Uttermost

Invitations

2012-01-22T16:02:00.002+03:00

Today, I have been stuffing envelopes for invitations to our annual Women’s conference. As I stuff these plain white envelopes with the table top printed blue paper invites, I can’t help but wish I were a different kind of woman. I wish I were the kind of woman who loves to make pretty things out of paper or fabric so that I could make the kind of invitations I want to send out.

I look at the scrapbooking supplies my neighbor has loaned me, years ago, and I can’t think of a thing to do with them. I know that were Cissy making these invites, they would be full of pretty flowers, stripes and layers of patterned paper. Each one would be handwritten. Instead, I am not crafty but practical.

Sometimes I find myself wanting to be better and more than I am. Eventually, God will show me that I am the way He made me and to let my own expectations for myself go.

Is it sin when I try to be something else, or is it sin when I give up with half an effort? Does God care that the invitations are crude at best? Do the women of Githurai even care? I do. I want to treat the ladies in the best way ever. I want the best for them.

So, I will bring them the Word of God. The invitations are only the vehicle to tell of the conference. I pray, they go out and women accept the invitation to feast on the Word and hear of how we must forgive others. I pray they stay for fellowship and food and that the Word of God will change their lives and the Holy Spirit will dwell in them. I pray they would relish the freedom that comes with forgiving others. That would be best.

New Images...

2011-11-26T09:12:00.001+03:00

Jackson has some new images in Hakuna Shida.

Prayer Update...

2011-11-25T09:26:00.002+03:00

Dear Friends,

I keep meditating on Romans 12:9-13 and overwhelmed to consider the utter impossibility of obedience to Paul's run on sentence. The standards set by the word of God are so high, I can only thank God for sending Jesus and empowering us with the Spirit to live a life pleasing to Him.

Yesterday Jackson and I spent Thanksgiving morning with some men from the church as we dug out the church compound's drain pipes. Rain had flooded the compound and much of the surrounding areas. At times the flooding was above our waists in dirty Githurai water and all the nastiness that floats in that image. As we dug down it began to rain again and now we were cold and wet. Even so the men just kept working. It was not natural, but I could see the simple playing out of transformed lives. I could even see the joy as our little team joked and laughed as we worked in the muck, cold and rain. It was strangely a joy to labor with them. More so it was a joy to see the Spirit of God at work in the lives of men that should only have had their own selfish desires in mind. Please thank God with us for helping us accomplish this task to bless our church neighbors and the surrounding community.

Thank you for praying for the trip to Teppi, Ethiopia, Jackson and I returned from. It was a wonderful time of ministry on behalf of Talking Bibles. It was a quick and intense journey, but God allowed us to accomplish the project, plus we had the joy of meeting up with many wonderful people.

Please be in prayer as we enter a busy several weeks. We will host a training seminar for Chronological Bible Storytelling, School of Ministry will graduate its first class and the church leaders are getting away for their annual leadership retreat. Please pray we would keep our relationship with Jesus primary even in the midst of the labor.

Shalom!

Ed

Prayer Update...

2011-10-23T21:28:00.002+03:00

Dear Friends,

As I type it is a couple hours before our normal Sunday service. As people that were once not the people of God worship Him and then He ministers to them by the Holy Spirit and in word it is anything but normal. It is supernatural.

Please pray as the CIF School of ministry begins wrapping up. For almost two years the students have met every week and learned practical minister, servant leadership and doctrine. Pray as they have been equipped that they can not take that to others. Please pray as the next class is scheduled to begin in January.

At the same time, please pray for as we begin taking a select group of men through a Shepherd's School to prepare them to plant the next generation of churches here in Kenya. We praise God for their hearts to prepare and ask for wisdom.

Please join us specifically in praying for Dennis Ndunguini as he prays about planting a new work in town center (downtown Nairobi). Lord willing the launch will be early next year, but there is much preparation now. Please pray as we look at facilities and as God continues to prepare Dennis.

Finally, please be in prayer for security issues here in Kenya. War has been declared on Al-Shabaab and Kenya has crossed over into Somalia to fight against the terrorist organization. Al-Shabaad has promised retaliation and the US Embassy has warned us of likely reprisals. So we ask you to pray.

Shalom!

Ed

Prayer Update...

2011-10-23T21:26:00.003+03:00

Untitled

2011-10-23T21:26:00.001+03:00

Kenyan troops pursue al-Shabab into Somalia - Africa - Al Jazeera English

2011-10-16T20:35:00.000+03:00

Kenyan troops pursue al-Shabab into Somalia - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Prayer Update...

2011-10-09T07:31:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Thank you for continuing to pray for the work here in Kenya.

Jackson has been accepted to his university of first choice. Presuming financial aid comes through he'll be pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree in visual journalism at Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, California. Thank you for praying for our kids as here in Kenya and please continue to pray as Jax finishes up his senior year at Rosslyn Academy and for Haley as she begins looking for internships related to her field of political science for next summer.

Last Friday was our mid-term in Kiswahili. This is one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had, yet it is also one of the greatest joys we've ever had as God is using it to open new doors of ministry. Please thank God with us for this special time, but also thank him for raising up great men to help at Calvary International Fellowship as I spend so much time in class.

It is amazing to say School of Ministry graduates at the end of next month. Thank God with us for bringing Julius, Veronica, John, Daniel, Janyce, Frida, Mrs. Ngila, and Godfrey to this point. Please pray as we begin to map out the next class scheduled to begin in January. Please also pray as we begin a Shepherd's Training for a couple key men that we believe God has called to plant new works within the next couple years.

Maybe I should have begun with this, but please thank God for His goodness and mercy to save us and call is His children. In a couple hours I will head to church and give a message from Matthew 25:31-46 with an object of being sheep that care for the least. As I contemplated that scene of coming judgment when Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats I can only think how just our God is and how good He is to tell us these things.

Shalom!

Ed

Powerless in the hands of a Powerful God....

2011-10-08T10:58:00.001+03:00

It is 9:39 Saturday morning. By 9:30 am last Saturday, my friend Boaz had just died. It has been a busy week with school but in the back of my mind I have been trying to process Boaz’s death.

I have written before about how delicate life is in Kenya. Bodies lay on the side of the road daily, left to be found by family or friends. Just two days before Boaz died, I saw a group of men sitting 5 feet from a man laying facedown. Two other men walked up to the facedown man, grabbed him by one foot and flipped his body over. The body was so stiff, if flipped easily. Clearly he was dead. They looked at his face then walked on. They were looking for someone else.

When Frances found Boaz, there was a small crowd around him. They told Frances a drunk had passed out. Frances looked at his face and insisted Boaz was no drunk. He called another friend, Manasa, to call us. Last year, it was Frances who had been hit by a car, and Ed who took him to the hospital.

When I saw Boaz, lying in a ditch, splayed out, head against a cement marker, he was barely breathing. I crouched in the mud and felt for a pulse. I felt a slight flutter against my fingers. Next, I tried to get any response from Boaz but there was nothing. I looked at Ed and slightly shook my head. “We need to get him to a hospital now.” The crowd around scooped Boaz up, and with me cradling his head, we slid him into the backseat of our tiny car. His knees bent at the door, feet in the foot well, head at the other door. The seat backs were laid back as far as they could go and I straddled them while keeping one hand on Boaz’s pulse point and the other on his chest.

Ed is an amazing ambulance driver. He kept up good speed without swerving or braking a lot. I was very secure in the back, the whole time, praying that God would have mercy, whatever His mercy would be.

The thing that I keep coming back to this week is how big God is and how small we are. I knew immediately that there was nothing I could do in this situation. It was way beyond my skills and even beyond the skills of the doctors here and even those there in America. All I could do was to call out to both God and Boaz. God was in control.

As we struggled to get Boaz unloaded from our car, another man was being dragged off of a motorcycle. That man got a bed behind a curtain. Boaz was left in the middle of the room. The night shift doctor glanced at him. The nurse was trying her best to clear the room of patients. “Get him to the ward and let them deal with whatever”. She said it repeatedly. In the meantime, there lay Boaz, shoes off, shirt open, one arm laying under his body and dangling off the gurney on the other side. I stayed by him, lifted him up and pulled his arm out.

Ed ran to pay for them to open a file. Ed ran to pay for the lab work. Ed ran to get xrays. They were not open yet. Finally a young doctor came in and put his knuckles to Boaz’s sternum and rubbed really hard. Boaz’s body contracted up in pain but not purposefully. Another bad sign. I was sitting on a bench outside the door but in full view. The doctor called me in to explain what had happened. I told him the story twice, the previous doctor twice. I knew they were looking to see if we had caused Boaz’s injuries. I stood by the doctor and helped him with is head to toe assessment of Boaz.

Boaz had a small, non- bleeding scratch on his head, where it had lain against the cement marker. His pupils were fixed and dilated. I had thought I’d seen blood in his mouth, no blood now. No broken bones or nails. No other bruises were found. Had he been hit by a car? There were not the massive injuries I would have expected to find but it is not impossible. Did he fall and hit his head? To me, this seamed more likely. We will never know for sure. The story going around the neighborhood is two men saw him get hit by a car.

This doctor finally got an IV started and talked to us about transferring Boaz to a larger hospital with an ICU and CT scan. We agreed to pay for the ambulance to move him. In the meantime, he called in a surgeon to look at Boaz. While we waited, me upon my bench, Ed pacing alongside it, the nurse telling the doctor to get Boaz to the ward and let them deal with transferring him, Boaz lay still, covered with a blanket. His bare feet sticking out.

The surgeon came in at about 9:20. He examined Boaz, called me in to hear the story again. He sent me out then sat at a table with the other doctor to discuss the case and write his notes. I watched Boaz. He started some fine shaking. The doctor’s were not looking. Ed said “He’s coming around.” “No, he is having a seizure.” The fine tremor moved down his body then got really big. He spazmed up into a fetal position, almost falling off the bed. I was up at his side holding him in place by then.

The doctors rushed to Boaz. They moved him to behind a curtain, the nurse rummaged in a box and pulled out a foley catheter, racing back to the bedside. Normally a foley is used for draining urine from the body. From behind the curtain, I heard the sound of suctioning and assumed that was it’s use this time. The nurse walked up and closed the doors. Other people were gathered around to wait their turn and to see what was happening. The lady sitting next to me offered comfort when I moaned aloud upon hearing the sound of chest compressions on a metal gurney. I knew what she didn’t.

Within minutes, the doors were open again. The crowd on the bench moved to the doorway trying to see in. I was standing against the wall. Ed was outside, trying to communicate the transfer plans to others on the phone. The nurse walked through the crowd, looked at me and crooked her finger.

I walked in and saw Boaz, lying on his side with his back to the door and his body covered with the blanket. I knew he was dead and respected the hospital staff for posing Boaz in that manner. The surgeon offered me a chair and told me that Boaz had died. He was kind and gentle and told me the basics. I thanked him and walked through the crowd. Ed was at the back, still talking on the phone, I met his eyes again and shook my head again, two and a half hours after the first time.

Ed drove the car out much more slowly than on the way in. I was seatbelted in the front. The back seats were still down and covered with dirt and leaves. Boaz’s shoes were in the back of the car. I sobbed aloud for half the drive, tired, full of emotion and needing to let it out. I grieved for Boaz’s wife and sons. I grieved for myself. Boaz had been our friend for six years. It is hard to imagine life in Kenya without him.

We praised God that Boaz loved Jesus and rejoiced that his struggles in life were over and he was meeting his King face to face. Ed drove me to Camille’s house. She was Boaz’s employer. We spent an hour talking with them about what happened and what they could expect next.

We went home and told Jackson. Took a bath, had something to eat. Then Manasa showed up. He had worked with Boaz for years and he took on the yard work for us when Boaz went to Camille’s. He was Boaz’s best friend. We talked and shared stories.

When he left, Camille called us back to explain again all that had happened to the family who were gathered at her house. We went back. I held baby James on my lap while Ed told what we knew about his father’s death. James is 2.5 months old. His brother is 18 months old. His mother is barely out of childhood herself. We knew the family was looking for someone to blame. We could not offer any blame.

We were powerless, Boaz was powerless, his family was powerless but we were all in the hands of a powerful God. And it is there I choose to remain.

Good day for Boaz, bad day for us...

2011-10-01T22:08:00.001+03:00

Today Kelli and I responded to an early morning phone call saying a vehicle near our house had hit our friend. When we arrived our friend Francis was standing so we asked him if he was hurt. He looked at us, pointed down to the crumbled person we had not seen and said, “It is not me, it is Boaz.”

