Report #3 From Kenya/Tanzania

The Second Conference – Suna/Migori, Kenya

11-1-06

Hallelujah and glory to the name of the Lord! Our heavenly Father is so wonderful! We are so thankful to Him on this trip…it seems as if we are walking down a broad avenue, and each time we turn to go into a door, it automatically opens as we approach it. We have honestly never seen anything like the supernatural grace and favor of God that we are experiencing on this trip. It really is amazing. We know it is because of your prayers and we are so-o-o thankful to you!

We want to pick up where we left off in the last report. God gave us such blessing in the Nakuru area, and He continued even more passionately in the next location. Or is it just that our hearts are getting enlarged with the love of the saints in each place? All we know is that love energizes faith (Galatians 5:6), and our capacity to walk in greater faith is being expanded a whole lot.

Before we proceed with this report, we need to let you know of some of the reports we have heard of the work in Nakuru. Good fruit has remained, and we are both deeply grateful and very excited by what the Lord has done there. Pastor John Amos received a call from his wife at home informing him of some awesome news about the man Paul prayed for in the hospital on Tuesday the 24th who had said, “I am free.” Praise the Lord, he was set free indeed! He was released on Friday after the doctors found him to have been completely healed! And the older man, James who had first asked for prayer for asthma and who also got his bones set back in order so he could walk straight and work physically, and who asked the next day for prayer for a job? He got a job the very next day, just like the young man that we had also prayed for! This is no small thing amid people who have been looking for jobs for years. How great is our God!! And a whole new cell group was commissioned as a result of the new people who came in to this church because of the conference meetings, bringing the number of cell groups of this precious little church up to 9. God is so wonderful! There were also lots of other healings, both inside and outside the heart, that we can’t begin to remember. The report (as of a few moments ago by phone) was that the believers are still so excited and moving forward with the things they learned. When the bastard curse was broken off them, for example, many were crying with tears of thankfulness – it was a major breakthrough for them (as it is for every group when this subject is dealt with in the Spirit). It is such a blessing to see what the Lord has done for His beloved church in Nakuru! Many new people are coming into their church now!

Thursday, October 26th – continued

We left Nakuru in a small Mitsubishi station wagon with a driver friend of Pastor John’s after settling on a price. One look at the bus station and we knew it would be wiser to spend the extra money for a private car rather than await a bus which sometimes shows up and sometimes not, and then have to worry about the security of our luggage. By private car we could be in Suna by early evening in time to enjoy meeting our hosts in the new place.

Pastor John and Pastor Moses (from a few hundred kilometers northeast of Nakuru) determined they would not let us go. So they came with us! They are both precious brothers and, as we began to see, are very powerful preachers. They used to know each other, but had lost contact over the years. Neither had any idea of each other’s ministry, in the past ten or more years, and they were dumbfounded when Moses arrived to meet Paul, and they were reunited. As we are learning on this trip, each pastor who has found their way to connect with us has been led by the Holy Spirit. In Pastor John’s case, he was hungry to learn more about the Kingdom of God. He set the intercessory team to work and they received some amazing revelation on what God was going to do through this.

On January 4th this year, the church began to pray for someone to come and teach them. It was on their hearts to receive instruction from someone from Canada (because they knew and liked what they have received from Peter Youngren’s ministry, who is Canadian). They also admired preaching they have heard from the US, and they also have been impressed by powerful preachers from Tanzania. So they began praying for preachers to come from these three specific countries. Soon thereafter, John was looking at his e-mail at a cyber café. As he was about to go on the internet, God spoke to Him in an audible voice from behind his shoulder and said to type “kingdom faith.” He looked around and no one was there! He began to look over the website, and spent the next few weeks praying. In a dream, the Lord showed his wife Carol to contact Paul.

The church kept praying, and Paul and John began corresponding. Long before the trip was planned, God spoke to the church through a prophet and told them that three men would be coming to teach them. After several months elapsed, when God called our team together and Paul shared with Pastor John by e-mail who were the people on it, he and the whole church were dumbfounded – they had no idea that God had answered their prayer for teachers from each of those specific countries. It was a very powerful confirmation from God to them that this conference would be ordained of God.

Another amazing thing for John was the divine re-connection with Pastor Moses, who begun e-mailing Paul after a recommendation from a precious brother and mentor in the Kansas City area. Moses was not sure he could come to our meetings due to other commitments and the travel expense. But our God is the God of breakthrough. What a powerful connection these two have made…we believe the Lord is going to do amazing things in both of them as they begin to work together. And all the while we have been traveling, Pastor Aggrey (from the Nairobi church) has been calling to check on our prayer needs. His intercessors have been hard at work in our behalf – what precious love!

So with Pastor John, the driver, and Paul, George N. and George S. all packed tightly in, we headed to the southwestern Kenya town of Suna-Migori. It was such a wonderful fellowship all the way. It was like a men’s fellowship – a really awesome and special time of prayer, enjoying each other’s mighty hearts for God…a real refreshing. Pastor Moses had to head home for a few days, and had left on Monday after the leaders meeting. When we headed out for Suna, he began traveling down by bus from his area (8 hours by bus) to again hook up with us. It was a real blessing that he did – he was a powerful contributor to the preaching effort during the conference.

