Day 4 Experiences--Sunday, June 21

-We went to a church service at our not-yet-completed church today. The music was beautiful! Everyone here loves to dress up for the occasion. They were singing and dancing, and continued singing and dancing for us after the service. Pastor Winterle finally came over and told us if we didn’t leave then, they would keep singing until we finally did leave.

-We went to the Masai (not sure on spelling) market today. It was a bartering market. My goodness how I hate those! For those of you who have been to Israel, or any other bartering market, this one tops all of those markets. It was in such a confined space, and the people were more aggressive than anything I have ever seen. At least in Israel the people did not grab you! I was grabbed several times. At one point I shook a lady’s hand and then she tried to use that to pull me into her section of parking lot. I literally had to pry my hand out of hers.

-Today Janice was complaining that women seem to take the second status role in this society. Pastor Winterle said that with the Masai this was not so. Janice asked if it was because it was a Matriarch society. Pastor said no, it was because with the Masai it is men first, goats second, women third. That got a chuckle from everyone, but it is sadly true. Its just terrible to see some of the injustices that are still rampant.

-I saw Proverbs 9:10 on Pastor Winterle’s wall in his office and thought it was pretty neat so I wrote it down. What was really great was that it was then one of the Scripture readings today. I love how God works like that!

-We gave out several items called a Proclaimer. Basically it is an audio device that plays the Bible and can run on solar power, winding up the cranker, or with electricity. The people we gave them too were overjoyed to get them, especially since many of them (even the ones that can read, Im not sure what the literacy rate is) have no access to a Bible. One man asked a worried question, what do we do with it when the device gets to the end of the Bible (question mark here). We replied with, you can play the whole thing again! This made him very happy. The device repeats and can play any selected book and chapter of the Bible! He would be able to listen to Gods Word over and over and over and this was something new to him. How many of us have access to the Bible on the internet, or have multiple Bibles in our possession that we arent as excited about to read over and over again (question mark).

-There was almost an assassination of a top government official and overthrow of the government last night, but the US stepped in and stopped it. Things are never dull here in Kenya thats for sure. The election caused all sorts of violence and cutoff travel last year, I can only imagine what that would have done had the government been overthrown...

-We went to an Ethiopian restaurant after church. In Ethiopian restaurants you eat everything with your fingers!

Well thats all for today. I hope I can get a few more days posted tonight, who knows when I will have internet again...