He was in bad shape. Hardly breathing. A couple guys helped us load him into the back of our car and we took off for the 10-minute drive to Kiambu hospital. Kelli was in the back kneeling over Boaz and saying with one breath, “Boaz, I need you to breath.” In the next breath I could hear her crying out for God to have mercy on our friend that was barely alive.

The drive seemed to take forever and several times the cycle of Boaz not breathing and then Kelli crying out for him to breath for her and then her prayers were repeated. As Kelly screamed “Breath for me.” I could remember how much joy he had to please Kelli in planting flowers in our yard or finding her some special plant. I want to think Boaz was responding to his friend’s request even as he gasped for air.

As we arrived at Kiambu District Hospital there was the normal confusion of a developing nations hospital, but we finally got Boaz into the casualty ward. He was still unconscious and his breathing was gurgled. Maybe he was breathing a bit less labored.

There was our friend laid out on the gurney. The one we had taken chai with in his house. The one we had prayed with. The one that helped us during the post election violence and the one that came with so many questions about the Bible. He was laying fighting for his life. At least I think Boaz was fighting for his life.

A few hours later Boaz seized and died. It was not pretty, but it was quick. Our friend never awoke from whatever it was that killed him. We are grateful that he was not in pain. We are grateful God allowed us, his friends, to be with him in his last hour. Our friend who loves Jesus is now with Jesus. Please pray for his wife and two small children. Pray for my wife as we process a hard day. Thank God with us that Boaz is now home.

A GUT FULL OF PRIDE

2011-09-29T19:40:00.002+03:00

Recently, I have been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It is not the worst thing when compared to Cancer or TB. It has, however, affected me and our family in big ways.

For me, one of the worst things is my pride exposed and laid bare. I used to be called “Iron Gut” Kelli. Really, before the past eighteen months, I could count on my hand the number of times in my adult life I had diarrhea or vomiting. Most missionaries sit around the dinner table and share all the horror stories of times they had bathroom emergencies.

Not me. Yet I did not feel left out. I felt proud and joyful as I could eat anything, anywhere and pay no consequences. When I say anything, I mean it literally. This includes spicy Mexican and Indian food, smoked goat with the hair still attached, even unclean goat intestine roasted over an open fire and served by dirty hands over a tumbleweed for a table. On the other side of this table lay the pile of excrement I had squeezed out prior to cooking. I too, had no water for handwashing.

Today, I never know what I can eat. The other day, I had the exact same lunch as the previous day. Yet this day, I missed my afternoon class due to cramping and nausea. Was it the Indian food I indulged in the night before? Was it having the same food two days in a row? I never know. Experimentation is all I can do to determine what won’t hurt later.

The guys in the family are being patient with me but like to joke about what a “sickly woman” I have become. Another point of pride. I am no longer the woman who could power through anything. I whine and complain and shut down. I hate that!

What most disturbs me is not the frequent trips to the bathroom, the miserably aching belly and cramping. I have not taken good health for granted though I have abused my body with neglect. I need to endure but more than anything, what bothers me is the deep well of pride in self I have. I am so prideful, I even took pride in how well my stomach worked! Ridiculous!

So now, publically and before God, I repent of that pride. I repent of abusing my body and being self-focused and whiny. Lord, help me to shine Jesus through all you bless me with, good or bad, healthy or sickly, broken or whole. Amina.

Prayer Update

2011-09-10T08:38:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Kelli is out of the cast and into physical therapy. Thank you for praying. There is still a lot of stretching and exercises needed, but it seems that every day there is more flexibility and range of motion.

Students in the School of Ministry have begun their last term and are set to graduate in December. Please be in prayer as they finish up their projects.

Please pray for the people of Kenya in these hard economic times when inflation has doubled the cost of many staples and many are not able to send their children to school. Pray people would rely on God and find contentment in Him. Pray we would know how to minister to these people and be able to point to the the Lord that has been sustaining them.

Finally, please pray thanksgiving as God has provided a job for our daughter Haley at university in California. Almost since she left here we all known she needs to work to supplement her grants and scholarships, but she has had a difficult time finding work. While it is clear she does not like the job itself (who likes their first job?) she likes having a job and knows it is God's way of providing for her.

Shalom!

Ed

Frustration...

2011-09-07T21:01:00.001+03:00

This is an attempt to explain the complications of doing benevolence in Africa. It is no means a comprehensive report, and is really just one example, but by telling what a friend of mine has been through may help explain some of the difficulties.

As many of you know we have been in the midst of a terrible drought that has been labeled a famine across the border in Somalia. Many people within Kenya are suffering, some are dying. Many are fleeing the north. Our friend is a church planting missionary in a northern region of Kenya. His time planting churches and training pastors among the people group has developed compassion and love for the people group he is called to. It is a group that lives most years on the edge of starvation, but this year some are dying. Our friend has been mightily used of God to help an indigenous church movement in a number of the villages in the district, but the vast majority of the villages have yet to hear of the grace of Jesus. It is hard enough when those people suffer from drought, but knowing they are passing into eternity without Jesus is unbearable.

Our friend broke away from his normal schedule to see if he and some of the pastors in the Bible Institute could help. More than 60-kilometers from the tarmac they came across several villages were the people were suffering severely, but not unto death. Further off the road they came to the village of one of the pastors in the institute and he said there is another village further into the bush. The pastor said they had not seen the vigana (youth) from that deeper village walking their camels or goats to water for several weeks and they were worried. Going another 60-kilometers into the bush they came to that village were not prepared for what they found.

Camel carcasses littered the area outside the village. There were no goats. There were many fresh graves, but no one walked around. Our friend and the pastors were shocked to enter the tukels and find the wzee (elders) laying on makeka waiting to die. In famine it is the children and the old that die first, and they were dying fast. Only a few young men had the energy to help, and to bury the dead. The village had not eaten in more than a week.

Like I said, our friend is compassionate, and God has given him a supernatural love for the people group he is called to. The 300 people in the village would not make it much longer. He promised he would return with help. Some surely would die before he returned. I’m leaving out the details of the emotional cost all this was taking on our friend and national pastors, but you can imagine his great desire to get some help. Upon returning to town and making a few phone calls the funds were in place and the next day he would return with about 10-days of vitamins and uji (a porridge). Because of the condition of the village it would be dangerous to bring beans, rice and millet, but the uji would built them up to move on to more substantial food. We talked and praised God that this may be God opening a door for a future church plant in the village. Since all their livestock were dead I even wondered about helping them restart by buying several dozen goats.

It all looked like God was setting up to save many lives temporally so that He would then save them for eternity. That is until our friend spoke with the district officer. For most readers it would be analogous to a county commissioner or maybe a mayor. The officer said our friend could not bring any food unless he brought food to five other villages under his jurisdiction. The missionary and national pastors explained while those other villages were suffering, they were not dying like the village he was going to. Their reasoning did not matter, the officer explained they could only go if he went to the whole area. Our friend said he could provide about 10-days of food for the one village where people were dying, or one day of food for all the villages. The official was adamant.

Our friend kept his promise to return with the food, but he knows for the one village where people are dying it will only be a tease and death will continue. It is a horrible dilemma. Please pray this still opens the door for the gospel to go into that unreached and dark area. Please pray for our friend. He is a man Kelli and I count as a brother and dear friend. I can hear in his voice the pain he is going through and we weep with him.

Prayer Update...

2011-08-22T22:38:00.002+03:00

Dear Friends,

We asked you to pray through our Children's Camp VBS and for the visitors from Calvary Chapel Oklahoma City and God responded powerfully. We are overwhelmed by all God did in and through Calvary International Fellowship and the team from Oklahoma! The VBS averaged 130 children every day and many made commitments to become children of God. Medical professionals treated well over 100 patients, tables were made for the Jesus to the Streets ministry and the School of Ministry came off break for some special teachings by Pastor Ken from CCOKC. Please continue to thank God for the outreach and pray for those that Jesus saved, including many parents, in this outreach. Please pray we can be faithful to make disciples to these God has added to His church.

The medical examinations were a type of outreach themselves as many people within CIF and the general community of Githurai were treated. We thank God as it is clear there is generally more health among the people of the church as they have responded to health teachings from Kelli. Hypertension was endemic a couple years ago but simple changes have brought down the blood pressures. Similarly, the people of CIF have spent far less on doctors visits and medicines. For all this God gets the glory and we desire to thank Him.

Please pray as Kelli's arm continues to heal from the dislocation. Please pray she can be patient to allow for the healing and get good sleep.

Please thank God with us for providing a Job for Haley! This has been a prayer item for a long time and God has been faithful to provide an entry level position for our daughter to help make ends meet.

Shalom!

This has been bothering me...

2011-08-11T20:14:00.001+03:00

I'll let you read this account of an event here in Nairobi and see what you think.

Prayer Update...

2011-08-11T20:09:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow evening a team from Calvary Chapel in Oklahoma City arrives for an intense week of ministry with us at Calvary International Fellowship. Please pray for all God desires to do in and through them for His glory among the Kenyans in Githurai. Pray as they minister to with the Jesus to the Streets ministry, help with a children's camp and minister with the school of ministry.

Please pray jobs and the economy for the people of Calvary International Fellowship. Inflation has doubled the costs of many staple foods and yet there are fewer jobs. We know God will supply for the needs of all His people, please pray people would rely on Him.

This morning Kelli dislocated her elbow and now is in a cast for several weeks. Please thank God with us for access to health care and for God's mercy to keep the injury from being worse.

Shalom!

Prayer Update...

2011-08-02T21:52:00.002+03:00

Dear Friends,

Let me first give an update on the refugee and famine crisis. There is a lot of political wrangling and it seems ministry and relief groups are actually being kept out of the Garissa and Dadaab area. The group Kelli is associated with has lorries of food and supplies ready to head north, but they are waiting for clearance, so it still may be a couple weeks. While it is easy to become frustrated, please remember benevolence and relief ministry is VERY difficult and the best thing we can all do is pray. Since the vast majority of those suffering and dying have no gospel witness among them the main prayer should God would use this situation to call these people to himself.

I just returned from a meeting with where we believe God has opened doors to put Pastor Stephen from Kisumu on the largest radio station in Kenya. Bibliahusema is broadcast across most of the country and we think this will be the first time a Kenyan has systematically taught expository messages through the Bible on Kenyan radio. We are being asked to financially make a six month commitment and then to asses if the venture in faith should be continued. We have been praying specifically for this opportunity for several years and Lord willing Stephen will be broadcast going through the Gospel of John beginning in September. While we believe God would have us take these steps, we ask for prayer specifically for funding and ability to disciple those that hear.

In under two weeks CIF will hold its first Children's Camp with a team from Calvary Chapel Oklahoma City. Please be in prayer as the visitors from America come, but also be in prayer that the people of CIF would be used to minister to the children of Githurai.

Please pray as Jackson comes back to Kenya at the end of this week. Please pray he would have a great senior yearat Rosslyn and would follow hard after God. Please also thank God for praise reports we are hearing from Haley on her return from Mexico. Please pray both our kids would be emptied of self and filled with the Spirit of God as they transition onto their new stages of life.

Shalom!

Ed

13-years-ago today...

2011-07-30T20:55:00.001+03:00

This is a video from my nephew Christian honoring his father, my brother, that passed away 13-years-ago today.

Hit & Miss

2011-07-26T21:26:00.001+03:00

“Hang on”, Ed urgently interrupted my conversation with Stephanie. As I turned back to the front to look at him, I heard a horrible crunching sound as a huge truck t-boned a small car. I watched as the woman in the passenger seat slammed into the man driving, then slide back into her seat, seat belt on. The driver, also slid right, into the door, then back into his seat. His seat belt also on. They were five feet from the front of our little Rav-4 where we were waiting for clearance to turn right across traffic.

The truck was dump truck sized, loaded with stone blocks. It’s grill was stuck in the passenger window of the white Mercedes sedan it had rammed. I am convinced it would have run right over a lesser made car. We have come across countless vehicles after accidents with trucks that had indeed been run over completely.

Ed and I instantly got out of our car, doors left open, Stephanie in the back seat. In the three steps to their car, I wondered what I would do with no supplies on hand. As we got to the car and looked in, we found both of the people were awake, and alert. The man, took his seat belt off and got out of his car. The woman stayed seated, seatbelt on. She complained of pain across her chest, under the belt, but had no difficulty breathing. I suggested she stay in the car, still, until help arrived. That there was no blood was an answer to prayer. My medical bag was sitting by the front door at home, awaiting restocking.

