Day 9: In Way Over My Head

Today, we went to our first church service in Kenya. The church we visited was called Nairobi Pentecostal Church; it's a rural church that also houses and educates probably over 100 children who were once on the streets. The service itself was pretty...unique to say the least. The speaker's message was about financial and life planning and his closing prayer probably lasted over 20 minutes. We didn't know this until later, but apparently, Kenyan speakers often use their time not only to preach but to also train their audiences in matters such as money, serving, HIV, etc. After the service, the team proceeded to hang out, play, and tour the compound with the children. It always gave our team so much joy to play with Kenyan children and to see their joy. These children have none of the possessions and crap that children from developed country have, yet, they don't complain and live a life of simple joy with one another.

Earlier in the day, I had written out a list of expectations I had for the GP and whether they had been met or not met in the first week. I wrote out my good expectations (developing a heart for missions, being transformed by God, etc.) and my bad ones as well (struggling with team culture, being distracted, etc.). As I went through my list, I realized all my good expectations were not being met and that all my bad ones were being met. Granted, it was only the first week, but holy crap, wasn't anything going right for me on this missions trip. It seemed like I could do no right. One of the purposes of our first week of orientation and training was to prepare us for our ministry assignments, during which we would be sent in pairs all over Kenya to do ministry with local pastors for 3 weeks.

So there I was: a few days from ministry assignment and realizing I was pretty much not spiritually ready at all to do ministry. I could barely take care of myself spiritually so how in the world could I serve others? At this point, my thoughts were that I was completely in way over my head and that this GP was not at all what I expected. In a matter of days, I would most likely be living in really poor conditions, hanging out with only one of my teammates, dealing with large spiders, and probably serving with a really, really holy pastor. I knew in my heart that I needed so much faith that God really did indeed have a plan for me in Kenya and that He would guide me through any and everything.