Friday - The Last of the Days

Friday is the last day I haven't blogged as far as I know. So let's finish this thing!

Friday was in impromptu day that was made up after Albert and David realised we weren't leaving till Saturday. They had some plan to get us to go to David's church and speak. We took this under in our stride. I had a talk up my sleeve from the Youth Conference that I hadn't done so I figured it was no big deal.

We were met at breakfast by the team who were looking rather gloomy for some reason. We found out that that night someone had broken into Isaiah's car and stolen his cd player and battery. Howie and I went upstairs to do our teeth and consider what was about to happen. We had a conundrum again. We knew that we could afford to buy him a new battery, and that we were probably going to be asked to buy one. While buying a battery was going to be no issue, being asked to buy one was probably going to be. I didn't want to be Mr Money again. Still we decided it was a good thing we could do, so we decided we'd offer to buy him one. I was hoping to offer before being asked.

However when we got back to the restaurant Albert told me Isaiah wanted to ask me something, so I didn't get the chance to not be asked for money. Still Isaiah seemed rather apologetic to be asking. He never asked for anything the whole time. All the rest of the time he spent serving us, driving us places, setting stuff up, carrying our bags (when we couldn't argue with him anymore). So I was feeling a lot more in the mood to be generous. It's funny that. I haven't finished working what was going on and why I always reacted funny when money came up. Would I react the same way in Australia? Would I be more willing to give money to people who didn't need it as much? Or is it just the assumption that because I'm rich I'll pay for everything?

Oh well.

We were sitting in the car battery shop and Albert suggested we go find a taxi to take us to see his mother before we go to David's church. I suggested that seeing as David's church had started their meeting 20 minutes ago, perhaps we should see Albert's mother second.

"Oh we can't do that" Albert said. "After the meeting we have a revival and crusade."

Oh gosh it hurt to hear that. We'd been compliant the whole time but we'd never heard anything about another revival and crusade. We both reacted with something like "We didn't know anything about another revival or crusade. We're not prepared."

So that put the stopper on things. Albert rang David to talk about the revival and crusade, the International Speakers were being difficult (they weren't saying that, I just felt like that). But I wasn't feeling like I was in any place to be doing another two meetings. The past 6 days had been rather full-on. I was ready for my sabbath.

We made it out to David's church and they'd been doing another singing marathon.

We had found out at some stage that David was a Bishop with 20 churches in Kenya, Uganda and Sudan. And to think we'd spent the past week making rude jokes with a Bishop. Still he's the coolest Bishop I know.

David's Church was bigger that any other we'd been to. I guess it's like the Cathedral. But they sure did have the worst sound system we'd heard yet, and that's pretty bad. Everything was turned up full, oh the humanity. I couldn't figure out when people were speaking English or Swahili the distortion was that bad. Often kids sit in the services with their hands over their ears. If only we could too.

During the singing Albert informed me that they'd decided to cancel the revival and crusade but instead we'd do two sessions back to back. I was going to do my first preaching double header. I figured it was a fair enough compromise.

I preached the first time on "Holy Spirit and Holy Scripture". No one seemed all that excited by the preach. I didn't say "Jesus has the victory" enough. But I wanted to do it because I feel that if the people of the church can learn to love the Bible then the power stays with all the believers rather than just the leadership. In places where most people don't have Bibles, it's hard to tell them to love their Bibles. Still it's more needed because when there isn't a high degree of Bible literacy then Pastors can do what they want and call it biblical. So I figured the more I encouraged Kenyans to love the Bible, the stronger the church could be. Still I don't want to suggest that David was a corrupt leader. I think he was one of the best Pastors we met.

Preach two, after more singing, was the one from 1 Samuel 6 the night before. This one people liked a lot more. Much more victory and "power". I got a lot more people waving and amen-ing. While I preached that one the keyboardist decided it was the appropriate time to test out his bad "Super-Mario Brothers" sound-a-like loop. It was a rather difficult thing to preach to. It wasn't even moving like most sermon keyboard accompaniment.

After an extended prayer session (with another demon being cast out) we were almost done. The Pastors got up to tell everyone what powerful men of God we were. They talked about how they had seen through us many come to Christ, many healed, many set free from possession and many miracles. If you listened to them you'd think we were Peter and Paul come back to do Acts all over again. While we did see lots of people come to Christ (which is great!) we don't really know where any of them were at before and where they're at now. And as for the rest of the stuff, we prayed for lots of people, and I'm sure God has heard our prayers and is working. But we can't say we saw much evidence of it all.

The greatest miracle I saw was hundreds of people living on less money every day than I spend on a Coke at home and still praising God, still living for God and loving God. That was the miracle I witnessed. And it had nothing to do with my anointing.

Still it's good to have people speak highly of you. I guess it's good press for the conference that they're advertising for next year when we come back!

We had lunch at David's house. There were plenty of laughs, and the food was good. Howie was asked if he'd ever tried smoking or alcohol, like we would ask someone if they had every tried ecstasy. Howie admitted that he had in fact tried alcohol once. He failed to inform them that we often love to have a beer back home. It was probably the wise thing to do.

After lunch and what seemed like an eternity of watching bad Christian music videos David asked us to bless the house because we had been his visitors. I thought that was a brilliant idea. I think we should all bless houses in Australia. It's such a nice idea. It was such a good idea that Albert then took us to his house to bless it. It was like we were the Traveling House Blessing Patrol. I should have brought my anointing oil. But I do think it's a good idea.

Albert took us to his mother's house which was a little grass-roofed, smoke filled hut with a fire inside. Howie called it "the Giant Bong", which was an adequate description apart from the lack of special herbs in the fire.

His mother was a lovely lady full of welcome and smiles. He told us that she was so blessed to have us in her home (what can I say, she is, we are the new Apostles). We said "Thank you" in Swahili and she almost fell over she was so excited that we were humble enough to learn her language. What a lovely lady. We prayed for her house too. Then we got Howie out before he died of asthma.

Finally we were driven back to our Hotel. We had a drink (non-alcoholic) with the team (Albert, David, Peter and Isaiah) before they left. It was sad to say good-bye to Peter and Isaiah there. We did like them a lot. We had many a laugh. Isaiah was going to get me to marry his sister. Next time I guess. But we gave them our details and they promised to be in contact all the time. We neglected to give them the addresses of our blogs. Oops.

Howie and I got to have our first dinner alone since arriving in Kenya, how special. I threw my chicken on the floor and then the rain came (I'm not sure if they were connected or not). I'll try it next time there's a drought. Then it was off our room to prepare the next days journey. And the rest, as they say, is blogged.

Oh and I got to see the Equator as we traveled home this time. We got out, took photos, filmed and refused to buy trinkets. In fact I didn't buy one touristy thing the whole time I was in Africa. Oops. We didn't really have the time. I guess I'll just have to stock up on Red Buses here.