The typical crowd gathered quickly and seeing that both people in the car were stable and did not need us, we quickly returned to our car and drove through the crowd before we could be stuck for hours, awaiting the police and mob dispersement.

After six years of driving on the horribly congested and lawless roadways, this is the closest we have come to being in an accident. If that truck driver had swerved to avoid hitting the car, he would have barreled right into us. If the Mercedes had been a bit slower or faster, he would have been spun into us. Instead, he bore the impact and we were spared. Please pray for the couple in that car. They will be in pain for some time as the impact was severe. Praise God with us, they were not killed or more seriously hurt.

And please, wear your seat belts.

Prayer Update...

2011-06-29T14:13:00.000+03:00

Dear Friends,

Crisis is not too strong of a word to describe the drought in northern Kenya and across East Africa. I ask you pray particularly for God's mercy and grace to come into Dadaab Refugee Camp up near the Somali border as they receive thousands of suffering Somalis. Pray for Northern Kenya, Somalia and that this crisis would be used to strategically get the gospel of Jesus Christ into areas that have been mostly closed to missionary work.

We are based in Githurai, on the edge of Nairobi, and do not have ministry among the refugees. I know World Vision and Christian Aid are active in bringing relief in the midst of this crisis. Please pray people would see the help they are receiving is God's mercy and come to know Him. Remember, more than 99% of the people in the affected area are not Christian. While few are able to minister to their physical needs, even far fewer are in place to minister to their greater need of being reconciled to God.

Finally, please be in prayer as we are in the midst of Kiswahili classes. Please pray we can be faithful students to prepare us for future ministry and yet be faithful to minister to those God has currently brought into our lives.

Shalom!

Ed

From Haley in DF.

2011-06-28T06:56:00.001+03:00

I've now been at my site, Armonia for a week and everything is going very well. Today was our first staff meeting back in the city center, I made it there fine but on the way back had a hard time finding the bus and then got a bit lost in the dark and the rain. It was a little scary but reminded me to depend on God rather than my own abilities in Spanish, navigation or cross cultural experience. My team is doing well, we are adjusting to the Chilango accent and enjoying teaching english here. Thank you all for the prayers, I am learning a lot and cant wait to get you even more details on what God is up to in this city, cuz its cool stuff. I have to keep this brief. adios

Prayer Update...

2011-06-24T09:05:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

It has been said the place a missionary is most comfortable in on the airplane between the passport country and where they serve. I'm not sure how that applies to Paul, but Kelli and I greatly thank you for praying us through our recent whirlough, for the first time we felt caught between the two. We caught up with many people, but not all we wanted. We had special times with dear friends, but not as much or as many as we wanted. As we reengage back into Kenya through the fog of jet lag we ask you to give thanks.

We believe God has opened the door to put Pastor Stephen Otieno on a local radio station here in Kenya. We are looking at making a six month venture of faith and see how it works as a way to reach out to people across Kenya. Stephen has a very engaging style of teaching that ministers not only across tribal divides, but to urban slum dwellers, rural shamba workers as well as the expatriate (missionary, U.N, CDC, workers) people of Kenya. Please pray for provision and favor as we meet with the station managers. Please pray for a good producer to edit the recordings. Please pray this would be used to minister to many.

It is not often the four Compeans are all on the same continent, but on our recent trip we had a couple days with Haley. Even before we flew back here to Kenya she was on a flight to Mexico City to help lead a group from Intervarsity to minister to indigenous people within that urban center. While she has very little access to communication, we have heard the team is doing very well and she has recovered from a serious stomach ailment. Please pray she would be filled with the Spirit of God as she leads her team, please pray for wisdom and boldness for the team as they serve in a hard area. Primarily, please pray God would use the team to show His great love for those urban slum dwellers as He calls them out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

Finally, please pray for Jackson as he works for his uncle in Virginia for the American summer. Jackson is a very independent young man, but this is his first time "on his own," so please pray he would continue spiritual disciplines and His walk with God while in new surroundings and patterns.

Shalom!

Ed

Haley in Mexico Updates...

2011-06-20T13:51:00.001+03:00

Here is the link for Haley's Facebook Group page for Intervarsity team's Urban Trek mission in Mexico City. Intervarsity also has a page that will eventually have updates.

Whirlough

2011-06-04T04:44:00.001+03:00

We are preparing to celebrate 8 years on the mission field. In those eight years, we have spent about 5 months in the US with an additional two weeks of vacation in Kenya. Now that may sound like a lot, but in fact, when we are stateside a typical week looks a lot like this week:

Arrive Friday 3pm. Drive to Santa Barbara 3.5 hours, stop for burgers and onion rings at Hamburger Habit then attend Inter varsity Santa Barbara, worship service “Common Ground”. Check into a Motel 6 and crash.

Saturday, spend the day jet lagged, laughing ridiculously over nothing and trying, with little success to accomplish some small errands with our lovely daughter. Camera bought, and UCSB toured, Starbucks drank, but not much else accomplished. Drive to Camarillo with all our junk to stay with our hosts, Herb and Shirley Judy. They take us out for pizza. We fall asleep early.

Sunday, leave the Judy home early for the first of four services at two campuses that Ed will teach. After each service, I stand in the back of church to visit with old friends and greet new ones. By 1:30, we leave church and drive to a Chinese restaurant to have lunch with Haley and three of her friends. By 3:30 we are back at the Judy house and helping them set up for the bar-b-q pot luck they are hosting for us. From 5-9 the house is full of over 30 people who have prayed for us, raised support for us and visited us in Kenya. It was a tremendously blessed time of getting to know our partners in ministry. By 9:30 we were crashed out.

Monday, Ed and Pastor Bruce Zachary spent the day driving the coast and discussing a church planting project they are working on. Jackson, Shirley and I went shopping at the outlet malls. Shirley treated us to new shoes and underwear. We treated her to lunch. Monday night was dinner at the Zachary home. Despite what she says, Karen is a great cook and a lovely hostess. We played with the dog, hung with their boys, Josh and Johnny, ate, talked and played with fountain pens.

Tuesday, Ed attended CC Nexus’ staff meeting, Jax and I visited Cal State Channel Islands. Jax did not like the “vibe” there. No one was around as the term ended last week. Also, the place is a former mental institution:) We then wandered around a grocery store and talked about how to make wise choices and comparison shop while slurping the ubiquitous Starbucks. We met up with Ed and the Zachary’s for lunch and ate too much Indian food. After lunch, we took Ed shopping at the outlet malls. Then we made our way to Ventura for an In-N-Out birthday dinner with Haley and Bob and Bev Irish. Dinner was finished off with Hostess cupcakes for birthday cake and we made our way to visit Lois Warner. Lois is our dear friend I had written about in a previous posting. After a quick visit, we drove back to Camarillo to share our testimony of being called to the mission field with CC Nexus’ School of Ministry students. After answering some wonderful and interesting questions, we headed back to the Judy’s and crashed.

Wednesday, we got to hang around the Judy house for an extra hour. I anticipated an extra hour of sleep but the exhaustion has given way to jet lag and I was up at six:( By ten we were all at Brooks Institute of Photography for a tour and talk about the school with a recruiter. After the tour, we met with a former co-worker of Ed’s and current teacher at Brooks, Greg Cooper. After a lunch of shrimp tacos with Greg, we walked around Main St. Ventura for an hour then made our way back to the Judy’s for chicken dinner before church. At CC Nexus, Ed taught the mid-week study and had a time of question and answer. We visited afterwards with the group from CC Ventura who had driven over to hear Ed. Then we crashed. Again.

Thursday, we went back to the outlet mall so that Ed could find some shoes. He had become overwhelmed the first trip and couldn’t focus long enough to make a choice. We ate burritos and taquitos at Evitas, then visited Ventura Community College and talked to the financial aid department. The young man there was very helpful and knowledgeable. Jax didn’t like the “vibe’ there either but did say he wanted to go to university. By five, Ed and I were at Armando and Maryanne Garza’s home for white chili dinner and Jax was heading to Malibu with Mike Thompson. Mike is a photographer who has visited us twice in Kenya. They were doing a photo safari at the beach then went out for a late dinner.

Today is Friday. We purposely left today open to visit with our hosts. The boys went to an outdoor range to shoot pistols and rifles with Dr. Herb, while Shirley and I ran to Costco, had a seafood lunch and then watched the good parts of this season’s American Idol. We are about to go out to mexican dinner. Maybe I should have said “see food” because we have seen, eaten and conquered the food placed before us:)

It has been our traditional “whirlough” so far but has been one of the best trips ever. The friends here in Camarillo and Ventura are so dear to us. The fellowship has been exceptionally sweet and the food, free flowing:) We are a deeply blessed family to be serving on the mission field with such loving and generous partners. Praise God for the family of God He blesses us with.

Prayer Update...

2011-06-02T21:07:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

We thank God for the kind hospitality and warm welcome we have received from friends and churches here in Ventura County as we take this quick "whirlough." Even as I type Jackson and Kelli are out with a friend learning about blowing glass beads and later this evening we'll have dinner with other dear friends. Thank you for praying for this trip. We are seeing incredible generosity and love for the churches in Kenya as many people become fellow workers with us (3 John 1:8) in this work. It is funny how we are enjoying sweet fellowship, consistent hot water and electricity, sane driving and tacos; yet we yearn to get back to Kenya.

Please continue to pray as Jackson looks at colleges and universities as well for us as we continue to share about what God is doing in Kenya. Next week will be an important meeting regarding the future training of church planters, so please keep the meeting in prayer as well. If you are interested in seeing a video from last week's message on God's mission and the work in Kenya, please just click follow the link.

You can follow this link to see our speaking schedule. Please pray for Pastors Murigi and Daniel as they undershepherd the church in my absence.

Shalom!

Ed

Please watch this...

2011-05-25T06:57:00.001+03:00

CNN documentary wins Amnesty International award - CNN.com

2011-05-25T06:55:00.000+03:00

CNN calls this an untold story, but it is not here. CNN documentary wins Amnesty International award - CNN.com

Prayer Update...

2011-05-24T20:48:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

After church last Sunday while in a meeting with the childrens ministry leaders one of the teens came running in trying not to interrupt. He whispered into the ear of one of the teachers and they ran out the door. Later the teacher came back to tell us a first time visitor to the church had stayed around to steal supplies from the Sunday school classes. Being caught in the act he dropped the bag of loot (mostly flannel graphs and puppets), but made it out the gate and down the road with his pockets stuffed with other supplies. From the human side of things it is strange to think people would come to a church to steal, but from a spiritual side of things it makes sense. It gave me an opportunity to reflect and realize that since the robbery of 2009 we have had very little theft at Calvary International Fellowship. So we should thank God for His hand of protection on the church. Please pray for this man's repentance and thank God with us that only a few things were stolen.

On Thursday we fly for our quick Stateside trip. You can follow this link to see our speaking schedule. Please pray for Pastors Murigi and Daniel as they undershepherd the church in my absence. Please also pray as we have heard there is a volcano erupting in Iceland th at may cause scheduling problems as we connect through London. Please also pray for Jackson as he stays behind to work for the summer and make his initial adjustments to America.

Shalom!

Quick Update...

2011-05-21T17:16:00.001+03:00

Here are a few images from the last year we'll be showing at a couple Stateside churches we'll be speaking at in the next couple weeks.

Sunday Morning...

2011-05-16T17:40:00.001+03:00

The camera on my phone stinks, but I could not pass up this guy outside church Sunday morning. I chased him off (presuming it was a make camel) because they tend to join worship and praise, but do not actually know any of the songs...

The East African: - Magazine |Chaotic night on ‘superhighway’

2011-05-16T17:29:00.000+03:00

This article speaks of our 'hood. That is Thika Road. The East African: - Magazine |Chaotic night on ‘superhighway’

We’ll be ducks......

2011-05-15T22:05:00.002+03:00

We at CIF are in the midst of a 40 day prayer and fast. I do believe this is the first time I have fasted for 40 days and it is amazing the things God is showing me and the breakthroughs we are having at church. And for the record, I am not fasting from food, so no one need worry that I will waste away. I am fasting from reading fiction, and that is really hard for me:)

One of the things that God is showing me and another woman who I am very close to is that we are so very wounded by others. For me, it is more of a pile up syndrome from years in ministry. Some recurring boils that have needed bringing to a head and lancing. Praise God, He is faithful to do so if I remain willing.

