finally, we have partnered together with a church in a village called Kresia to provide a building for the congregation from the Brad Pederson Memorial Building Fund.  Unfortunately, we were not able to visit the village as the road leading there had been washed out by the recent heavy rains. However, Pastor Simon who leads the church has promised to provide pictures as soon as construction is complete. This trip has been very full and very fruitful, though not without a lot of trouble, including sickness, blown engines, lost luggage, and various other minor challenges.  But though it all, God has been faithful to supply us with His grace that is sufficient for all things. We thank God, and we thank you all for your prayers and support!

Saturday May 6, 2023
On Tuesday of this week, our team met with the leadership at Karura Community Chapel.  We have been holding Biblical Counseling classes via Zoom for the past year with the pastors at this church, along with many other pastors in Nairobi, and this meeting was another step in partnering with Karura in other areas of ministry. This church is a vibrant, growing church that is very gospel-centered and has community outreach in a number of areas. They have a prison ministry that reaches 20,000 just in the Nairobi prisons, and a rehab program that reintroduces those who have been released back into society. Their Love in the Name of Christ ministry provides resources to the poor in partnership with many other churches in the area. They also have a women's shelter that houses women fleeing bad relationships and those who are homeless due to unplanned pregnancies.  In talks with some of the leaders in the past months, they expressed an interest in adding a pregancy resource center in their area and so we came together to talk about what that might look like for them.

Linda, Toni, John and myself with Pastor Joseph, just one of the pastors of this church of 1.200 people.  John is a member of this church and was the point person in connecting us with them.

Ben and Kim shared about Care Net of Puget Sound and Agape Care Net Clinic in Majengo. We hope to connect Karura with Agape Care Net as they consider how to implement a pregnancy resource center. Pastor Reuben and Maureen, who lead Agape Care Net have really paved the way in modeling how pregnancy center ministry should be done.

Kim connected with Queen who is in charge of Love in the Name of Christ and Mercy House, which ministers to women as the point person for establishing a pregancy center.  In the background I am talking with Pastor Amos who is in charge of the prison ministry which has over 400 staff and volunteers ministering in the Nairobi prisons.

And here is Frank talking to Pastor Joseph about API USA.

Left to right in the backrow: Pastor Martin, one of the teaching pastors at Karura, Luke Tendayi, our initial contact at Karura, Frank, Kim, Mike, John, Pastor Amos.  Front row: Pastor Chahale, Pastor Fred, Ben, Linda, Queen, Toni and Pastor Joseph.  We were blessed by our time together and look forward to partnership in ministry with this church.

Thursday May 4, 2023
While my team has been ministering in Kenya, Jay McBee, our Director of Biblical Counseling has been in Uganda with his team, Pastor Reuben Luvanga and Moses Biketi.  I just received a report from Jay and thought I'd post it for you all.

"On Friday April 20 I met with the leadership of Karura Community Chapel in Nairobi and the students that participated in the zoom counseling training for the last year. Karura with the support of API will now open a local counseling center as part of the church’s ministry to the community. API will help expand this work by conducting an expedited training for an additional group of pastors. What normally takes two years will be compressed into one year to be able to equip more counselors for the counseling ministry.

On Sunday, Moses Biketi and I traveled to Matete to meet with the students that Moses and Luvanga Reuben trained for the last year and a half. Moses and I taught the parenting material of the training over two days which enabled these students to officially complete their second module of training on marriage and parenting."

On Wednesday and Thursday, the Biblical Counseling team of Jay, Reuben and Moses traveled to Kampala, Uganda to travel to the Kyaka 2 refugee camp in western Uganda. Kyaka is home to 100,000 refugees and is one of the largest in Uganda. The team just finished four days in the Kyaka camp and are now traveling to Mbarara and Nakivale which is the largest camp in Uganda. The pastors were very grateful for the team coming to minister to the pastors and to better equip them for the work in the camp. Many are going to join our API weekly WhatsApp audio training calls to further their training.

The API Counseling team will be adding two new training calls to accommodate this growth. One will be in English and in a first for API, we are adding a Swahili only weekly class. This will be done to accommodate a new development. At the Kyaka camp, someone approached us to express their appreciation for the work we are doing on behalf of pastors and offered to make introductions to pastors in the other refugee camps. Our current trip is focusing on doing conferences in Kyaka 2, Mbarara, Nakivale and the refugees in the slums of Kampala. We have pastors from three other Ugandan camps, Rwamwanja, Kyangwali, and Oruchinga that are part of our weekly WhatsApp groups.

These additional introductions may enable API to do outreach to pastors in all 12 of the camps in Uganda and include them in our new classes. Please join us in praying for this endeavor and that no camp would be left out. Many speak of the suffering and hardship of leaving everything that they once had behind in their home countries. Some have said that they never expect to be able to go back because of the factional fighting. They are attempting to make a new way in a new country even though they are in or on the outskirts of the refugee camps.

Thank you also to the children at Tree of Life Christian Church and Northridge Community School who made homemade cards for the children in the refugee camps. The first group of cards were handed out to the children in the Kyaka 2 camp."

 

It's Wednesday night here in Nairobi and John and Frank and I took the rest of the team to the airport to fly home.  We've had a very full two weeks of ministry and fellowship and this past Sunday we took a few hours to tour the amazing Maasai Mara game park. This was a guy trip as the ladies were still recovering from their illness. I thought I'd show you a few shots of God's incredible creation. Photography courtesy of Rob.



