Part of my heart is still in Kenya and I hope to go back one day.  It is difficult to put exactly into words all that we experienced, but I will do my best to give some of the highlights.

One of the things I didn’t love were the back-to-back 8+ hour flights in coach.  If you don’t know me in real life, I’m a bigger dude, and sitting in confined quarters for 8+ hours is not what I consider to be fun, nor was it comfortable.  However, we made it through our flight to Amsterdam and then after a brief layover, we flew down to Nairobi.

We got into Kenya at night and were picked up by a few friends from the Kenya Baptist Theological College.  We took our hour plus ride up into the mountains of Limuru and made it to the campus and were taken to our cottages.  I roomed with a friend from my church, Scott, who happened to be a former military guy, so he had literally brought his own hammock in case we had to sleep in the bush.  We actually had a place with electricity and plumbing, so I think he was a little disappointed at first.

The first day there we went to the graduation for the diploma students.  I was told that morning that I would say a few words about serving, and then give each graduate a towel to remind them of Jesus in John 13.  I’m used to being put on the spot, and I like to talk in front of people, so I gave a brief sermonette and did as I was asked.  The graduation lasted over 3 hours, which none of our group was prepared for, but we went with the flow.

Saturday we went to the National Park in Nakuru.  We saw tons of giraffes, African Water Buffalo, baboons, a rhino, two hippos, and two lions.  It was a blast.

Sunday I preached at a church in one of the slums in Limuru.  You can see a part of that service in the video at the top of this post.  They actually did a song like an intro to the sermon.  It went on for like seven minutes.  I told Scott that I wanted our church to start doing an intro song, and he said if we did, that he would leave.  I might test him on that one day. 🙂

For the remainder of the week, in the mornings we interviewed students and took their pictures to get their profiles ready for the new HaMoreh Ministries website (Launching Sept 2012) that will afford you and I to sponsor students to get their theological training.  In the afternoon, I had the privilege of teaching theological students.  For a few days I did a mentorship class with a lot of Q&A, and the last day I did a six hour course on expository preaching.  It was truly a blessing and an honor to teach these students.

We went back into the slums on Friday and visited Christlike Kenya Academy, which is a school for children in the slum who have lost parents to HIV or whose parents are sick.  The children were so sweet and seemed very happy (also in the video above).  My heart broke when I saw the holes in the ground that they used for toilets.  So, part of what I want to do in Kenya is help Christlike Kenya Academy and hopefully develop a long-term relationship with them.

As many of you know, I am working on my first book Tragedy to Truth and hope to have it released in February 2013.  I am committed to give all of my royalties to do ministry in Kenya.  My board of directors for my non-profit ministry are in agreement, and we are very excited to see how God uses the book to reach many with the Gospel of Jesus, and how we can make a difference in Kenya.