For my sweet sister, it is a new realization that being in ministry means being slandered, gossiped about and maligned. She had recently been falsely accused and was deeply hurt. Through her time in prayer and fasting, it had really grown to an immense burden upon her. She talked of leaving the church to avoid the pain. She has not been sleeping well and is having dreams and visions.

What she has learned in searching her heart, the scriptures and seeking God, is three reasons she goes to church.

To respect God’s Word by listening to his servant teach it.
To obey God, who says not to forsake the gathering of believers.
To be used to minister to others.

She learned these lessons last week and was excited to come to church and share them with me last Sunday. Unfortunately, I was home sick. Here is what God did to confirm her assessment.

A young mother came to church for the first time with her nine month old son, Michael. My sister could see the child was seriously ill and having difficulty breathing. She immediately began praying in her heart for the child. After church, she talked to Mama Michael who told her she came to church to see the Daktari, Me. Feeling helpless and powerless, my sister took the mother and child to the elders who laid hands on the child, prayed for healing then, practically, gave her bus fare to take the child to the local district hospital.

Today, Mama Michael was back in church, with her son. He had been treated for pneumonia and was much improved. She wanted to share what God had done. Today, also, Ed taught on Matthew 18. He spoke of forgiveness at length. My dear sister, realized today that she was able to forgive the slanderer and wanted to be more like Christ. When we talked, she shared all that had happened and how listening to Ed’s message really touched her heart.

Together we shared our struggles with what God is showing us in our time of fasting and prayer. We shared the burden of ministry and recongnized that it is a painful position. I shared with her my tendency to grow a shell around me to not let the pain in and how I knew that was wrong. Instead of being candy coated chocolate, I need to be something else. We need to be closer to Jesus, who upon His triumphant arrival to Jerusalem, wept with deep anguish over the very people who would be killing him by the end of the week. We need to be more like Jesus who, hanging on the cross, begged His father in heaven to “forgive them they know not what they do.”

The closest thing I keep coming back to is we need to be ducks. Yes, ducks. They have soft, downy feathers yet water just rolls off their back and when it gets to their tail feathers they shake and fling the water off. We need to be like a duck. Let the hurt and pain roll down our backs but not penetrate, let it get to our tail then shake it off. Then we can let the empathy and compassion for others seep through our down, as it would be unable to do through our candy coating.

So, friends, pray for us to allow God to surgically remove the candy coating and give us the down we need to transform us into more Christlike servants. And pray, are you candy coated? Or downy?

Prayer Update...

2011-05-13T21:57:00.000+03:00

Dear Friends,

On Fridays I use Chronological Bible Storytelling as an outreach Bible study at a local high school in Githurai. It is truly foolish to have a fat and bald middle aged mzungu (white man) trying to minister to over a hundred Kenyan youth, but that is what God has ordained. My favorite time is the last 15-minutes where we open the session up to questions. Please continue to pray for these meetings and for the relationships that are building.

Please pray with us as we seek God about helping get a solid church planted in downtown Nairobi. On any given day there are thousands of people wandering around the town looking for a place to spend their lunch hour. We can not help but look out on those crowds with compassion and pray God would raise up a man to lead them in grace and truth.

Please pray for Jackson as he finishes up the last two weeks of his junior year at Rosslyn and prepares to work in the States for the summer. Thank God with us for a good year and for His provision for the school.

Finally, please be in prayer for the young people at Calvary International Fellowship. Pray they would grow in the Lord and become Godly leaders in their families and communities.

Shalom!

Ed

P.S. We are making a quick trip Stateside, you can follow this link to see our speaking schedule.

Kelli at Art Cafe

2011-05-11T11:46:00.001+03:00

I have a collection of images of Kelli drinking coffee. This is probably because she is always drinking coffee and I am always taking pictures of my beautiful wife. Here is a photo from a quick break we took at Art Cafe this morning as we strategized how our day would go.

Dada Kelli,

2011-05-10T16:20:00.001+03:00

First, I love having a dual sim phone, but the camera stinks. So here is a quick picture of Kelli seeing some burn patients at CIF.

"I've had enough"

2011-05-09T22:37:00.000+03:00

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the prophet Elijah. Despite doing wonderful works of God, directed by God, Elijah feared for his life and ran away from what God had called him to. Then he stops under a tree and asks God to take his life. Apparently God taking his life was okay but dying at Jezebel’s hand was not. “It is enough.” Elijah said.

I know that feeling. While I never really had much culture shock or cried every day for a year as some women on the field do, lately I have had enough. Oh, not of the church but certainly of living in Kenya. If I allowed myself this could easily be a rant of all the things that drive me crazy about living here. Eighty percent of Kenyans claim christianity, they clearly are NOT. Of course that is why God has us here.

The thing I love about the story of Elijah is not so much him but God. After he ranted, Elijah laid down and slept. When he awoke, God provided a meal for him. Actually it was a cake. Yeah!! In my mind, it was a chocolate cake and a cup of coffee:) Then Elijah took another long nap. The angel of God again woke him with food and told him of a great journey. One too great for Elijah.

God provided rest, food and vision for the next step. In fact it was a forty day and night step to Mt. Horab. That is some amazing food. Despite being weary, and fearful, Elijah took those steps, made strong by the rest and food of God.

What does this mean for me. “That’s enough,” was a common phrase in my house when I would discipline the kids. Now I am saying it to myself before I end up in the bad place of needing discipline from The Almighty. I Don’t like that. So, I am laying under my figurative broom tree and resting in Jesus.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Jesus says in Mt 11:28 I am eating the cake of God’s word. “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls away, But the word of the Lord endures forever.” 1Pt 1:24.

God is giving me sweet rest and nourishment. He is giving me vision for the next step. Basically, I need to keep on moving as Elijah did. He used Elijah in a mighty way after this time of rest and I am sure He will use me. I doubt I will be parting any water in my future but figuratively, I likely will. It is an awesome adventure following Christ. That has never changed and it never will. I know I am where I am called to be for this time. I trust in Him and He is giving me rest for my soul.

Isn’t God good!!!

Prayer Update...

2011-05-05T21:30:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

It is so awkward, at least for me to write anything about missionary support. I'm never afraid to explain what I believe God may be directing us to and what it will cost, but I'm always afraid someone will think we are pressuring or expecting something from them. I could go on and on about my feelings on the subject of missionary support raising, but I've already typed more words than I intended. I just wanted to ask you to thank God for His provision. We asked you to be in prayer on this issue and God has provided. Abundantly. More than we could ask or think. Surely there is more prayer needed, but it would be wrong not to include thanksgiving with the intercession. We thank God for His provision and you for praying.

Haley was asked has accepted a position as a team leader with Intervarsity's Global Urban Trek to Mexico City. Please pray she will be used to help the other short-term missionaries and that she will be effective in ministry to the nationals. Please pray as God works within Haley and through Haley. Please pray as she raises support for the six-week mission and praise God with us as some of her costs are being met by Intervaristy.

Please thank God with us as we come out of a difficult time of conflicts and divisions at Calvary International Fellowship. Thank God with us as there has been healing and restored relationships. Please continue to pray as God humble themselves and become broken before God.

Thank God with us for a some small building projects around the church. Lord willing a kitchen will be completed by next week and our shipping container will be converted into a flat to house interns.

Finally, please pray as the CIF School of Ministry begins its fourth term.

Shalom!

Titus 2 Woman

2011-05-04T21:11:00.001+03:00

My dear friend Lois Fern Warner is on hospice. She is not ill. She is old. At age 91 she has slowed down and is not eating much. So, she went on hospice, almost 13 years after I put her husband Frank on hospice.

I remember coming home from our first short term mission trip to Ensenada, Mexico. We had only been home one or two hours when I got a call from Frank’s son, Phil, asking me to come and check on his dad. We were all church family, so I happily let Ed unload our two kids aged 7 and 4 and I made the mile drive to their house. Frank was in his chair and not doing well. I don’t remember the specifics but I do remember telling Lois, Mary their daughter and Phil, their son, that Frank was dying. He had hours to days left. It was their response of joy that made the scene so memorable for me. With tears in their eyes, they praised God that Frank would soon be joining his King in heaven.

For a few days, there was a constant bustle of church and biological family in and out of the house. Hospice was there to see to Frank’s physical comfort. He lay like a shell of the man who was the first to greet us and welcome us into his family at CC Ventura, the year prior. He was rarely awake and Lois Fern sat beside him when she wasn’t busy welcoming visitors and seeing to their comfort.

It was Lois’ birthday, the evening Frank died. My family was there at the end. Much of the church family were there in the house and around Frank’s bed. We prayed and sang hymns as he breathed his last.

Someone called hospice who then called the mortuary. The mortuary driver was also church family and he arrived at the house with his partner. I think it was Phil who greeted them at the door with laughter and joy. He brought them into the house and offered a piece of his mother’s birthday cake. The mortuary worker was very disturbed by the lack of sorrow and the joy filled home. Her co-worker explained that Frank was in heaven and that everyone in the house knew that, took peace in it and had confidence that they would see Frank again. As he had welcomed us all into church, he would be there with a powerful slap on the back and a deep voiced “Welcome” when we arrived in heaven.

For awhile after Frank died, we all worried about the delicately built and blind since childhood, Lois Fern. She was tougher than she looked and has served on without the love of her youth. For 20 years, CC Ventura has been meeting every week for prayer meetings in her home. It was in those prayer meetings that Ed and then I were called to the mission field. The people in that home fasted and prayed for us. And though the people have changed over the years, they continue to pray for our family and the work God has called us to.

I feel so blessed to be from this family. Selfishly, I want Lois Fern to hang on until we arrive in Ventura in four short weeks. I would love to be able to gently squeeze her frail shoulders one more time and tell her I love her and how much she has meant to our family. Yet, I want her with her dear Lord and with Frank. I know that is her desire. Good by is not necessary to the blind woman who would pray over the National Geographic Maps with a magnifying glass. She would unfold them every month, spread them out on her floor and pray for the people living in those countries. When we left for Mexico, she gifted us with her maps. They are in the one box we have left in the US. A treasure just as she is to us.

Lois taught Chuck Smith and Jackson Compean about Jesus in Sunday school. She raised three children who to this day walk with Him. She has been a prayer warrior for missionary families and opened her home to prisoners out of jail. Lois Fern has lived a “Radical” life and has been used by God in a mightily gentle way. My world is better for her. My walk with God stronger for her.

Thank you Lord, for Lois Fern and Frank Warner.
Romans 15:13
Kelli Compean

Our Town...

2011-04-20T10:55:00.001+03:00

We have a strange relationship with Nairobi. Here is a link to some excellent stories and images as a photojournalist tries to capture our strange town.

This describes are city perfectly;

"The inhabitants of this capitalistic, mercantile city survive, succeed, flourish or fail in the near-vacuum left by a lack of central control. Amid apparent chaos, individual networks crafted by necessity and opportunity cement new paths to progress.

Nairobians succeed not because someone tells them what to do, but because no-one does, and it is perhaps this good-natured bustle, this grab-the-quick-buck hustle, that most defines this archetype of a 21st century African city."

Here is some explanation of the project.

Daily Dispatches: Nairobi is an innovative exploration through photojournalism of a fast-evolving 21st-century African city, unfolding day by day in real time. We will spend each day of April searching out stories from all corners of Kenya’s capital, stories which will paint a compelling, informative and surprising portrait of the city, and the lives lived by those who call it home. Each day, we will send our images and reports back to a series of US universities and colleges we’re working with, who will in turn print them and mount them in an exhibition which grows day by day.

Oh Yea!

2011-04-18T21:46:00.000+03:00

Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya wins Boston Marathon in record time | The Fabulous Forum | Los Angeles Times

Amped Up...

2011-04-17T19:45:00.001+03:00

Great Arts Music and Poetry today!

Prayer Update...

2011-04-16T18:01:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

The resurrection is never far and in many ways we celebrate it every day. Tomorrow we'll focus on the Triumphal Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, on Friday our normally scheduled prayer meeting will focus on the death of Jesus and next Sunday we'll see the glory of God as Jesus rose. Rejoice with us this week as we prepare to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord!

Timothy's mentor told him "And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." It is a basic reality of ministry that we should train up people to minister, but their qualification is the ability to then again train another generation. And so on, and so on. Please pray with us as we begin to develop an intern program at Calvary International Fellowship Pray for discernment and wisdom as it is our desire that the first generation of men trained up will then possibly take the program and train the next generation.

