Holy Redeemed Apostolic Church of Eldoret

CONTEXT:  This post is describing the church in Eldoret that I visited my last Sunday there.  I'm actually still in contact with this church via email, and was able to visit them again when I went back at the end of 2013.  They have continued to prayer for me and the church here in the US and have been a huge source of encouragement and wisdom, a beautiful picture of the possibilities of what it means to be the global church.  They remain eager for me to come back to visit again and bring others with me, as well as being adamant about coming to visit me here. If anyone would be interested in connecting with them, they would be thrilled to hear from you, I'd be glad to give you their contact info.

Finally two men in suits, Pastor Shebd and the senior pastor (who didn’t look very senior), Pastor Musungu, and greeted me, which relieved me because it had occurred to me that I didn’t think I could pick Pastor Shebd out of a crowd, and I definitely don’t think I would have recognized him if he hadn’t walked up to me in the suit.  We hopped in a matatu and headed out toward the church.  I had figured that they were in town picking up a bunch of people, and I pictured them having a full church van, but apparently the two of them had come into town just to come get me.  This seemed strange to me though because the service was supposed to start at 10:00 and it was a little after that already, and here were the two pastors out picking up one random visitor.  They were very excited for me to visit, and I told them how glad I was that it had worked out, particularly since this was my last Sunday in Eldoret. 

                The church wasn’t far at all, just past the big field where I had done some of my running.  It was a couple hundred yards down a pretty rough two track, in a building made completely out of corrugated metal sheets covering a framework of rough wood poles, with two thicker wood poles serving as supports in the middle of the room.  It was a simple room with a dirt floor and small wood benches and rows of plastic chairs serving as pews.  The room was maybe 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, and for this service contained 40 or 50 people.  The service was already in full swing, and we could hear the worship music when we were still a little way off.  I instinctively headed for one of the available spaces toward the back of the church, but the pastors ushered me up to the front, where a metal frame couch sat with a table in front of it, pretty clearly where the pastors sat and they beckoned me to join them, which I did trying not to appear as reluctant as a I felt.  The worship was lively, and most people were moving with the music, dancing a little bit and clapping, definitely with more energy with people at most churches I’d been to in the US but not with what I picture as a charismatic or Pentecostal church vibe.  After a couple minutes I realized I was still just kind of observing people and what they were doing, which I tried to snap out of and really join in the worship.  I really enjoyed the energy and enthusiasm with which they worshiped, and it was infectious.  We sang for about another 15 minutes, some in English and some in Swahili, with people switching back and forth with the ease and fluidity that Kenyans always show between the two.  A couple of the songs we sang were old hymns that I recognized, but all done at an up tempo beat with people clapping and dancing to the music.  I realized that if they had been going strong since 10:00 that would mean it had been about an hour of worship, after which Pastor Musuougu got up to preach.  Before he started he mentioned how exciting it was that I was there, calling me a man of God that would share a few words after the service and have a meeting with the church leadership, like my visit was something they had been planning on for weeks.  It hadn’t occurred to me that me coming to visit was really a big deal for the church, a big enough deal for them to send both of their pastors into town just to pick me up, while their service was going on no less. This really intimidated me for a couple reasons.  First, I would like to be someone who is thought of as a man of God, but hearing it from the pastor made me feel like they thought I was a missionary or pastor that had come to visit.  Second, I had no idea what they expected me to share or what this meeting would be like, but I was honored with how excited they were to see me and how big of a deal they considered it.  As intimidated as I was I absolutely didn’t want to shy away from what was happening here, thinking of Moses shrinking from the great duty that God had for him, giving excuses about how he wasn’t qualified.  Without a doubt I didn’t feel qualified for what I assumed they expected of me, but I thought to panic and avoid what was happening here would just show a lack of faith in what God was doing here.  In my mind he had his reasons for bringing me here to this church, so the best thing I could do is forge ahead trusting that he would guide me and watch the amazing ways that he works.

Like the worship, the crowd participation was more enthusiastic and energetic than I was used to during the sermon, but not with the fervor that I associate with a charismatic or Pentecostal church.  The sermon centered around the passage in Luke about the paralytic man that was lowered through the roof to Jesus’ feet by his friends who expected a miracle and a passage in Ezekiel about “standing in the gap” to pray to God for healing and provision for the groups around us that we need to “stand in the gap” for.  The whole sermon was translated into Swahili by another man standing up there, but they were far less entertaining than the pair at Elijah’s church in Kisumu.  Several times through the sermon Pastor Musuougu broke into song, and the man sitting at the keyboard up front, the only instrument used for the worship songs, would cue the beat and jump in with him as he sang.  I really liked it because it felt to me like it blurred the line between teaching and worship into just a big celebration and praise session that didn’t adhere to the more partitioned type of service I was used to in the churches I’d been to before.

