Sunday, October 7

We are sitting on the veranda at Mennonite Guest House in Nairobi, listening to the birds singing, enjoying the flowers, and the sun is beginning to sink. At the time I am writing, most of our family and friends in the US are in church. We have already been to church, had lunch, and evening is coming. It is a pleasant evening, not too hot, and a light breeze. This morning we worshiped with Nairobi Mennonite Church, pretty much on the other side of the city, and it is where our family attended during the 2 years we were in Nairobi over 20 years ago. It was good to hear the spirited choir and to interact with the people there. Most of the congregation is young adult, some are students, and most of them are unemployed, or only occasionally employed and that makes it difficult to maintain a thriving congregation. Last Sunday we worshipped with a rural congregation in an isolated area where most of the members are subsistence farmers with little cash income. But in all these situations, we see expressions of faith and hope, which carry them forward.
This week, Wednesday, we will drive to western Kenya again, this time to the southern part, to visit 3 more church areas, and we will be there through the weekend. In the places we have visited so far, we have found a good bit of interest in leadership development. The bishops tell us of their plans to start new churches, but they have no one with training to provide leadership. A bishop told us that only 1 of his 8 pastors has any kind of training for church leadership. So a vision is emerging for a locally-based program that will provide the basic training in biblical studies and leadership skills. We have asked ourselves, how did our fathers manage to be pastors with their limited education? They were mostly self-taught and did a lot of reading and study. Here, reading material is limited so there is not much opportunity to learn from others. Our goal is provide access to training that will give new leaders a good foundation for their leadership.
This week we applied for a new passport for Gloria, because her present passport expires in January. Yes, we should have done that before we left the US, but it did not seem so urgent then. But it affects how we get work permits and visas, so we have submitted the application and it takes up to 2 weeks to get here. That will delay our travel to Tanzania, but we are using the extra time to make some contacts here.