Please pray as we finalize plans for a quick trip Stateside at the end of May and into June. A church is bringing us over to speak on God's mission and then Jackson will stay to work with his uncle in Virginia for several weeks. Please pray not only for the practicalities for Kelli and I as we take this whirlwind trip, but also this would be a learning experience as Jackson prepares to move to the States for university in 2012.

Shalom!

Flat Stanley...

2011-04-11T06:08:00.001+03:00

We were asked by Sheppard Elementary in Santa Rosa, CA, to receive their Flat Stanley, which was actually a Flat Stacy. So she went with us to Bible studies and other events around Githurai.

Random thoughts from a stundent...

2011-04-08T11:13:00.001+03:00

Some whacky student at University of California Santa Barbara has begun a blog of her random thoughts. It is a joy to read.

Prayer Update

2011-04-02T11:34:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

We walked out of the bright day and into the small home where six adults, two children and an infant were all taking lunch. As we made the traditional Kenyan greetings our eyes adjusted to the dim light we could see another person laying on a stained bed with a bucket of sputum next to him. By shaking the sick man's hand it was clear he had a very high fever. Kelli began her assessment, but since it was probably tuberculosis, HIV, or both, he was going to need labs drawn. In the meantime she gave tablets to bring down the fever. Mostly the man needs to surrender to Jesus and that is our greatest prayer and ask you to join us.

Please continue to pray for the work God is doing here. We keep hearing how the people are encouraged to be learning the word of God and we are seeing some transformed lives. We rejoice and are thankful for that confirmation, but we also are overwhelmed by the number of people that only hear and do not become doers of God's word. Please pray with us that as God's word is proclaimed that it would sink into these lives and bring forth fruit.

Shalom!

Ed

Detroit and Nairobi...

2011-03-31T18:52:00.000+03:00

An interesting read and commentary... Online commentary: A struggle in Detroit and Nairobi to trust outside voices | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

No peace...

2011-03-29T00:22:00.001+03:00

"The last enemy that will be destroyed is death." --Paul

I’ve been struggling with death for some time now. I don’t know any other way to put it. For over twenty years, death and I have been closely acquainted. I first struggled as a fairly new nurse working in Bone Marrow Transplant.

There, death was the unspoken enemy. Clearly, patients, undergoing bone marrow transplant have usually failed more than one course of chemotherapy. BMT is more often than not, at least 20 years ago, the last ditch effort in the fight against cancer. Everyone knew this, the doctors, nurses, certainly the patients, even the housekeeping staff, knew that these were those who were hunkered down in their foxholes, snow and sleet pouring down, bombs overhead and shrapnel taking out their fellow warriors. Like those trapped in WW2 at Bastogne in the Battle of the Buldge, the patients of BMT knew that they were in dire circumstances, but no one could talk about it.

There was no discussion of death allowed. It was an unspoken rule on the ward. Even as patients battled raging infection and had none of their own blood, we only talked of winning the war. I learned there that when in the foxhole, all you have to cling to is the hope of winning, if not the war, then the battle.

In my year on the ward, I learned that I was better suited not to foxholes but to strategy. I became a chemo and research nurse. There in the out patient clinics, I got to know my patients. We would sing and dance, laugh and play while carrying on with the business of fighting death with strategy. We kept schedules and closely monitored the situation. I became very adept at recognizing when someone was loosing their battle. In fact, I got to where I could smell death on them, often weeks, even a few months before they would succumb.

This is where I came to accept that sometimes retreating from the battle and waving the white flag was a relief, and surrender brought great peace, not only to the patient but to their family. It was here that I began helping people with that surrender by helping them emotionally to transition from active battle to a planned and comfortable retreat.

I moved on and became a “transition to hospice” nurse. When oncologists had patients that were nearing the end of their battle, I would visit them at home and begin helping them through the process of surrender. I was not the hospice nurse. I was the strategist. Helping them to plan how much longer they could continue the fight with the resources they had. Helping them to rally their own troops and get them all facing the same direction. Once they were ready for the peace of surrender, I would pass them on to the hospice team.

I did this work for fifteen years in all. It was a calling and I felt blessed every day to be doing what I felt was meaningful and important work. Even the days when I felt I was the angel of death, going from home to home talking of sad and disturbing things, I loved my work. I know it was a large part of God’s preparing me for the mission field. God used it to prepare me for the suffering and the devastation I would find here.

After all this association with death, I find a new aspect of it here in Kenya that has me wrestling all over again. What I once felt I understood and even accepted, I find I can not understand and can not accept. Why? Death here is so needless. It is so preventable. At least in the mind of a nurse. God must have another view I just do not understand yet.

Let me tell you about the death of Kenya. Since moving here six years ago, I have seen men lying on the side of the road, breathing their agonal breaths with smashed in heads because they were run over by busses that don’t always stay on the road. I have seen men lying in puddles of their own blood, shot dead while the police who shot them stood over their dead bodies. I have seen men chased by crowds with pangas (machetes) weighted down with re-barb to cut through bone. Thank God, I didn’t have to see the end of the chase.

Within weeks of arriving I loved and lost an infant to TB. This year, I have had two dear friends loose children. I attended both funerals. In the first, the young man bled to death from amoebic dysentery. A diarrheal illness that a few dollars of medicine would have treated. Instead, he was mistreated for Typhoid and died. Last week another friend lost her five month old daughter to choking. She choked to death on her own vomit.

These deaths are so senseless to me. Death is not the worthy adversary here as it is in cancer. There was no lengthy valiant battle to plan and strategize. There was no weariness to fight and finally, when ready, a white flag to wave and peacefully accept surrender. This death is a sneaky, rotten bastard.

This is my struggle. I know that God is in control of even this. That He alone is victorious over death. I know that it was probably my pride that made me think I had a nodding and worthy relationship with death. This is not the way it is supposed to be. I understand it but still wrestle with it. I hate the needlessness of these deaths. I hate the violence and abuse of these deaths. I’ve been struggling with death a long time now.

Romans 15:13

Kelli Compean

Sort of Prayer Update...

2011-03-26T19:44:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

In 2006 we met a wonderful young lady that could only afford a very substandard high school where the headmaster was forcing himself on her. We broke one of our basic rules and through God's provision were able to help her find school fees to attend a better school. Her parents were of no help, but by 2008 she graduated. Considering she had no family support and her living conditions were miserable she actually did quite well through her studies. We again broke our rules and encouraged an outside supporter to help her with school fees to attend a vocational training college for secretaries. Again she did quite well and last November she graduated. She now needs a job and is really struggling because it takes either a bribe of finances or sexual favors to get one, and then it is often only if you are the right tribe. Please thank God for providing for our friend this far and that He will provide a way for her to support herself that does not compromise her Christian witness.

We are surrounded by thousands of wonderful people like our friend that need help, and yet benevolence is very, very difficult to do well. Good intentions can easily create dependence and we feel a great burden to stay focused on planting churches to make disciples. We ask you to pray our hearts do not turn hard and cold to the great needs around us and yet we also ask for prayer to be discerning regarding how we can help.

Prophet Micah reminded God's people of old of His great deliverance from the bondage of slavery. He uses the word "redeemed" (Micah 6:4) which is the same word Luke, Paul and John used to explain how Jesus rescued or delivered us modern people of God from the bondage of sin. Micah's reminder of God's redemption is shortly followed by our expected inward response. While the response is a changed heart, it is then expected to be expressed outwardly in justice, mercy and walking humbly with God (6:8).

I think that is what is needed today in Africa. We as God's redeemed people of today recognizing the great redemption from bondage God has given us can respond to live in ways that bring justice and mercy to the oppressed as we walk humbly with our God.

Sorry, this is not our normal prayer update. I like to keep it short and concise, but I think I just needed to pour out (it must be the pastor in me). We ask you pray God would would provide a job for our friend, and the thousands more around us that need help. Since Jesus came seeking that which is lost we also ask people would respond to His great love, be redeemed from their bondage, and there would be more of God's justice and mercy in Africa as more people walk with our great Redeemer.

Shalom!

Other blogs of mention...

2011-03-21T20:42:00.001+03:00

You may be interested in reading about Kelli and other ladies from CIF heading out to Kisumu to help with their first women's conference. Our friends Matt and Peg wrote about it on their blog.

Its a little older, but they also wrote about a health conference Kelli taught at their church as well.

After church prayer meeting...

2011-03-20T18:48:00.001+03:00

Quick images from our prayer meeting after church today...

Stormy weather for P4...

2011-03-20T18:38:00.001+03:00

I take so few photos anymore it is no longer instinctive. For this portrait of some family friends we we tried rush to Lake Victoria (I was already in Kisumu) before a storm came in. We were too late, it was raining as we pulled up. To make matters worse the sky was flat grey and did not even make a dramatic stormy background. Then I realized my flash batteries were near dead. Portraits were never my strong suit anyway (give me a good bunch of civil disobedience, a hostage standoff or a ball game any day...). Even so, with all my whining, I kind of like this portrait of our friends the Pottengers and I was really blessed to help them out. Plus, these days I don't have some editor breathing down my neck and I can post whatever I desire on the blog...

Prayer Update...

2011-03-19T20:10:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Thank God with us for a great trip to Kisumu as ladies from Calvary International Fellowship went to minister to the ladies of Calvary Chapel Lakeside. We rejoice to see the ladies of CIF step up and minister outside their walls and we rejoice to see how God is working in Kisumu. We praise God for a wonderful time, but more so for His great love being pored out.

Please pray with us as seek God about developing some flats on CIF's compound as part of an internship program we belive God is leading us to help disciple and develop future ministers. Please pray as seek to further develop the compound for God's glory and the development of His people.

Finally, pray thanksgiving with us for the recent rains. There has been great concern that Kenya was going into drought and crops would fail. The rains are late, but they will go a long way to help the crops.

Blessings!

Africa in the Cinema

2011-03-15T22:02:00.001+03:00

Haley has completed an excellent paper for one of her Poly Sci classes at UCSB. She asserts the hypothesis that though there may be some improvement in the last 10 years, the overall depiction of Africa still carries the same colonial mindset of superiority over the “Dark Continent” that has led to hundreds of years of disaccord between Africa and the West. She does this by examining the 10 largest grossing movies set in Africa in the last decade. Please feel free to download the paper, but also to give Haley credit if the information is published.

Okay, her paper is very serious and I do not want to take away from it, but please allow me to list my five favorite movies set in Africa or featuring Africans.

Casablanca

Endless Summer

Kibera Kid

Bustin Down the Door (South Africa Segments)

Tarzan

Prayer Update...

2011-03-11T06:12:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Please pray as I chauffer Kelli, Veronica and Mrs. Ngila to Kisumu to minister to their sisters at Calvary Chapel Lakeside with a one day conference. Please pray for safety on the road as well as wonderful time of ministry and fellowship for the women.

Rejoice with us as Jax scored the winning goal in the final game of the Rosslyn Academy field hockey season. It may sound small or unimportant to thank God for something like the successful end to a field hockey season, but we are thanking God for the joy it has given us all.

Finally, please pray with us to have a break through with the gossip problem at Calvary International Fellowship. We’ve had seasons of victory in this area, but it seems there continues to be a problem.

Blessings!

Prayer Update...

2011-03-05T15:15:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

At Calvary International Fellowship we have been doing chronological Bible storytelling as part of the regular Sunday service for several months. We have been following God’s revelation amazed at the holiness of God and the inclination of mankind to consistently choose rebellion. In the last weeks we were blessed to go through the story of the Lord’s Passover and deliverance of the Children of Israel through the Red Sea. Then last week we had the story of the Lord giving His 10 commandments. We seemed to walk with Moses up and down Mt. Sinai as God gave His covenant to Moses and warned the people not to come too close. We could almost feel incredibly important moment that was unfolding. As we heard of the thundering, lightening and trumpet as the Lord approached the people we almost trembled with all the people in the camp. Finally, when we read the commandments a heaviness came over the church as that law confirmed our knowledge of sin. Soon a release came we came to see Jesus is our deliverer from that bondage. For all this we thank God and ask you to join us.

Please pray with us as two of the CIF women’s Bible study

leaders travel to Kisumu with Kelli to take part in a women’s conference. Rejoice with us that the church plant in Kisumu is no longer a seedling but a sapling that is growing into maturity.

