prayer mountain

4.9.09 Friday Lodwar

I used the time we spent on Prayer Mountain to brainstorm ideas for my Sunday sermon. I'm a bit nervous so opening the bible and reading passages is helping me figure out what route I want to take. The mountain looks down on the town of Lodwar on one side and the vast, dry river bed on the other... the wind is blowing slightly but other than that the air is filled with a deep silence. Below are some of the passages I have been pondering and some of my thoughts that I've been gathering out of the readings.

Isaiah 2.6-9
The Lord gave watchmen to the city...kept watch for the enemies...God can save the city.. He made this city the way it is so we can seek His ways.

Is. 32.1-8
The honest man has a room in the House of the Lord... the scoundrel who lies and cheats will no longer be respected... the noble man will stand with Jesus

What's the story?

Those who are true in God's love will be saved.
Those who are blind will see.
God's ways are not our way, nor is His time our time.
Sometimes what we think we need is not what God knows we need.
You must stand watch.

When we are given grace from God sometimes we can fail because we forget how to be a child of God

**We are challenged by our daily lives to serve God. Sometimes its harder to see the path to greatness because we are filled with so much pride and greed. Americans are surrounded by so much wealth and we succumb to a life full of things rather than a life full of servitude. Sometimes I feel that although I am in a city full of millions of people I am alone a lot of my day. We are so separated from each other by the way we live. Our security measures, our individual goals and hopes for the future, keep us locked up in our individual worlds... unable to see past our own shadows. We work so hard to essentially secure ourselves a lonely existence. The way the Turkana people live and take care of each other should serve as a great example for all the world. God teaches us to love one another as He loves us. God teaches that family is the most important thing below Him. That strangers should be welcomed as neighbors. He who gives much will get much in return. What I have witnessed here in Lodwar is their ability to love and share with one another. I have witnessed what it truly means to be a family of God, under God, to be God's Children. Their hardwork and dedication reaches to all areas of their lives...to how they raise their children, to how they worship the Lord.

Other possible scriptures

1) Wickedness is undesired in God (Prov 24.1-2)
2) Knowledge is power - be powerful in your love with God (Prov 24.3-4)
3) Be strong and persevere - God will reward those who search for him in times of trouble (Prov 24:10)
4) God speaks in his own way but men may not perceive (Job 33.12-26)
- if you rejoice in God you shall be rewarded - by knowledge, by love, by grace you shall be saved
5) By grace and faith alone we are saved (Eph 2.6-10)
6) Be imitators of God, dearly loved children (Eph 5. 1-2)


My thoughts are just jumbled and completely unqualified to figure this out... but here I go.

These things we see

9:00pm Lodwar 4.9.09 Thursday

We got back from the Bush today feeling much more uplifted and yet still saddened by the day.

It began with the Leadership Summit meeting at the Bishop's church in Nakwamikwi. The musical instruments we all loath were used today by the congregation. Microphones and keyboards drowning out the beautiful sounds of their naturally talented singing voices. I feel collectively we find it all to be a travesty of the church founder to bring that in to this culture... how could they place in the minds of these naturally gifted musicians that they need to amplify and synthesize worship just because the white people suck at it. Sorry, that wasn't nice, but somehow its still true. Our group wishes we had just an ounce of the rhythm and harmony the congregations here possess and we are seeing it morphed into something horrible by the Western way of thinking.

Once I was able to relax about the music the keyboard stopped, the singer slowed down and began to pray and then the most wonderful thing happened. It felt like the wind rose up and began to swirl around me at the exact time that the parishioners began to individually pray out loud. They were praying in Swahili, in Turkana and in English, with a multitude of voices all working together to create a sensation that shuttered through me. I closed my eyes and my body soaked in the sounds of all the worshiping voices, crying out for God to come down and save them.

After the ceremony was finished some of the women came up and grabbed Rachel and I and began to teach us to dance along with the music of the keyboard. Pastor Michael then came around and brought us all individual bracelets, with our names scrawled on them in beads... it brought me to tears.

