M is for Maasai, H is for humility.

I’ve been in Kenya for 8 days now and the team is finally getting the opportunity to post another wave of blogs.  We just finished up a 5 day outreach with the Maasai tribe out in the Great Rift Valley and stopped at an internet cafe in a town called Nakuru on our way home to get some “Browsing-Time” as the Kenyans call it.  The last week has been so incredible for all of us.  We have made so many great connections with the people of Kijabe, the town where we are based, and also the people of the Maasai.  It is amazing to think that we are thousands of miles away from home, but still surrounded by people praising the same God and how fortunate we are to be able to worship along side them in such a beautiful place.  I am truly blessed to have been given this opportunity.

 

Our first few days were spent in Kijabe getting settled and familiarizing ourselves with the schools and hospital where we would be spending the majority of our time.  Pastor Simon, our director for the trip, and Margaret, his wife, have been a great blessing to us.  Margaret prepares all of our meals and Simon is always there to make sure that we are comfortable.  They lived in Waukegan, Illinois for 8 years while Simon went to Bible College and were so impressed that I knew where that was.  They really love Chicago and I guess having someone to share that appreciation with is a rarity for them.  I was happy to fulfill the role.  It is great spending time with them and they are bound to teach us a lot the next 3 months.  Simon showed us around town and introduced us to Ester, the head of the Kijabe Primary school.  We got to work with the kids of the school for a few hours that day which was an awesome and exhausting experience.  I can now say that I have held 5 children at one time.  I can’t even describe how excited they were to have us there and to sing to them and talk to them.  As soon as we walked in they started screaming….   I wasn’t sure how to respond.  We get to teach at the school every monday and I am definitely looking forward to that.

 

Simon had approached us on Tuesday and said that if we were willing, the opportunity to go stay with the Maasai tribe had already been presented to us.  We were all pretty stoked for this and didn’t expect something so incredible to come our way so fast.  On Wednesday we packed up and packed into a van and headed for “The Bush”.  After a long journey down an extremely bumpy road in a very hot vehicle (add air-conditioning to the list of things that we take for granted) we pulled up to small homestead consisting of about 4 shacks all constructed of sticks and mud.  We were immediately greeted by Amos.  Amos was going to be our host for the next few days and was overjoyed to have us there.  We had read in a book back in Kijabe about the customs of the Maasai and how they drink cow’s blood so we were all a little concerned about what kind of greeting we would receive and how radical these people would be, but  Amos blew us away.  He was an amazing guy with a great heart and appreciation for Christianity.  We soon learned from him that the majority of the tribe where we were staying were Saved-Christians and they had put the drinking of cow’s blood to rest years ago.  Crisis averted.  Praise the Lord.

 

Alright, story time…

 

Each day with the Maasai we would split up into small groups and walk the narrow dirt roads inbetween homes to talk with the families and share the word of God.  It was so humbling to see the simplicity of these people’s lives and how much joy they still had in the Lord.  I couldn’t understand it.  I began to regret all those times that I had let the littlest worries totally consume me and make me question my faith.  Here these people were, living day to day just hoping and praying to have food for their children, but never questioning God’s plan.  I was completely humiliated in a great way.  I certainly needed to be brought back down to earth.  On the first day of our outreach, Blair’s group came across a man on the road.  They approached him and soon found out that he wasn’t a believer and apparently was semi-disrespectful to them.  Disrespect was something we had not encountered yet.  The group wasn’t discouraged and they settled him down to have a talk.  The man was a farmer and was wondering why, if there was a God, he had not brought them rain in so long?  They asked the man if he had prayed about it and the answer was obviously no.  The group then huddled around the man and prayed over him and for his crops.  The man still did not accept Christ, but gave them a friendly good bye as they went their separate ways.  That night, the sky opened up.  I have never seen so much rain.  Our tents flooded, everything and everyone was drenched.  I can’t even describe it.  What an amazing thing to witness God answer a prayer so directly.  The next day i was in Blair’s group and we were lucky enough to stumble upon this same man.  He was almost frightened when he saw us and didn’t know how to respond.  You could tell that he was on the verge of tears.  He thanked us for the rain and we made sure that he knew that it wasn’t us that brought it, but God.  You could see in his eyes that he was ready to to accept the Lord and he asked us to pray with him as we did.  How amazing!!!  Seriously, I didn’t know what to say.  He repented for denying Jesus in his life for so long and prayed for forgiveness.  I read to him 2 Corinthians 5:17 which says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”  It is never too late.

 

I hope you took as much out of that as I did.  It was really a lifetime changing experience.  I am grateful to all of you reading this and sorry I don’t have time to go into more detail and for the occasional gramatical error.  No time for editing when you’re paying by the minute. I would like to thank those who helped support me on this trip.  Dr. Kontny in specific.  I will hopefully be able to post some pictures with my next blog so you can get a visual feel for everything that is going on.  Keep praying for our team!

 

 -Regan