Continuing the Journey

Sunday at Mukuru Mennonite Church

Mukuru Mennonite Church is not easy to find. You must go down several small muddy paths through the Mukuru slums to find it. It was our first time to go there for a worship service and we weren't sure what to expect. I had visited during the week about a year ago with Clair Good.

I was preaching and Nairobi has been having problems with power outages. As I get older, I don't see as well without good lighting - so I was hoping there would be no power cuts while I was preaching. Well, not a thing to worry about! The church building doesn't have electricity anyway. There is simply a large hole cut into the mabati, iron sheet, near the pulpit to give light. It was enough light, but I did have to ask the man translator (into Swahili) to move to my left side so he would not block the light.

Sunday School was before the main service. Unfortunately, in Kenya there is not much discussion in Sunday School. It usually consists of another, possibly more teaching-like sermon. Pastor Manoa was talking about how God is still God, even when we have difficulty. In Kenya there are many 'Miracle Crusade", so Pastor Manoa told the church that chasing miracles isn't the answer, because it leads to the worship of miracles rather than God. One of his examples was that if you didn't have food to eat yesterday, God is still God. WOW!! I wasn't expecting that. That is the daily experience of people from Mukuru.

For myself, I preached for the first time in my life a sort of prosperity Gospel sermon. People need hope! And they need to know that God is on their side. I said that God blesses us because of His love, not because we give money to a preacher. I also encouraged them to use whatever blessings that we might receive from God, to increase the blessing. I used Jesus's parable about the three servants and the master who gave each a different amount of money (or talents in the KJV).

There were about 30 people at church. After the service we toured the compound. They also have a primary school (K thru 2nd) at the church. They hope to add grade 3 next year. None of the classrooms have electricity. Kids sit on wooden benches and the rooms are fairly dark, with a few small open holes in the iron sheets for windows. You can't make these 'windows' very big because of the rains. The blackboards are small pieces of plywood that have been painted black. The church feeds the students a noon meal, which is sometimes the only meal these children receive in a day. The leaders of the church and school said that the hope to get larger black boards and another small building to add additional classes.

posted by Brislen Family @ 9:10 AM