We went back to the cottage after eating a great meal with the pastors and conversing with the bishop about his family. I was able to get an hours nap in before heading out into the bush. I am always tired, it feels like we go-go-go and don't get much down time to let the body feel the effect of the day. Today was my first day with a little stomach sickness, but by late afternoon I was fine. I pray the morning brings complete relief. We traveled to the bush with an extra truck to carry the food we were going to deliver. We came upon a setting only National Geographic could have prepared me for. As we drove through was used to be a lush forest 50 years ago we see the sparseness mixed with areas of green vegetation. Although it looks ideal we find out it is not suitable for living because of the rainy season that washes the houses away when the area is transformed into a river. We pass large termite hills and stray camels which we must stop for to take pictures. We reach the Lolupe village and are taken aback as the congregation is huddled under the tree, dancing and singing. Posts stand on a broken square, the foundations of a soon to be church building. The people are dressed in traditional wear of a sheet, necklace and jewelry. The men sit on their stools on the outside of the circle... it's clear in this setting that women take up the majority. My mind can't comprehend that something so beautiful can hurt so much. How can this beautiful culture live daily with a level of hunger we can never now. The food we brought will last three days, 1 week if the family combines. The government is only feeding them once a month and usually only corn. The kids are sick, with protruding bellies and hernias. The women are hard workers who bear the child raising, the house work and the business to sustain a family and a husband who doesn't contribute anything. Although this wasn't always the case, since they used to have more success at migrant living as they traveled with their sheep. Although providing all that is needed to survive the women still have no say over their lives or their families well being... it remains in the hands of the fathers and husbands.

The poster child

6:00pm Lodwar, 2.9.09 Wednesday

Arrived shortly after 6pm from our tour to all the 9 churchs the pastors took over/built up. Some churches vary from large structures to a single tree. Its amazing how the followers of each congregation will worship in whatever place they can find. Which made praying for new buildings a difficult thing to do... because I notice that these people don't need buildings to find God, they have already found a path to him without the flashiness we so often find here in America.

While I reflect on the day in the hammock I'm taken back into real time iwth the cries for food from the small children next to our cottage. They sing songs of Happy Birthday and Jesus Loves You to get whatever food we may have. They have learned through the past visitors that by entertaining they can possibly be rewarded. Rachel brought them a bag of trail mix and tried to individually give each child some but it escalated to the children reaching into the fence and trampling on each other. They got shoo'd away by their father.

I can't block the image of all the kids pushing against the grate, crying because the littles ones would get their food taken away. It's the perfect metaphor/example of what it looks like to give from the outside... where is the strength to continue when this is what is caused from it, the crushing of one another to get what's needed to survive. God is working in all of this, I just can't seem to find him easily sometimes.

Her first Foreign Correspondence!!

My friend Jenn, who was on the trip with us, is a reporter for NPR and just published her story yesterday on Marketplace. Below is the link that will take you to the interview and photos.

These are interviews with locals in Lodwar that we met and got to know over our 11 day trip. The purpose of this segment is to give more information on what is really going on in Kenya regarding the drought, the corruption of the government and the effect this has on the people of Lodwar. She covers a lot of ground in the 3 minute segment and has left a lot of listeners with questions, desires to help, and some ignorant comments. Enjoy!

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/09/30/pm-kenya-drought/

fake reality

7:00AM Lodwar Wed 2.9.09

I'm swinging in the hammock to the sounds of distant birds chirping, kids speaking Turkana and watching the sun come up. Last night I thought the evening in Lodwar was the most impressive site I'd seen but then I wake up and find that the morning has its own unique glory to it. The sky blends with the trees and all seem as if its been freshly painted a hazy deep blue.

The stories I heard while in Soweto yesterday were tear inducing. Most of the stories centered on how the kids came to be orphans and the women who saved them. These women who had come to God through the Pentecostal church felt a responsibility to follow Joshua's plan and start rebuilding the town of Lodwar one child at a time. Each women has one to 4 foster kids, some with almost 10; while having at least one biological child already at home. One of the ladies who was interviewed by our team is sick with AIDS and has two kids of her own and a foster kid to take care of; I'm anxiously awaiting the completion of the interview.