                After the sermon we entered into a time of prayer and worship, with Pastor Musuougu calling people to come to the front to pray.  When I looked up, probably at least 30 people were at the front, standing and praying as the music blared through the sub-standard sound system.  We prayed and sang for probably at least another 15 or 20 minutes, after which the offering was taken in a big plastic bucket placed in the front of the church while another song was played.  There was not the usual short tithe talk given about how we needed to give back to God what he had entrusted to us, but nearly everyone came up to put something in the bucket.  I glanced into the bucket and it was almost all coins, meaning that most people were giving less than 50 schillings, which I would guess was not an insignificant amount of money for farming families from the rural areas.  They had a regular time for greeting visitors, but I was not included in that other than being mentioned as “the man of God who has come to visit us”.  Another visitor that was there stood up and shared her name and why she had come, to which everyone responded with enthusiastic applause.  After that both Pastor Musuougu and Pastor Shebd gave me lengthy intros, Pastor Musuougu talking about how I was the first white man that had come to the church and that it was important time for the church to be able to spread their ministry in new ways.  When he was saying I was the first white man to come to the church he stumbled over what word to use, the first time I have seen any hesitation about calling me a white man or mzungu.  As he hesitatingly said, “The man of God is first uh… the first” I butted in to add “Mzungu!” which got a lot of laughs from the congregation.  Pastor Shebd shared about how we had met and his conviction that God had a specific purpose for me coming to the church.  I began to worry a little bit about what their expectations of me were.  I was excited about being able to come here too, but I wouldn’t be able to come again before I left and I didn’t even know the next time I would be back in Kenya.  I hoped they didn’t have any grand plans for me contributing to the church because I was seven days away from essentially disappearing from their lives for at least a year, and maybe longer.  But those weren’t things to worry about right now, I thought.  If this is something that God is doing something special with then I will just take the next step that I can see and trust him to take care of the steps after that that I can’t see.

                By the time they actually called me up to talk I was still kind of nervous but I was actually pretty excited to be able to share with the church. I think this is the first time I’ve ever talked with an interpreter, which definitely took some getting used to, and a couple times I forgot about him and went for a couple sentences before he butted in to try and translate the gist of the whole chunk I had just said.  I’m pretty sure that just about everybody could speak English though, because the murmurs of approval and amens that I got always came immediately when I hesitated rather than after things had been translated.  I reiterated what Pastor Shebd had said about how we had met in a matatu coming back from Nangili, and also how my plan until the last day or two was to be gone this weekend to Nakuru, so I felt pretty strongly that God was doing something with this relationship and that both I and them needed to be prayerful and watchful for where God was taking this.  I also shared with them about my hesitance to be called a “man of God”, how I’m just a student from the US that’s visiting Kenya, but that God can still do amazing things with anyone who’s willing to follow him, regardless whether we feel we are qualified or strong enough for what he is calling us to, that we should all consider ourselves to be men and women of God.  I mentioned Acts 1, where the early church shared everything together as people had need, saying that in this day and age it is right for the Church to be connected globally and join together to serve and honor God.   I felt really encouraged about how it had gone, I hadn’t stumbled over myself too much and the things to say had just come to me.  Despite my own reservations and hesitations about getting up to talk, I felt that God had still used me to say exactly what he had for that group to hear.  We sang another song to close, then they called me back up to say a prayer to end the service. 

                The whole church gradually emptied out into the yard outside, with everyone greeting each other, not unlike the milling around that happens after a typical American church service.  Over the course of the service I think a crowd of kids had gathered at the doorway where they could see me sitting, but I had only noticed them periodically until now, as they came to see the mzungu.  They exhibited that peculiar and amusing behavior to me where they definitely wanted to investigate me and crowded around to get a good look at me, but would shrink back or even run away if I turned my attention to them.  Eventually as I did more milling around shaking hands with people I was able to shake hands with a couple of them, and after that it seemed to me that the rest didn’t want to be left out so they came over to shake my hand too.  When I was hanging around with some of the guys from the church later in the afternoon we laughed a little bit about how they reacted, and the general reactions I had got since I’d been here, but they shared that for many of these kids I might be the first white person they had ever seen.  I had wondered about that before but it had seemed unlikely to me because, while they weren’t a lot of white people around Eldoret, I still figured there were enough that kids could see them from time to time.  But for kids growing up, I imagine they don’t really go into town, that they’re worlds pretty much revolve around their farm and school.  When I thought about it in terms of the chances that farm kids out in rural Montana had ever seen a black person, it seemed more plausible. 

