God is good!

I had a pretty good idea that today was going to be a good day.  Yesterday, on our way to Nakuru, we met Thomas in Sondu and picked up some supplies for the Kikitemo IDP camp.  We lashed them on our LandCruiser and sped off to our hotel.  This morning, it was time to deliver.   

We had told John Karauke, our WBS worker who discovered these people, to meet us at the camp.  We did not tell him why, he assumed it was for some new visitors.  When we arrived, he was holding church out under the trees.  We joined him and listened to the singing.  These people are some of the most poor you will ever see or hear about.  They live in huts made of sticks and plastic bags, yet they were worshipping God with all they had.

The excitement built as John invited us to speak.  We talked of God’s love, and how he answers prayer.  Grace retold the story of her prayer to God for the orphan’s food and how God answered that through John.  She told us that when the orphans got their first meal from us, they all went out in the field in a circle and prayed for all the donors that were helping them. She said they stayed there for a long time just thanking God for sparing their lives.  I was starring into the eyes of those same children, with no shoes and dirty beyond belief and just wept. When it was my turn, I spoke of some small gifts we had brought.  Maureen spoke of God’s faithfulness.  In the distance they could see our vehicle, loaded with something covered with a tarp.  You could tell they were getting excited.  Finally, after some more worship, we broke to unload the vehicle.

As we began to pull tarps and blankets out of the inside of the truck the singing began again.  With each new parcel added to the pile in the ground in front of them, their fervor grew.  Then we climbed the vehicle and took off the tarp revealing a hundred more blankets in bales.  Now their few men joined us in bringing the massive bundles to the ground and the singing hit a fever pitch.  They were singing in Swahili, but Maureen told me the chant was, “You have brought us blankets, God is good!”

As we finished the unloading, some of the older kids came out in makeshift costumes performing a comedy of some kind.  The people were eating it up.  They were laughing and clapping like you couldn’t believe.  Finally, John said a few words about how just yesterday they were talking about the weather change and how there would be sickness from the rains and cold.  He said God has spoken to the visitors, telling them what to bring.  I think he was right, but God didn’t need to speak miraculously to me on our last visit to see that there was insufficient shelter and blankets, it was obvious.  Usually the needs of others are right in front of us, we just have to look.  

I have to tell you, that whole experience for me was one of the most amazing things that I have ever been a part of.  You know at times that you are doing God’s will, but most of the time I think we just wander around hoping we are doing okay.  At a time like this, there is a purity about the joy and satisfaction that you feel that is amazing.  It’s like looking into the face of God and knowing, I mean absolutely knowing, that he is pleased.  There is nothing to rival that.

After we left, as we were climbing the hill on the highway out of the Rift Valley, I glanced up to see the front of a Mutatu (the private busses here) coming toward us in the opposite lane.  The name of the bus was, “God is Good.”

Later, we went to Barclay’s to do the monthly banking and then to Nairobi Java House for lunch, but that really doesn’t compare with the morning.  I’m not sure that anything ever will.

Kikitemo and Java House