Magnificent cheetah





We came upon three lions who had made a Cape Buffalo kill early that morning.  You can see the partially eaten carcass in the background.  They were all taking it easy after a morning of gorging, but staying very near their kill to keep hyenas, jackels and buzzards away.



A silver-back jackel







At one point we came upon a jackel trying to make a meal of mongoose.  However, as he approached the colony, about 50 of them took after the jackel and chased him off. There is strength in numbers! 

We also came across a couple of cheetahs hunting some impala off to the right out of frame. We decided not to wait around as it could be hours before they made a kill.

A red-headed buzzard looking for snakes, lizards and bugs as it stalks across the savanna.

At a hippo pool.  

Hyena looking for food



I find giraffes so fascinating!  We want to thank all of you who have been praying for the ladies and want to let you know that when we got back from safari, they were all feeling much better. 

Tuesday May 2, 2023

It is Tuesday morning and we are back in Nairobi, having traveled from Narok yesterday.  We left Oloolaimutia Sunday evening because the weather indicated heavy rain that night which might have prevented travel.  The river we had to cross from where we were staying during the conference has no bridge and is unfordable when the heavy rains come. so we opted to overnight about halfway to Nairobi. Above is the entrance to Mara Shiners School where we held the conference.

Happily we are able to report that all the ladies are doing well after being down with some kind of illness since Thursday evening!  It was a challenge for the team as they were all such an integral part of the conference, but by God's grace we were able to fill the holes they left and we are just glad they are all feeling well.

We finished our conference Saturday afternoon so here are a few shots from the week.

Linda was feeling well enough by Saturday to speak at the women's breakout session.

Pastor Stephen leading the singing.

Our conference director, Pastor Shadrack giving instructions (right) and Pastor Daniel interpreting.



Amoss Mallangah, one of our API Masters students, came all the way from the coast of Kenya to be with us at the conference.

Women's breakout session.

The conference sessions were held in the middle structure which is the school dining hall and kitchen. The buildings on the right and left are the boys and girls dorms.  Mara Shiners is a boarding school, as are most schools in Kenya.  The small blue structure in the forefront is the solar generating station which powers the whole school.



Here we are in our Maasai finery!

Ben with our hosts, Stephen and Betty Muntet. We are so grateful to Stephen and Betty who opened their home to us and took such good care of us. 

Two very white Maasai guys.

John and Stephen

Crossway Publishing provided some valuable resources for the pastors which we handed out at the conference. 

Dinner in Narok

Sunrise in Oloolaimutia

Friday April 28, 2023

Tuesday morning we set off for Oloolaimutia but took a minute to take a photo at the equator.

We had to cut across the park from the Sekananie gate to Oloolaimutia and got to see a little wildlife in the process.



We arrived at Mara Shiners School, our conference site Tuesday afternoon to a warm Maasai welcome and dramatic skies.



Wednesday morning we started our Foundations of the Faith conference and by Thursday morning we had about 180 attending. 

During the first session of each day, Linda Galle takes all the children for a Bible lesson and then outside for play.

During our breakout sessions on Thursday, Kim shared on the Sanctity of Human Life with the women.



Ben shared on the Sanctity of Human Life and Sexual Integrity with the men.

During the plenary sessions Wednesday and Thursday we were going through the doctrines of grace. Pastor Stephen Muntet, interpreting here, is our host, along with his wife, Beatrice.

At the end of the day, we have a Q & A session with all the teachers of the day clarifying (or trying to clarify) points made during each presentation.  This is often the most intstructive time for both students and teachers.



We will be posting more tomorrow if the internet will cooperate.

Wednesday April 26, 2023

This is a sunrise photo where we were staying in Mbale.  We finished our training with the Agape Care Net Clinic staff and volunteers on Monday as all of us took turns presenting various aspects of the training. 



Toni shared that the Agape Care Net team seemed very interested in all the training and coaching that we provided.  "The effective communication skills portion was very well received and they asked many good questions and shared a few of their own experiences. They are a group with a heart for women, children and marriages, with various medical and professional training to contribute to the pregnancy center and local community."

All the ladies took advantage of a sunny lunch break to pose for the camera.  After the final session, we all piled in the vehicles to get a tour of the clinic with the staff and volunteers.



Reception

Ultrasound room

Pharmacy

Kim and Precious Kim

Thanks to all who have been keeping this mission in prayer!

Monday April 24, 2023

Sunday morning the team split up to go to two different churches.  Half of us went to Agape Christian Fellowship, led by Pastor Reuben Luvanga, and the other half to Mahanga PEFA Church led by Bishop Fredrick Ndondo, who is also a board member of Agape Care Net Clinic. 

Kim got reaquainted with her namesake, Precious Kim, Reuben and Moureen's daughter.

And this little guy was fascinated by the mzungu's in church.

Sunday afternoon we held our first training session with the Agape Care Net Clinic staff and volunteers.

Ben Edwards spoke about the necessity of strategic planning and church relationships.

Kim spoke on the centrality of the gospel in all we do and the sanctity of human life.

There was lots of time for questions and answers.

It was a really full and satisfying day as reconnected with old friends and made new ones.  

Linda Galle shared about her new friend, Faith. "This is Faith, my dear sister in Christ, who I met at the Care Net training session, and who shared her own "crisis pregnancy" story with me. Faith recently graduated from nursing school and now volunteers 6 days a week at the Agape Care Net Clinic.  What a blessing it has been for our team to meet these amazing volunteers who want to serve our Lord in this ministry!"