                The after church socializing turned out to be pretty awkward because no one really approached me to talk to me and I wasn’t sure who to talk to, so mostly I just stood there with my hands in my pockets smiling.  I talked with one lady and asked her a little about the church, but she happened to be one of the other guests, so I couldn’t ask the general questions about the church that I wanted to.  I found this much different from my church back home, where if a visitor came they would probably be greeted and gently interrogated by at least half the church, or at least all the old ladies (for those of you from church reading this, I’ll let you decided for yourself whether you fit into the old lady category or not.  I’m not naming names, except for Michael Lawlor, he’s pretty much the founder of the old lady club).  After a couple minutes Pastor Musuougu ushered me over to the mud house next to the church, which I found out was his house, for the meeting with the church leadership.  The house had two rooms and a roof made of corrugated metal.  It didn’t have any electricity, and so it had that weird feeling of being pretty dark despite it being the middle of a sunny day.  Pastor Musuougu called in the church leaders, which I was surprised to find included about 15 people, which seemed like a lot for a church of only about 50, but if I think about if a similar type of meeting was called in my church back home, which has less than 50 regular attenders, I can think right off of over ten people that would be there for sure.  Also, I came to find out later in the afternoon that this Sunday was pretty sparse because it was the first Sunday of the month, so many people were back at their farms, and church attendance would be much higher for the rest of the month, usually making the building pretty crowded. 

                I was nervous as the meeting started because it was another place where I was afraid unrealistic expectations for me would surface.  But by this point I was really excited about what was happening here, and I felt really comfortable with this group of people, despite meeting all of them except for Pastor Shebd just this morning.  I felt that God was working here, and I was grateful to be alone for the ride and excited to see what he would do next.  Pastor Musuougu opened the meeting by going around and introducing everyone, most of whom were either elders, pastors, or leaders of some ministry or branch of the church.  Several looked pretty bored, but I had found that that was just how some of these people looked a lot of the time because they were pretty reserved.  I still wondered whether attendance had been voluntary or if Pastor Musuougu had drug some of the people in.  He gave a general word of welcome to me in a pretty somber tone and mostly reiterated how excited they were to have me there and the possibilities of what my relationship with the church could lead to.  He asked several other people to speak, including the youth leader and pastor of evangelism, as well as Pastor Shebd, who all generally expressed gratitude and excitement at my visit and hope that I would return again and bring more people with me, and also implored me not to forget about them when I headed home.  Here for the first time I felt my fears were beginning to be realized.  When my turn came to talk I tried to mainly assure them that I absolutely would not forget about them and would tell my church at home about what I had seen and experienced here, but also tried to caution against expectations of me returning or bringing other people.  I explained that it would be at least 10 months before I would return and I couldn’t think of anyone else I knew who would be coming in that time.  The one encouraging thing I was able to say was that I was pretty sure the rest of my family would be coming in about a year’s time, but I wondered if they were on a tight schedule if they would be willing to make a stop at a little church in Eldoret that they had never heard of or been affiliated with other than through me.  But, as I told them, I believed God had special purpose for this meeting, so I trusted that whatever he had planned we just needed to be prayerful and ready to follow where he was leading us.  I reiterated to them that I personally didn’t have any pastoral or theological training, I was just guy who God happened to be using in this situation.  The response of the evangelism pastor (I wish I could remember his name, his face still fresh in my mind) was that my time here in Kenya was training in its own way.  In what I had seen and done in Kenya I had experience with me that you couldn’t get at any seminary in the US, and I found that message to be pretty profound.  It fit really well with my deep conviction that I had a completely unique set of talents and experiences and background from anyone else in the world, and I needed to find where I could serve God in the unique way he had designed me for with all the peculiarities and distinctive characteristics that made me uniquely effective for the job.  To me that’s one of the most exciting things about believing in there being a God.  Anything that is strange or out of the ordinary about me, or if the set of desires and experiences and talents that I have don’t match up in my own mind, rather than finding it to be an unfortunate situation I get kind of excited to go search for where that unique blend of desires and experiences and talents are more useful to serving the Kingdom of Heaven than if I had the talents and experiences and perspectives that I wish I had.  We ended the meeting by exchanging contact information to be sure we would be able to stay in contact, and I tried to secure confirmation that they were familiar and competent with email, which Paster Musuougu said they were but didn’t completely convince me.  The other matter was that I told them I definitely wanted to take some pictures of the place to be able to take back to my church, to which they readily agreed.  After some discussion it was decided that the best thing would be for me to go home and get the camera now, considering that everyone was there and I didn’t have that far to go to get home. 