Please pray with us as God has added to His church in

Githurai. Pray that we would be used to make disciples of these new people and know how to engage them into ministry.

Please pray as we hope to finish up some small projects

around the church, including a section of security wall.

Blessings!

Prayer Update...

2011-02-19T19:58:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Kelli is finishing up a week long medical ministry campaign in Meru District. She called last night to to give wonderful testimonies of all God is doing. Please pray there would be fruit that remains from this work and churches would be planted in those rural areas. Please also pray as Jackson and I drive up to meet her and the team on Monday.

Please pray as we try to build a simple wall on the Calvary International Fellowship compound. As is often the case, city officials are coming to bring a lot of red tape into the situation. It seems every time we turn over a shovel of soil they want some permit, some plan approval, or mostly some bribe. Pray we have wisdom.

We are praying for CIF associate pastor Murigi Kariuki and his wife Anne as they travel to Kisii to minister at a pastor's gathering this week. Please pray they would have safe travels and be used by God to equip church leaders among the Kisii people.

Finally, please pray and thank God for healing that is beginning to happen among church members. Gossip and malicious words had caused great damage and we ask you to keep praying as God is bringing maturity and healing.

Shalom!

Prayer Update...

2011-02-19T13:55:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Shalom!

Prayer Update...

2011-02-11T09:05:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

A couple times in the last week I have meditated on Psalm 1, particularly how the man of God has delight in the law of the Lord. It is so good to be in the law rather than be under the burden of the law.

Calvary International Fellowship had gone through a season of people falling away. Since it is the Lord's church, bought with His own blood, we did not worry as we ultimately trust God for adding and taking away. Even so, we began to pray and now we are praising God because in the last weeks we have seen Him save and add more people to CIF. Please pray with us for these new people. Pray that we can minister to these people and be used to make disciples of them. Pray they will be saints that receive the seed of God's word on good soil and bear fruit: "some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.”

We are grateful for your partnership in this work, you care for us and the love for the people of Kenya.

Shalom!

Ed

10/40 in Phoenix?

2011-02-10T17:43:00.001+03:00

If your church is considering a new short-term missions destination I ask that you pray and consider Phoenix 10/40 Interface. It is the opportunity to have radical impact with the gospel of Jesus Christ into unreached groups from the 10/40 window right in the heart of Phoenix. We have worked with Pastor Jeff Jackson for years and highly recommend this as an alternative mission trip for your church.

Turkana Drought...

2011-02-10T16:10:00.001+03:00

Please be in prayer for the people of Turkana in this time of drought. We have a close missionary friend that is serving in the area of this video and we have come to call many Turkanans our friends. It is difficult to see this drought knowing so many of this unreached tribe will soon die. Please pray.

Jackson and Haley's first day in Kenya

2011-02-06T07:53:00.001+03:00

It's hard to believe we are almost to our sixth year here in Kenya and out eighth total year on the mission field. Here is a photo of Haley and Jackson's first day in Kenya, when their cruel father forced them to attend church after more than 48-hours of travel.

Prayer Update...

2011-02-03T20:49:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

As I prepared the chronological Bible story through the plagues the Lord brought on Pharaoh and Egypt I was overwhelmed with God's goodness. It may be hard to think of the stink of the Nile, the frogs, the boils and darkness they could feel good, but God is good. Remember, the plagues were to deliver His chosen people out of bondage. Remember, God clearly warned Pharaoh of the coming judgment multiple times. Remember God gave Pharaoh many opportunities to repent. Then, right in the midst of the plagues, between the boils and the hail, the Lord explains why this was happening to Pharaoh; "But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." God is so good that even in the midst of judgment He is glorified.

While I can not say we have seen judgment, we have been seeing a lot of suffering. One friend sent us a text saying "I am tired of this life." She is a wonderful young lady, but repeated rapes and other abuses just about has her defeated. Another woman in the church is constantly beaten by her husband, but tribal customs do not allow her to leave. The police are no help and she and her children suffer greatly. It is times like this it is good to remember God's goodness as we ask you to pray for the ladies of CIF. In this suffering we are seeing people come to see the power of God and come to declare His name. Please pray for the mamas of CIF.

Please especially pray this week as they gather for a conference based on allowing Jesus to tame tongues from James 3. Please also pray for jobs for these women to provide for themselves and for their children.

Blessings!

Ed, for Kelli and Jackson.

Great Story...

2011-01-29T10:17:00.001+03:00

Here is a link from the LA Times about a Masai man leaving the Mara to come to America to learn hot air ballooning. Though we do not know the man or the missionaries he works with, we do know the area and found the story to be very compelling. At CIF one of our faithful men goes out to near this guys home in Masai land to bring God's love with a team doing chronological Bible storytelling, so it was we enjoyed reading this and hope you will also.

Funny gross...

2011-01-26T21:28:00.001+03:00

Giardia is an occupational hazard. It comes around, we glue ourselves to the toilet, pop Cipro like Pez and take yogurt to replenish our good stomach fauna until better. It kind of freaks me out that it is a fecal oral contamination, but I basically reflect on the healing rather than the cause.

Last night was just gross, but it also kind of funny. Kelli and I had saved some points from a particular shopping mall here in Nairobi and used them to get a couple nights away at a resort. After a great day in Aberdare National Park we returned to the resort for dinner and by the time we got back to our safari tent I was feeling a little queazy. I was not thinking giardia, but shortly after getting to bed I jumped up for the bathroom with an all to familiar twinge in my stomach. Without being too graphic, I was concerned about what end the protozoa (what Kelli calls a a single cell flagellate organism) was going to violently erupt from. From vast experience I knew to grab the trash can on the way to the toilet. Taking the position Elvis apparently died in, I leaned forward to use the basket between my knees and that was the last thing I remember.

Kelli said all she heard was a large thump as I passed out. She came in to find me hours from tarmac and anything resembling a hospital, but passed out cold on the floor. That would be embarrassing enough, but as I went down I pinned and killed a cockroach with my cheek. So when Kelli came in I was face down, half naked with my arms and legs sprawled out out on the cold tile of our so called luxury safari tent and with a cockroach under me. Kelli began to yell try and try to turn me over to clear my airway. I'm a solid 95kg. Okay, there is not much solid about me, but turning me over is not an easy task, even with a cockroach pushing up on my head.

Praise God that after several minutes Kelli was able to get me to my side, help clear the vomit in my throat and wake me up. I promptly told her there was no reason to be yelling and then asked where I was and why was she kneeling in the bathroom? Then I asked her why I was in the bathroom laying on the cold tile? Most importantly, why did I feel like crud and have a cockroach stuck to my head?

My wife is a nurse and generally unflappable. She took care of me and knew exactly what I needed. It's about 24-hours after my cockroach killing dive, I am coming around and like several times in the past I am thanking God for the creator of Cipro.

Prayer Update...

2011-01-20T22:47:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Thank you for praying for Kelly and the medical procedure. As I type she is resting at Aga Khan University Hospital here in Nairobi. We'll spare you all the details, but the surgeon came in and was amazed at how well the procedure went and how well Kelli was recovering. So while we ask for prayer for continued healing, we also ask for prayer for thanksgiving.

Please pray for Jackson as he heads out with a group from his school to build a dam in the Kola Village among the Akamba people. This is like a short term mission where the students will learn about ministry in rural areas while they serve the people of that area. Please pray not only for the team's safety as they work, but that they can reflect Jesus as they work.

Finally, as you have prayed for Kelli and her surgery, please pray for the babies within Calvary International Fellowship. A newborn named Cif (named after the church) is in the hospital with jaundice and 18-month-old Kelly (named after Kelli) was also admitted with an unknown ailment.

Blessings!

Ed, for Kelli and Jackson.

Prayer Update

2011-01-14T06:37:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Thank you for praying for the health and stewardship conference at Calavry Chapel Lakeside in Kisumu. It was powerful. The conference was on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday afternoon after church the mamas (a respectfulterm for mature women) asked to talk with Mama Jackson (Kelli). We presumed they had some more questions, but they wanted to thank her and invite her back. Culturally this was huge, but Kelli almost began to loose her composure as the women began singing songs in thanksgiving for her. The success of the conference to edify the church and as an outreach is fruit to your account. Please thank God for all He did, and continues to do, in Kisumu.

James said if anyone is sick that they should call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint with oil. We ask that you pray for Kelli's health. She has been having serious pain and on Thursday she'll go for exploratory laparoscopy surgery to look for the problem. We know God is in control and trust the outcome to Him. Please pray that Kelli can persevere through the pain she is currently experiencing, for wise decisions and for God's provision for the procedures.

Thank you for praying. We thank God for you as you intercede for us and this work.

Shalom!

Ed

Kelli on Mission...

2011-01-10T17:47:00.000+03:00

We just returned from several days in Kisumu. The main purpose was for Kelli to teach a two-day health and stewardship seminar designed as an outreach for our daughter church, Calvary Chapel Lakeside, there on the shores of Lake Victoria.

People were blessed to learn basic nutrition, when to spend money on the doctor, water purification and basic fetal development. Kisumu is Luo Land, and because of various tribal practices and perversions it has had extremely high rates of HIV and other STD's. Most of the second day of God's plan for sex and reproductive health.

Below is Maureen, John Mark, Peggy and Pastor Stephen from CC Lakeside.

Prayer Update...

2011-01-08T19:24:00.001+03:00

Greetings from Kisumu,

Kelli has just finished teaching a great seminar on God's plan for health and stewardship for Calvary Chapel Lakeside here on the shores of Lake Victoria. It has been a great blessing to see how the church here is maturing and growing in their relationship with Jesus. Please pray for as the church here continues to grow and mature. Please thank God with us for a wonderful seminar and time with friends in Kisumu. Thank God with us that we all have had the joy to see this church established. Please pray for Pastor Stephen, his wife Maureen and all the saints in the church.

Please pray for the children's ministry at Calvary International Fellowship in Githurai. Growth often brings growth pains and we believe God is bringing the children and teens to a new level. Pray specifically for hearts to worship God as the teachers and helpers minister to the children. Pray for creativity as we look how to fit all the kids. Pray that more faithful teachers and helpers would be raised. up.

Thank God with us for His grace, for His mercy and for His compassion.

Finally, please pray for Haley as she looks puts out job applications. Pray that she would find a perfect job that would provide for her needs and yet be a ministry to those she works with.

Shalom!

Ed for Kelli and Jax too.

SOM

2011-01-04T18:00:00.001+03:00

In May of 2010 we started with about 18 people in Calvary International Fellowship's School of Ministry which, Lord willing, will graduate in December of 2011. Classes meet one evening per-week during the five scheduled terms. Including class, it takes about eight hours per-week to complete the course. SOM is only for for church members in good standing, all students filled out an extensive application and the syllabus was very clear regarding expectations.

Tomorrow we'll begin out third term and we are down to eight students. The others have been dropped because of faithfulness. Not one came to see talk or explain why they were dropping. They just stopped coming.

I explain all this to ask for prayer for faithfulness. As I stare at the first term's list of names and the completed applications I wonder how many will actually complete the course.

2 Tim 2:13,
If we are faithless,
He remains faithful;
He cannot deny Himself.

I really thank God for those eight. Their combined GPA is above 4.0 (there has been a small amount of extra credit). I believe they are the future of CIF and the future God desires to impact Githurai with.

This is what happens...

2010-12-31T22:09:00.001+03:00

Unlike many of their friends, some of which are second and third generation missionaries, our kids were not totally raised on the mission field. We left for Mexico when Jackson was finishing third grade, but we still are amazed at the the basic bits of Americana he has missed.

This evening, to go along with a pun Kelli sang out a very well known Paul McCartney song, one that near every person where Jackson was born would have heard on their parent's radio. It is one of those songs that is sort of background culture for many kids born even in the 90's. Jackson just looked at his mother like she sang a made up song. I instinctively hummed the rest of the line.

Jackson, having recently discovered the Beatles knew about Paul McCartney, but simply asked, "Why are there some John Lennon songs, some Paul McCartney songs and some where they sang together?" Kelli said, well, the Beatles broke up that they released solo albums. To reinforce the basic concept Kelli added, "You know, like Sting." Jackson again went blank and asked. "What is Sting?"

Prayer Update

2010-12-29T21:47:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

We are amazed to look back at all God has done in and through the people of Calvary International Fellowship. A brief video of 2010 in review is available below. If you desire, the video can also be downloaded to your computer.

