Chepilat

Chepilat is a town in tea country, near Sotik on the main road to Kisii in western Kenya. Pastor George, himself a young man, is leading and mentoring a group of leaders. He says, “They call me overseer, but I am really just one of them. That is a name they gave me.” But it is clear that they look up to him and respect him. Pastor George is not Masai, but he grew up among Masai, he speaks their language and he feels like one of them. That prepared him to be a peacemaker when violence broke out in Chepilat during national elections in 2007 between the Kisii and the Kipsigis tribes. His ethnic background made him acceptable to the Kisii, and his upbringing made him acceptable to the Kipsigis, a tribe related to the Masai. He felt called to be a peacemaker so he moved his young family to Chepilat and began to call other pastors and community leaders together. The result was greater understanding among them and today there is peace in Chepilat.

Approaching an estate on the tea plantation near Chepilat

Besides his peacemaking efforts, Pastor George is a church planter. He took us to a tea plantation where a church is growing among the tea workers. The workers live on the plantation in “estates” of about 500 people each. The plantation we visited has about 20 such estates, but many of them have no church and it is difficult for people travel to a church. So Pastor George is leading efforts to plant churches on the tea estates and in the surrounding towns.  He reported that the general manager of the tea plantation encourages the church development efforts among the tea workers and has offered, if they continue, to build them a church building.

My question to Pastor George, “How many churches do you hope to plant in the next year?”

Picking Tea

“Thirteen.”

“How many churches do you have now?

“Six.”

“How many of those six are less than a year old?”

“Three.”

We met with Pastor George and his leaders to discuss training for their congregational leaders. So we are planning to return in January 2014 for a two-day training seminar where the church elders will be given training and study materials to lead Bible study and leadership study groups for their own people. It looks like they will be needing to train many new leaders.

Meeting with the leaders of the Chepilat churches