                The pastors and a couple others walked me out to the road and put me in a matatu, leaving me to travel home by myself only after repeated assurances from me that I wouldn’t have any problem getting home or finding the church again.  When I got home I grabbed the camera and some food, but before I headed back I called Jack, who had called about five times during the service and meeting.  I felt bad about hanging him out to dry like that, but we had had a plan and he hadn’t followed it, and as flaky as he seemed to me I had mostly ran out of patience to be willing to wait around for him to show up places whenever he felt like.  I called him now though, and he told me to wait for him at the gate, which I kind of dreaded because I figured there was a decent chance I could stand at the gate for an hour or two with no sign of him.  I went to the gate, and didn’t wait around for very long before heading down toward Kipkaren.  I figured the whole way down there would be no way for me to miss him if he was coming to the gate, and from farther down the road I could both get some good pictures giving people at least a little bit of an idea of where I usually ran and also be able to see him coming from farther off.  I went down to the point where the road starts to drop toward the river, which actually gave a pretty good view out over the river and up the other side into Kipkaren.  I snapped a couple pictures and waited for Jack, quickly running out of patience.  I called him again and told him that I had to leave so I was going, to which he seemed to pretty much ignore what I was saying and just kept repeating that he would meet me at the gate, which just frustrated me all the more.  I wasn’t going to keep everyone waiting at the church because I was waiting around for some goofball that I couldn’t even seem to communicate anything with.  It was as if he thought that if he just said the way he thought things should be enough times, eventually I would agree.  Just as I was turning to go and told him not to bother coming down, he proclaimed that he was at the bridge, to which I coldly retorted that he wasn’t at the bridge or I would be able to see him.  Just then though, I saw him running down the road on the other side of the river, waving his arms.  I motioned him to come on up, still extremely frustrated.  Sure enough, when he got up to me he was much happier to see me than I was to see him, and I asked him where he had been that morning in a less than pleasant voice.  He replied, with some righteous indignation, that he had taken a matatu from the national station (the gas station next to the estate where Roger lives) to Pipeline just as I had said and had called me over and over when he got there but I stopped answering my phone, which was true, I turned it to silent when we headed into the service.  I replied without any remorse that we had waited for him for a long time at the National station and that if he would have gotten there on time we wouldn’t have had any problems.  He struck me as the kind of guy that it was foolish to assume would make it anywhere on time or would follow whatever plan had been laid out. 

                Pastor Shebd was waiting for us when we arrived at the matatu stop and, after introducing himself to Jack, walked us back down to the church.  Some people had left, but most still seemed to be hanging around.  I asked if they were just staying for taking pictures, but Pastor Shebd said it was pretty normal for a large part of the congregation to hang around for most of the afternoon.  I began snapping pictures, first of the leadership team in Pastor Musuougu’s house and then of the whole congregation outside.  We took some pictures inside the building, but I don’t know enough about photography to take good pictures in a dimly lit room like that so many of the pictures turned out either too dark or blurry as I messed with the camera settings to try and figure out how to get some decent pictures.  In the end I think I won out by the “strength in numbers” strategy, that out of about 50 pictures, maybe five or six were really good portrayals of the church and the congregation, but I figured that was enough.  The main thing to me was for people back home to be able to see the faces and see the building so they knew at least on some level who they were praying for, rather than just praying for a random church in Eldoret that I happened to visit.  I wondered if we really would be able to establish a special relationship between this church and the ones I went to back home, because it didn’t seem very feasible to me but then again as far as I was concerned we were already outside of what was feasible, so that wasn’t a major concern.   Just as many of us started up the road to catch matatus for home, the rain that had been threatening all afternoon finally unleashed itself and we scurried back to the cover of the church.  I really didn’t mind because, especially compared to many of the others, I didn’t have far to go and I didn’t have anything to get done the rest of the day except an evening shakeout, but with the rain pouring down it was looking easier and easier to just forget about that.  I really like hanging out with these people also, I didn’t feel like I had to put on a happy face or had to accommodate them, they just struck me as really genuine people who were extremely loving and welcoming.  I had the chance to talk with the pastors more as we waited out the rain, as well as a young man named Silas, who said Pastor Musuougu and Pastor Shebd had been important mentors for him and had really helped him get his spiritual life back on track.  For the first while we had been waiting out the rain Silas had just been sleeping where he sat, and Pastor Shebd explained to me he had come straight from an all night shift at Raiply, the same factory where Pastor Shebd works.  The rain continued to come down pretty hard for probably about an hour, so when it let up some we headed out, ready to head home.  I was a little bit reluctant to leave, knowing that I probably wouldn’t come back here again before I left.  This was the kind of thing like Iten that I was disappointed to not find until my last week here.  Why couldn’t I have found this place in my first week or two in Eldoret so I could have come back a couple of times?