After the night of sufficient sleep, we awoke to a sunny
morning there in Ronda.
We walked to the
pastor’s house for some breakfast consisting of plenty of tea and some buttered
bread (a definite staple regarding breakfast in
Kenya).
Again I found the television was on,
broadcasting some preaching from
Mombasa.
We watched this for some time and found that
even though Sunday School was to begin at 9:00, the pastor did not leave his
own house until nearly 10:00.
We
followed him about half an hour later and found that the church numbers were
down to about six or seven as we lost some of the pastors in attendance from
the day before.
Service technically began at 10:00 and was said to last
until 1:00.
Jackson, my traveling companion shared a few
words regarding the Prayer of Jabez after about an hour of singing.
Fortunately the Prayer of Jabez has not
become so commercialized here in Kenya, being displayed upon paper weights,
t-shirts, letter openers, coffee mugs, pens, socks, tattoos, belts and the sort
as one may find in the USA.
This being
the case allowed those people to have never heard the concept and they accepted
it with open arms.
It was my turn after some more singing to bring the
preaching although it was after 12:00 at that point.
It seems to me that if the main service
doesn’t start until after the noon hour that it should really be considered an
afternoon meeting.
Nevertheless, not wanted
to get caught up in the technical, I brought a message about the all surpassing
glory of the Spirit dwelling inside earthen vessels.
It was received well, although with a few
less ‘amens’ than the previous crowd.
Service ended for the ‘morning’ session and we were told the
elders and pastors wanted a meeting before the afternoon session.
We met with them in which they presented
their requests and desires for the church, things like new instruments (the
Kenyan term involving anything to do with the sound system or keyboard) and so
forth.
I must say that the small meeting
place they had merited no need for a sound system as the human voice was strong
enough.
Nevertheless, the one they had
seemed to do the trick and I am sure it will last for some time.
Also they wanted some guidance for the sake
of evangelism and reaching the community as they knew nothing of the
matter.
This was certainly an area that
will be focused on and after I am gone
Jackson
will continue to be assisting them in that area.
The afternoon hours passed on and although we desired to
leave by 3:30 pm to head back to
Nairobi,
the church tied us to another session that began abruptly at the 3:30
hour.
Due to our need to reach
Nairobi before the late
hours we moved quickly and I preached a very short sermon on the imminent
return of Jesus Christ.
The torrential
rains subsided just as we finished and by 5:00 we were on our way by the return
matatu to
Nairobi.
As we were boarding our chariot to be carried
back home, we noticed a very drunk Masai man who was in the vehicle.
He was not just a bit tipsy but terribly
drunk and I knew that would make the ride all the more interesting.
Not more than thirty minutes into our journey he began
yelling and complaining loudly in Swahili.
I learned that he was complaining of having a full bladder.
The shouting probably continued for another
hour until the driver finally stopped to provide a reprieve to the full
bladdered man as well as the passengers affected by his vocal protests.
He warned him strongly to keep it down and he
did for the next hour or so until his bladder again grew full.
He began repeating himself but to no avail,
the driver refused to stop.
We were almost in town when the matatu blew a tire and we
were forced to stop.
The inebriated
passenger was convinced the driver stopped on his behalf and after taking care
of business told the driver it was time to go.
However, at this point the driver was addressing the needs of the tire
and within thirty minutes we were back in transit.
We reached town and hopped another matatu to
bring us back here to Kibera.
By 9:00 we
were back in our places of domicile, reeling from the wild journeys of the
weekend!