After the usual Kenyan holiday lull, ministry is picking back up at a rapid pace. Please be in prayer as Calvary International Fellowshiptransitions to a new schedule this coming Sunday. Please particularly pray for flexibility in the Sunday School and youth ministries. Please pray as Kelli and I travel to Kisumu this coming week to visit CIF's daughter church on Lake Victoria. Pray as Kelli gives a health class for the church in Kisumu and that I can spend some quality time with Pastor Stephen Otieno.

Please pray for Sudan and our missionary friend Stephanie as comes down to ride out the Sudanese elections. Thank God with us for our big home, but also please pray for Steph, her patients she'll leave behind in Sudan and that the election will go peacfully.

On a personal note, please be in prayer for Haley. She is at a Latino ministry conference in Dallas with Intervarsity. Please pray as she carpools back to start the term at UCSB. Also, please pray for Noel, Kelli's mother. She had a severe fall will have surgery this coming week to repair her broken wrist.

Finally, and I know I'm already way longer than normal, please thank God with us for calling us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. We rejoice in His grace and mercy.

Shalom!

Ed

2010 Compeans & CIF in Review

2010-12-28T19:49:00.001+03:00

To put this video together Kelli and I looked through a couple folders of images visitors left with us. It is always interesting to see our life and the work at CIF through the eyes of other Americans. We both thought it all looked more like a developing nation setting in their photos and that we must have become accustomed to living here.

Falling....

2010-12-28T10:50:00.000+03:00

I have this bad habit of falling. Since my teen years, I fall all the time. My right knee creaks when I walk from the damage done from years of landing on it. Apparently I have my mother’s balance.

On Christmas eve, my mother tripped and fell on the way into my cousin’s home. Rather than landing on her knee, she landed on her left hand, breaking completely both bones. When she got back on her feet, her hand hung limply. At the emergency room in Northern California, she was told she needed surgery to repair the break but they could not schedule it until Tuesday. Deciding to wait the six days at home, my dad drove her back to Southern California that same day.

On Christmas morning, we talked and she was obviously in extreme pain. My mom has an incredibly high pain tolerance so when I could hear tears in her voice, I encouraged her to go to her ER and ask for something stronger for pain. Her pain is now well controlled and we await her appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on Tuesday, US time.

In the meantime, I have been meditating on “count the cost”. For many years, our time in the field has been off and on struggle but I never really felt it was costly. Lately, like in times like this, I feel the cost. I know a broken arm is not such a big deal in the big picture but I sure don’t like being half a world away when my mom is hurting. Earlier this year, Haley was in a similar situation and I was blessed to fly over to check in with her, but I can’t just hop a plane for every hurt. Being a mom and a daughter so far away is something I am really struggling with this year. Please pray that I learn how to live with my heart in two places.

A new tradtition...

2010-12-22T21:16:00.001+03:00

I'm of Mexican descent and proud of it. My family in the States has a tamale making party every December where thousands of tamales are made, but being on the mission field we have not been to it in more than nine-years. For a couple years as missionaries in Mexico and a for our fifth Christmas here in Kenya we have made our custom tamales.

Last year, with Haley back in Kenya for Christmas, we invited several other friends and returning MK's to help in the process with a bribe of a homemade Mexican meal.

Now we have turned it into a tradition. Even without Haley back for Christmas, we had several other MK's back to spend their holiday with family, and to make tamales at the Compean's house.

madness...

2010-12-20T19:29:00.001+03:00

We had a totally Kenyan situation today. Monday is Mzuri Monday Madness at one of our local movie theaters. It is basically a deal where we get lunch and a movie for 600kshs (about $7.50) on Mondays. We can't usually afford that, but both Jackson and I are serious C.S. Lewis fans and we have been eagerly waiting for the new Narnia movie. The included popcorn may have influenced us, but it would also be our first 3D movie. Mondays are my Sabbath, so it sounded all sounded kosher.

We checked the listings and apparently so did half the missionary community in Nairobi. On arriving a the theatre there were already several people milling about. As we came up to the cashier we were told Mzuri Monday Madness was cancelled for the December holidays and it would be 800kshs ($10) for the ticket and there would be no lunch. We said there were flyers promoting Mzuri Monday Madness, we had checked before coming and even the normal movie rate is only 600kshs. All to no avail. It was going to be 800kshs. Merry Christmas.

We skipped the movie and had lunch with a couple other dejected missionaries. We kind of laughed as we discussed the totally different view on business practices.

prayer update (Christmas Edition)...

2010-12-18T18:54:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Please thank God with us as we celebrate the best gift ever, "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Kenya is abuzz with holiday travel to homelands, news from the Hague, and many teens are nervous as circumcision season is here. All of that is fine, but we pray we could all be like the angels and cry out "“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”

On Friday afternoon Calvary International Fellowship has its weekly prayer gathering. Stephen Njoroge heads up the meeting and since next week we'll have a different program he took the time to read over a list of things we have been praying for in 2010. In the midst of the work it sometimes feel like ministry is going at a glacial pace, but all God has accomplished in 2010 was overwhelming to consider. We prayed to move the adults from the children's hall and now we meet in our building. The School of Ministry is up and running. Calvary Chapel Lakeside in Kisumu is meeting and turning into a solid church. God brought us Chronological Bible storytelling and it has been adopted. We named off several people that we prayed for and were born again in 2010. The worship and praise team has solidified and is actually being turned over to new leadership in a week. I could go on, and we did on Friday, but we thank God and you for interceding.

Shalom!

Ed

Jambo Mwanzo

2010-12-15T12:26:00.000+03:00

BBC Africa News in Kiswahili. BBC Swahili - Mwanzo

Back to School Nursing...

2010-12-13T19:17:00.003+03:00

I had two more days of being the school nurse. The Wednesday was exactly what I expected of all the days. It was quiet. I had a few scrapes that needed band-aids, a couple headaches, mostly staff and one or two upset stomachs. The Monday before was a whole other matter.

I had twenty patients come in to see me before lunch. I sent six kids home with various stomach ailments and one young boy who got a mild concussion on the play ground. I had planned to leave with the school bell to take our friends, Roger and Cathy to the airport. What I had not planned on was staying behind to be the nurse on duty for the after school games and practice. That is when an already busy day went right over the top.

After school there was a middle school field hockey scrimmage, a girls soccer practice, boys varsity “friendly” basket ball game that was not very friendly and the two boys and one girls field hockey teams combined to scrimmage together. I made rounds on all the fields about every fifteen minutes but most of the time was spent between the basketball court and the hockey field.

While there was a lot of contact and fouling in the basketball game, no injuries occurred. The field hockey I was sure would not be the same. Last year, in a similar boy-girl game, a gal “ran into” Jackson and was subsequently on crutches for six weeks. I was pretty sure to have an injury on the field.

The first go around, there were no injuries. The second trip past the field, one boy had ice on his knee and ankle. Minor bruising, no sprains. The third trip, another boy was on the bench with ice to a bruised shin. I joked with the guys, asking if they were letting the girls get the stick on them. Fourth trip around, I walked out of the gym, onto the field and had the coach calling for me with her arm around two boys.

Apparently, they either bumped heads or both got hit with one of the upraised sticks. One shook off the bump, the other, Joseph, was unsteady as he walked and said he was a little dizzy “but okay”. Within minutes, Joseph was not responding and having seizures. We ended up loading him on a back board and putting him in another parent’s van. That dad drove through rush hour traffic hooting his horn and never stopping. The coach and I were crouched over him in the back, prepared to do CPR. Praise God, we never had to, though it was close for awhile.

We got Joseph to the hospital just minutes before his family arrived. After reporting all that had happened to the doctor, I moved into the waiting room and prayed with his shaking mother and sister. It took two hours for the ER to stabilize him enough to transfer him by ambulance to a hospital with a CT scanner, ICU bed and a neurosurgeon.

In the week since, Joseph has been released from the hospital. He never did have a bleed in his brain, just a really serious concussion. By the time he was being transferred, he was awake and recognizing his family and understanding Korean. He has since regained his english but at last report does not remember any of his life in Kenya. Four years.

Please pray for complete healing over the Christmas break. This injury happened at a good time in that he really only missed one week of school before the scheduled three week holiday. Pray he gets the rest needed over this time.

Mpesa

2010-12-13T14:39:00.001+03:00

It is Jamhuri Day here in Kenya, plus it is Monday, which is my day off. I should not have been "working," but should have just enjoyed coffee with Kelli and our friend who was on leave from her ministry in Sudan. Instead I had taken the time to get some work done by sending some funds to CIF’s deacon by way of Mpesa. From an administration standpoint Mpesa is beautiful thing. It stands for mobile money and describes mobile money transfer system controlled by mobile phones here in Kenya.

To my surprise my digital receipt came back saying the funds were sent to a someone named Simon. That was bad news because the deacon is Mwangi. Quickly I looked at the number I sent to and realized I had mixed up a two and a six and now the funds were sent to to a stranger that belonged to a tribe that is very superstitious and would very likely believe God had blessed him with a windfall of the equivalent of about $200. What should have been a beautiful thing was now a mess. Crud.

Jumping up from our coffee I rushed back to the Mpesa office to try to get the problem straightened out. Maybe they could put a stop to the transfer before Simon could withdraw the funds. Of course the lines were atrocious and people were cutting in front of me before I could get to a clerk. Once to the clerk I was informed that in the 20-minutes since sending the funds Simon had gone to an Mpesa kiosk and withdrawn the funds. Crud again.

Mpesa took some information for their fraud investigators, but there was not much hope. Dejected and feeling both stupid and ripped off I made my way back to coffee with Kelli and our friend. On the way I sent a text to Simon saying the funds he withdrew belonged to a church in Githurai and asked if he would please return them. Over coffee we prayed, and the chatted about stewardship and how occasionally something still slips through our cracks. Both the ladies reminded me that it is God's provision, not to make me feel bad, but that He knew this was coming and He will provide.

I decided again to text Simon explaining how we were praying for his repentance and restoration. Though I was not trying to use guilt, I was hoping to remind him that it was not just a mzungu he ripped off, but money given by people as worship of God. Again we committed it to prayer and went on with our discussion about the work in Sudan and such.

Then it happened. A simple text came from Mpesa confirming Simon had returned the funds to my account. God is good. Of course He is good regardless of Simon's returning the funds, but I felt good. I called Simon and told him he made the right decision and then we prayed to thank God.

Prayer Update...

2010-12-10T09:09:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Pray in this season of celebration we would be content in Jesus and all He has done. His grace is sufficient, meaning everything else is extra and unneeded. Pray that regardless of the situation we can cry out like the angels “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

If you have read the latest hard copy of the Uttermost newsletter you know the support for this work has fallen off. This week we received our statement for November's support from our financial facilitators and we are now coming to you for prayer. We are seeking God for where to cut and how to practically responded to this situation. Even so, this is a spiritual issue that needs intercession. So please join us in prayer.

Please also pray for CIF's Jesus to the Street ministry to the street boys in Githurai. God is blessing and we are seeing disciples being made. Please pray, this is very hard ministry, but there we believe Jesus reached out to such as these. Jackson documented some of the boys and ministry, but please be warned that the images on this link are disturbing. I know I am disturbed, but also moved with compassion to pray for the work.

Finally, please thank God with us as our Kenya visas were extended for three years.

Shalom!

Ed

We like Mike...

2010-12-09T20:26:00.002+03:00

Our friend Mike Thompson was here recently and blessed us with this family portrait.

The Story of Allie...

2010-12-09T11:01:00.001+03:00

The Mondoks are friends we seldom get to see. Their hands are full with important ministry and we live in Africa. We want to encourage everyone we know, even those we do not know, to read the post from Bryon's blog. Be prepared to weep, feel anger and then rejoice. We are humbled to consider the caliber of people God has raised up to get behind the work here in Kenya.

Jesus to the Streets...

2010-12-08T20:20:00.001+03:00

John is a former street boy that Jesus radically saved. He now ministers to boys like he was at Calvary International Fellowship, it is called Jesus to the Streets. Below are some photos Jackson took for a class to document some of the life of the street boys and the ministry. Some of these images are shocking.

Cheezy was in a fight and had part of his lip bit off.

Street boy is the right term, but so is glue boy. Some of the kids get strung out by the age of 10.

Mwenda offers haircuts for the boys.

Pastor Murigi checks one of the boys for glue before he is allowed into CIF.

Football outside the church.

CIF allows the boys a place to wash their clothes.

Informative...

