While Jess and Anne were talking to the female leaders, Brian, Dave and I were talking to the pastors.
I was utterly humbled by this group of pastors. When I asked them to articulate their struggles as pastors someone stood up and said that their main struggles were as follows...
1. Our congregations are made up or orphans and widows 2. They have not eaten and do not have money for food 3. They do not have clean water
The group was so hopeful and I reminded them that without the supernatural intervention of God nothing would change. If Jesus could turn water into wine and He said that we would do greater things then maybe we need to be using our authority to be turning dirty water into clean water. A bold thing to say but it flew out of my mouth.
The group really wanted ownership of what they were doing and were not just looking for handouts. They were so grateful for the things that we were assisting them with but desperately wanted to become self sustaining. We were handed a micro-finance proposal.
While we were there we were able to buy them 3 acres of land with a river running through it which will start them in agriculture so that they can be self sustaining.
During this pastors meeting is when I first started to feel sick... I left this meeting to go to the bathroom and it was all down hill from there...
I'll post more soon and promise to leave all of the graphic sick stories out of it.
Take some time after reading this to pray for the pastors and church in Kenya.
JIM baker
P.S - leave COMMENTS!