Moses, during lunch yesterday, was describing a funny story to us about what his parents would do when they weren't able to provide food for the day. They would tell the kids who were hungry that if they kept playing outside they would slaughter a goat for dinner and they would get to eat its right leg. Moses said they found out this is what they'd tell them to keep them going during the day but they would know no food would be coming that night. Sometimes they would get one meal a day - this is the norm in Lodwar. That one meal would always be dinner. They would play all day and then get to eat a meal before bed because its hard to sleep on an empty stomach. The way he tells us this is in a joking manner, laughing as if it is a funny story he's making up. For a second we laugh along with him, his smile is infectious, until the realization finally dawns on us of what he's saying. Your stomach tightens up and its hard to swallow as the tears threaten to stream down your face. All the while he's saying this you reprimand yourself for being hungry for lunch that day after having a large breakfast that morning. You scream at yourself for feeling tired, for your body betraying you by the growling in your stomach. The body that is used to the comforts of your world and has no idea how it would feel if you only got a glass of water at night because there wasn't enough to drink when you were thirsty all day. Their bodies have become accustomed to not drinking water.

The children interupt his story by chanting my name to come out and play with the football we brought them. They love to chase me and have me chase them. They have so much energy to play in the scorching sun that I try to keep up but I'm burning up. There has been a large transition from the beginning of our time in Soweto to the end... where we began timidly shaking a hand here and there and smiling out of nervousness to holding a child to my chest as I play "airplane" with her and all the kids grab at my legs. Its the difference between meeting someone for the first time and saying goodbye to a loved one.

street wise

It was extremely difficult to come up with a way to describe how today felt when we were all recapping the events over dinner.

We drove past the street kids today, a group of homeless children who live around Lodwar, on our way to the church to meet the Unembraced kids. It felt oddly discomforting that we were driving past homeless children this morning without giving anything when we were going to spend a day with the kids who were "lucky" to have been taken out of their homeless environment. Aaron was able to step out and film after Pastor Joshua explained to them it was for a documentary involving the church and we wouldn't be making any money from them. Otherwise they would be expecting us to pay them for their "likeness". This chance meeting for Aaron helped give him a new visual for how he wanted to capture information for the documentary, and ended up scoring more interviews with these kids. They wore ragged clothing on their extremely dirty bodies and ate what they could get out of an empty bean can from the pile of trash freshly dumped. The city people will dump wheelbarrows full onto the side of the road and the kids will wait around to dig through it. There was a leader of the group who told them what to do and when to do it. These "leaders" are necessary protection for some of them, a way out of getting beat up by other street kids. The children, Moses told us, came to live here because of tribal fighting, AIDS, , famine and desertion by their parents. They come and have no relatives so they try to survive as best as they can. The old ladies have a hard time as well because if they are widows they were left with nothing to survive. In the modern era of the Turkana culture the women are responsible for practically everything do with the survival of the family: cooking, caring for the kids, running the house, and bringing in the income... and yet they have no power over the finances or their place in the world. The Pentecostal influence here has at least done something in the way of fixing this problem: the hold a men's retreat every Saturday and one of the topics of the retreat is to understand the fault in this way of thinking.

I still can't explain how my day in Soweto affected me. Maybe tomorrow.

Camels

6:50am Lodwar, Tues 1.9.09

We heard a camel in the night that we didn't recognize at first. It sounded hurt so we checked it out and it was all bound up... at the time we couldn't figure out why.

Slept well last night, tucked into my net covering the bed with the fan blowing on me to relieve me from the heat. No mosquitos and no spiders showing up yet so that's good, and woke up to a warm shower so my expectations so far are being exceeded. The water tank sits in the sun all day long so it stays warm throughout the night. The women who run this facility are all so pleasant and welcoming. Helen, one of the women who work the front desk, is from Kisumo, the village where Obama's dad is from. She's gone now, on vacation so we said our goodbyes and I'm taking her well wishes and love back to everyone in the US. It's a quiet and calm morning full of distant bird chiros and baby cries. The trees are the exact replica of every National Geographic picture I have ever seen of Africa. They have this windswept effect that makes me think of brushed watercolor paintings done by the guy on PBS.

We're heading to visit the orphans and their families today, bringing with us toys, necklaces and pictures for them. It will be another long day and I pray and hope for energy and excitement to fill me from start to finish. Thank you Lord for this gift of Africa.

Went to leave for the day and found out the camel was slaughtered.