2010-12-06T22:48:00.003+03:00

Justin Bell is a great friend of ours. Besides being one of the pastors as Nexus in California, he is newly married, runs a small business is completing his degree and with his wonderful wife is expecting their firstborn.

As part of his degree Justin just finished a paper entitled "The Kikuyu Female Circumcision Issue of 1929." Granted, this is a heavy topic, but this is also a well done paper that explains issues we deal with so I asked Justin if I could make it available to others.

All dressed up...

2010-12-06T10:14:00.001+03:00

It is not often we can get Jax to clean up, but he cleaned up nice to take Claire to the Rosslyn winter formal banquet at Lord Errol.

BBC News - Kenya corruption costs government dearly

2010-12-03T21:43:00.000+03:00

BBC News - Kenya corruption costs government dearly

The Kenyan government has said it could be losing nearly one-third of the national budget to corruption.

Finance ministry officials told a parliamentary committee the losses could be nearly $4bn (£2.5bn) a year.

They said individuals were taking huge sums meant for development projects.

Prayer Update

2010-12-02T20:23:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

December is typically restful here in Nairobi. Schools are out, people tend travel upcountry to see family and traffic is lighter. All this is good, but we remember that Jesus is the best rest.

Please be in prayer for as the CIF leaders pull aside to seek God and look at what He has for us in 2011. Here are some specifics to pray through with us.

1. WOW (Women of the Word) conference in February.
2. GYM (Gospel Youth Ministry) summit in May.
3. VBS (Vacation Bible School) in August.
4. SOM (School of Ministry) graduation in December.
5. Further development of leaders (sorry I'm out of acronyms).

There are many other things to pray for in 2011, like Kelli and I heading back to finish Kiswahili classes in July, but the above points are things we'll be praying through and discussing in next week's retreat. Please join us.

Finally, please also pray for Haley as she takes finals for the end of her term as UCSB and for our friends Roger and Kathy head back to the States after their time seeking God's will for future ministry here in Kenya.

Shalom!

Ed

He has prepared a city for them...

2010-12-02T16:24:00.000+03:00

After dusk we gathered for the outside a home in Zimmerman that Kelli and I had been in several times for ministry, meals and fellowship. This time we were gathered for the pre-funeral meetings. After a death in Kenya it is common in most of the cultures for family, friends and neighbors to gather every evening to sing, swap stories and for different groups to make a donation to cover any associated bills. If the deceased was Christian it is common for there to be preaching and hymns. Since Joyce had been a patient of Kelli's and was like a mother to CIF's Associate Pastor Murigi, we were asked to host Wednesday evening meeting.

Starting with a Kikuyu song saying "Jesus, you are good" the gathered family and loved ones moved into Kiswahili songs singing of God's greatness and ended with an English, though heavily Africanized, version of "When the Saints Come Marching In." Pastor Murigi then got up and gave a very frank update of how the fundraising was going and that it was believed there would be finances to have the burial by next Tuesday. He then invited me up to give the message.

Using Hebrews 11:13-16 I explained that our sister had died in faith and had looked forward to her heavenly home in the city of God. As we considered eternal issues in the death of Joyce I explained it is right for us to seek comfort in God's eternal words. Daniel, CIF's other associate pastor, finished us with some nice soft songs before we broke for chai and fellowship.

I never checked to see how the fundraising went for the evening, but there were joyful voices and people were blessed to have spent time with Jesus.

Things I needed in missionary training...

2010-11-30T20:37:00.001+03:00

Jesus said a disciple will not be above his teacher. I'm living proof. Great men have poured into me personally, taught me through their writings, through their classes and in seminars. Long hours have been poured into us so we've been blessed to learn a lot about God from men that love and know God. I hope I'm doing the same in a 2 Timothy 2:2 model. I just wish there had been a class in basic vehicle mechanics and home maintenance. Pretty soon I'll be rightly dividing the word of God by candlelight because I can not keep the electricity on.

From Nurse Kelli...

2010-11-29T19:28:00.001+03:00

Many years ago I had the opportunity to work in an elementary school as a student nurse while getting my public health nurse certificate. It was a fun time of testing kids for vision problems, scoliosis and working with bumps and bruises.

Years have passed. I never did do anything with the PHN I earned, choosing to stay in the field of Oncology until we became missionaries, first in Mexico then in Kenya.

In the nearly eight years that have passed since leaving my career, I first worried about loosing my skills, then learned to incorporate them into the ministry we are called to.

For the past four years, I have held impromptu medical clinics out of the back of my vehicle or out of the fishing tackle box Ed got me for supplies. I have worked in slums and in mountains, even in 125 degree heat with sandstorms. I have taught health classes in bible studies and in church. Every bit of it has been a delight for me. A constant challenge as I deal with things that I was not prepared for in working with Cancer patients as well as the things that work did prepare me for, such as suffering and death.

Yesterday, I was blessed to have patients who came from the street boy shower ministry a man in our church has started. On Saturdays, he and several others, invite street boys into the church bathrooms to take a shower. They provide soap and towels so the guys can be physically clean. They provide bread and chai, so that they can experience a semi-full belly and they provide the Word of God to hopefully bring them to Christ. We desire to comfort them with kindness as well as share Jesus’ love with them. We pray they spend eternity with God in Heaven. Our great desire is to see that the life they lead is the worst they will experience, not the best.

One of the young men I saw had a mask on. He had been in a fight one week ago and in the fight, his upper lip was bit off. Not all of it, just the left half. He had gone to a clinic after the fight where he was given a tetanus shot but otherwise, left untreated.

His wound was raw and draining pus. His mask was filthy. He was suffering and will always bear the marks of this fight. Through a translator, I taught him to clean it three times a day with clean salt water and apply antibiotic ointment. I gave him antibiotics, Tylenol and told him to return next week. Please pray that he does return, both to hear the gospel and to get his check up. Pray for his healing, both physical and spiritual.

Once I got home from church, I received a phone call from Jackson’s school. The school nurse would be out for some time due to her daughter’s illness. They asked me to cover some of the days. With great joy I volunteered for a few of the days and that is where I sit now. I have had a steady stream of students and teachers with complaints such as bug bites, headaches, chicken pox and flu symptoms. I feel like I have gone full circle. Once I feared never nursing again, now I know that it was preparation for what God has for me now as well as in my past. I know that nothing is wasted in God’s economy so I can assume that nursing will be a part of me and my ministry always.

Jesus brought healing and comfort to the sick, he also removed the sting of death by dying for our sins. The nurse’s daughter died today. Please pray for her family, that the God of comfort will bind their wounds and heal their pain.

Romans 15:13

Kelli Compean

Matatus and My Heart...

2010-11-27T13:34:00.003+03:00

Yesterday I boarded one of Nairobi's infamous matatus for a trip to Calvary International Fellowship. It is normally kshs 20 for the five kilometers. Of the hundreds of trips on this route only a few times have I been asked for the correct amount, usually I am expected to pay the mzungu (white man) tax. It is typical for the tout to take my kshs 50 and then conveniently forget to give me change. When I ask for it he returns kshs 10. Yesterday was no different, severe arguing allowed me to pay the fair "Kenyan" rate on the trip to the church. It is doubtful I could have left him a tract and it would have meant much. On the return a different tout only wanted the mzungu price from me. It ended up with me wrestling my money back from the tout and walking. The last I saw of the matatu was the 15 passengers with their faces pressed against the glass staring at me as it proceeded down Thika Road. I must have really showed them as I faced kilometers of walking in the mud because of the equivalent of 30-cents.

It is always a challenge to keep my Christian witness and not beat the crap out of the corrupt drivers and touts. It came to a head a couple years ago. One of our friends was abused on the route to the church and the following week I was ripped off again. It led to a tout and I squaring off in a crowd until police (usually more corrupt than touts) broke it up with his baton and yelling "Give the mzungu his money." The tout was a thief, I was just standing up for my rights and yet I'm not sure God was glorified in my attitudes or actions. Okay, I'm sure God was not glorified in my attitudes or actions. Kelli says I should just say "Mungu akubariki" which means "God bless you" and walk away. Yea, I could, and probably should...

So after yesterday I have once again sworn off matatus. Kelli is happy because they are notoriously unsafe, but I wonder what is the way to handle these things. I grant my temper is not the way, but I have also used matatus as a place meet people, minister and invite people to Calvary International Fellowship. As sort of joke I often leave tracts or handout Bibles in the outside pockets of my backpack and allow them to get stolen as my passive aggressive side rejoices. I wonder if I should just put up with paying double the cost as the "cost of doing business" as a missionary.

It is part of another question I often work through. There are no set prices in Kenya and we almost always are first told a price 200% or more than what we will actually pay. After bargaining we come to the actual price. It is different than Wal*Mart, but it can also sets a tone of animosity between myself and the ones I hope to share Christ with. It is difficult to go into a deal with a vendor and then ask if he needs prayer.

Prayer Update...

2010-11-27T13:17:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

In this season of thanksgiving we thank God for for so many things. He has drawn us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Everything sort of fades from that single point, but we also thank Him for allowing us to be part of a marvelous work of drawing more into the light of Jesus, for giving us wonderful relationships, and giving us joy and hope in the midst of a a hard place.

Please pray with us thanksgiving as we see God bring together a ministry to street boys in Githurai at Calvary International Fellowship. Though it began with difficulty we thank God for refining the vision, giving some blessed subtractions and now allowing the ministry to go forward in a way we believe can bring forth fruit that will remain.

Please pray for Haley as she prepares for her first Christmas away from home.

Please also pray for longtime ministry partners Roger and Kathy Chesebro that are back here in Kenya for a couple weeks to meet with people and seek God about returning here full-time.

Shalom!

Ed

BBC World Service - Documentaries - Road Kill

2010-11-23T06:22:00.000+03:00

Haley sent this BBC radio article. BBC World Service - Documentaries - Road Kill

New Signboard...

2010-11-18T13:34:00.001+03:00

We recently repainted the signboard at CIF. Here it is with some of the kids from the church and some of the team that recently visited from Nexus.

Prayer Update...

2010-11-18T08:41:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

We had asked people to pray for Kelli's asthma and other issues and God has been good to allow healing. She is almost back to 100%, thank you for praying. We say here in Kenya, "God is good all the time and all the time God is good, and that is His nature." We can attest to that.

Thank God with us for a wonderful visit from Nexus and building up of the Calvary International Fellowship spiritually and physically over the days they were here. It was wonderful to see old relationships caught up and new friendships developed.

Please thank God with us as we complete the final school terms of 2010 (Kenya is on calendar year school schedule). CIF's School of Ministry is about to take its December break and the high school Bible study will be taking its break as the school shuts down until January. Please thank God with us for the excellent study within the School of Ministry and the continued open doors in the high schools.

Please pray as we prepare to take a day long retreat with CIF's leaders to impart where I see God taking CIF in 2011.

Shalom!

Ed

Cheetah 1, Gazelle 0...

2010-11-18T08:35:00.001+03:00

We were blessed to go on safari to the Massai Mara with a team from Nexus at the end of their visit to Kenya. It was an incredible experience to witness so many animals, including a cheetah chasing down an gazelle and wildebeests preparing to cross the Mara River only to scattered as a group of youth lions unsuccessfully attempted to get dinner.

BBC News - Is Kenya's government finally get tough on corruption?

2010-11-18T06:47:00.000+03:00

BBC News - Is Kenya's government finally get tough on corruption?

Not a self portrait...

2010-10-26T20:19:00.001+03:00

Jackson is taking photography at Rosslyn academy and was honored with the picture of the week in his class. The gecko was captured on leaf near our front door.

Prayer Update...

2010-10-22T06:08:00.001+03:00

Dear Friends,

Please pray we would constantly seek to minister to the Lord before we minister for the Lord. Pray for our devotional lives and our desire to follow hard after God. Pray that we can know God more than we know about God.

Please pray for Kelli to be able to persevere and we would know how to minister to her as she has had a series of asthma attacks. This has been exhausting for her and the Kenyan habit of burning fields and rubbish only seems to exacerbate the problem.

City water is now flowing, our tanks are full and we are enjoying showers and flushing on a regular basis! Thank you for praying.

We are seeing God bring a great burden for evangelism and compassion for the lost people around Calvary International Fellowship. Please pray God would increase that burden and move on people to reach out to the lost.

Shalom!

Ed

News from from our Northern Frontier

2010-10-18T13:51:00.000+03:00

Somalia, Kenya, United Nations, African Union: For Somali refugees, the road leads from one misery to another - latimes.com