Kenya in October 2024

Here is a brief summary of our time in Kenya from October 17th to the 28th. This was not a pre-planned trip but an opportunity that arose through circumstances (read trip detail below)  Here are the highlights;

• Bob escorted Pastor David Janney to a remote village outside the southern city of Kisii.  We flew with David all the way to Kisumu and then rejoined him on the return trip from Kisumu to Nairobi.

• We executed two conferences, one on evangelism with an evangelism team in Kisumu, and the other on servant leadership with pastors and bishops in Sabatia.  We established many relationships and the conference comments and responses were very positive.

• We visited and evaluated multiple locations for future FC Grace conferences.  This was very very successful.  Many leaders want this message and have access to many coaches.  We have grown from the 2 conferences held in May 2024 to now over 12 opportunities in Kenya for 2025.

Trip Background

Just a month ago, a pastor friend, David Janney shared with me that he was headed to Kenya to work with a pastor in a remote village outside the city of Kisii in southwestern Kenya. He had not traveled to Africa alone before and Kenya was new to him. He prayed to the Lord for an escort and and the Lord encouraged him to trust him and to walk alone like  Abraham's journey to Canaan.

I shared this with Jeanne and we both felt led to figure out a way to join him. The next day, Jeanne received a request from a group of pastors and ministry leaders from western Kenya with whom she's been providing a bible study on Romans. After a lively session Sunday where breakthrough understanding came, they asked if she and I could come speak to them on servant leadership and evangelism. They offered to cover the ground costs if we could arrange the airfare.  The distance between the two locations (Kisii and Kisumu) was only 2 1/2 hours. The timing and location are too coincidental, and after praying we felt God's peace about going. We also took advantage of being there on the ground to arrange meetings with many people that Bob had been talking to for conferences in 2025.  

The Conferences

The Evangelism conference in Kisumu held on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, October 19 and 20 was attended by the our friend Pastor Abel, Bishop Elisha and the evangelism team of Living Streams Centre, located in a very poor area of Kisumu with a K-8 school and church. We used biblical examples to discuss many of the aspects of evangelism and then focused on how to incorporate new believers into the church setting. We gave time for questions after each session, and this turned out to be as fruitful as the talks with much gained by us as well as those attending. 

Our next conference was one hour north in Sabatia, part of a larger area called Butere at the Word of Life church. Bishop Enock along with another Bishop Samwel who leads the Butere pastors association, hosted the conference. We talked about Servant Leadership again using the biblical examples and a book by Warren Wiersbe to discuss the key aspects of this topic. Because of the successful connections everyone had made in Kisumu, we used the same format of speaking and then taking questions. 

Through the conferences, we learned that these leaders are so hungry for training. They are truly committed to the Lord and those they minister to but receive inadequate schooling and much is rooted in African church traditions. Through our conferences, we saw new understanding take root, a willingness to remove non-biblical traditions in the church and a commitment to focusing on teaching the Word and teaching their members how to study as well. A few days ago we received some feedback from one of the pastors who was putting into practice what a point he learned: "Yesterday I was hanging around with a friend, and someone who was not well known to me called out "Pastor it is good you are here, come pray with us, we are sinners". I had to move out from our corner where we were taking goat meat and joined them.With laughter, they told me to pray for them. I remembered what Bob and Jeanne Allen talked about: never to rebuke sinners but show love with boundaries. I grabbed a seat and preached the word of God for salvation through Jesus Christ." We praise God for new understanding!

FC Grace Meetings (see map below)

After the conference Jeanne and I were driven further north and west to the city of Kakamega.   We had an FC Grace Conference here this past May, however on this day we were visiting Pastor Nathan and his wife Jacqueline. We met with several of the pastors from Sabatia and discussed the opportunities for FC Grace in this city and region. There was recognition that the church is generationally removed from the soccer age group of coaches, players and fans. There was also recognition that the church has judged and shamed these same people creating a barrier. We dreamed about reversing this situation by bringing the church out of the building and onto the pitch. This would require the pastors to prepare their congregations to give grace and love to these people instead of judgement. There was great excitement about this idea and we have developed a plan to hold a soccer tournament in 2025 to launch this new concept.

From Kakamega we continued north to the city of Eldoret and met with the Calvary Chapel pastor and a local well known woman, Mama Diof who runs a soccer league in the slums, and has an NGO to help with many needs there. Bob gave an overview of the FC Grace message with a brief look at the Core Message. CC Eldoret is interested in hosting the conference and Mama Diof will bring 100 coaches to it. From there we went to Saia west of Kisumu, and met with Pastor Slias Owiti-Oduor who has several big projects including schooling, farming, and church planting to help the communities there. We provided the same FC Grace message overview and he wants to host a conference in that location. During this time, we were also talking with the manager of a league and a coach on Mfangano island off the coast in Lake Victoria. They have been pursuing us to hold a conference there having heard about us from another coach with whom we worked.

We then flew back to Nairobi and held 3 meetings last Saturday with coaches and pastors, explaining the Core Message. Each meeting resulted in a commitment to host and fill the conference with coaches. We first met with a missionary in Homa Bay who wants to reach out to the greater soccer community there by hosting an FC Grace conference. We met with Pastors from Grace Covenant Church on the east side of Nairobi just outside the Kibera slums. We are specifically excited about 4 coaches who live and coach in the Kibera slums, who stated that they get no assistance or help and feel completely forgotten. Our hearts were filled with compassion for these men and women, and we see this as a wonderful opportunity to step into the heart of the poorest of the poor in Kenya and bring the hope of Jesus as well as minister to the needs of the people in that area.

In Closing

We spent time on the plane ride home, thanking the Lord for all He had done through this trip. We counted a total of 13 opportunities to hold conferences, about 7 weeks in Kenya alone for May 2025! We are praying about these locations wanting the Lord to lead us in choosing and funding for this trip. We also plan on returning to Uganda to hold conferences in the refugee camps.