We arrived in the middle of the afternoon into the middle of the busy main street of Migori. We were coordinating by telephone, and soon found Pastor Moses and the local pastors, Joseph and Alice, waiting us amid the dust and frantically busy street traffic. But you couldn’t mistake who they were. They were lit up with a million candles of light with the Holy Spirit!

We were taken to Pastor James’ house in a poor (in the physical) section of the city. But talk about rich – we were so loved and welcomed, it flowed out of their hearts and into ours. George S. and I kept looking at each other through tears, and our time there was only just beginning. Alice began to explain how the Lord had worked to connect us together. But let me first tell you about their ministry.

Joseph and Alice have seven beautiful children, and they never quit serving the Lord. They have such love and fire for the Lord that since starting their ministry among the villages in 2004, their work has grown to reach about 3000 people among 21 village churches. Sixteen of them are in Kenya, and four are across the border in Tanzania. At each village we visited during the next few days, you could see the love the people had for their pastors, especially Joseph and Alice. Alice is constantly smiling with a radiance of God that is infectious. And Joseph is a powerhouse of anointing. Even when, for example, our car broke down way out in the country as we drove to a village to minister, when they spied a lone cattle shepherd up the road they both raced to him to share the Gospel with him. I’ve never seen such zeal for sharing the Word! Everywhere we went in the subsequent days, this couple seemed to know everyone…and we are talking hundreds of villages and small cities scattered through this huge region. Alice had written to say that they estimated there are some 5000 pastors who need and yearn to be taught the Word of God. Alice and Joseph would dearly love to give Bibles to the many that don’t have them – a thousand Bibles are needed in the Lua language of their area for furthering their work. Now that we have seen the hunger and the need among the people out in the villages, we sincerely agree. This is a dynamic ministry, and they are led by the Spirit of God in a profound way. We are so privileged to come alongside and help them in this work!

We need to tell you how the Lord connected Pastor Alice and Joseph with Paul. Like with Pastor John, it was by revelation. The Lord showed Alice in a dream one night about a ministry that God would send to help equip them. In the dream, she saw the word “kingdom.” She would have seen more, but someone began knocking at the door and woke her up. So she asked the Lord for the rest of the dream, and asked the intercessors close to her to pray. For a week they prayed. At the end of a week, they received the letter “F” and the name “Paul” to add to “kingdom.” What does this mean Lord? So they prayed and fasted. They were convinced the Lord wanted to show them something, but that they needed to press into the Spirit to learn more. After yet another week of prayer, they saw “kingdom faith” and “Paul.” They were led to type these words into the internet, and it led them to the Kingdom Faith Ministries website...hallelujah!

What they read on the website in the various articles confirmed to them that God wanted them to contact us. This was not a light thing to them. They had been praying and fasting for the previous six months for God’s divine hand to teach them more about how to walk by the Spirit and how He works. And they did not want popular television-style glitz and glitter ministry. They have seen such before, and they know the difference. They sincerely hungered for someone who could teach them about entering and staying in the presence of the Lord, and walking by revelation. So they were praying, and knew that God was showing them who to contact.

In December last year, they wrote to Paul. Many people write to Paul from many countries. And each one Paul tries to respond to kindly, and to a few he has been led to share more deeply when the Holy Spirit shows him to do so. In his first response to Alice’s invitation to come and teach in Kenya, Paul was cordial but non-committal. Alice responded with an e-mail that shared how long the saints had been praying for the right person to come, and that Paul needed to understand how specific the revelation was for them for Paul. It was a Holy Ghost fired letter that was very bold in the Spirit! A week later, Pastor George N. from Tanzania called Paul to introduce himself, having also been led by the Holy Spirit to contact him, and shortly after that came Pastor John and Pastor Moses, all independently and not knowing one another. So in all of this, God began to bring this trip together and assemble a team by the Spirit of the Lord. Hallelujah!

It was when Paul wrote again to Alice to say that he would come in the name of Jesus Christ and did not want to lift up any other name, that Joseph and Alice and the saints knew with confirmation that they had been led by God. They were so excited, and immediately wanted to begin publicizing a big conference among all the saints in the province. But Paul was led to ask that there be no advertising, and to keep it to just their church (not yet knowing there were 21 of them!). This further blessed them, and they knew this was a different kind of ministry. Later on, you will see how God used this to do a supernatural work of unity building among the other pastors in the area, especially those who are members of various denominations.

So, today we arrived to hearts that have been very prepared by the Holy Spirit! After a bumpy ride to the outskirts of the city of Migori (the area population is about 100,000), we were ushered to the home of Pastor James. What a precious time to getting to know one another, and we were in awe as we learned how God had been working to bring us together.

Every meal in Kenya is wonderful…each one is very similar, and each one is served with such love and blessing. It is such an honor to be with these saints, and at every meal together we have been reminded over and over of the privilege we have of being in their homes. After we finished eating, we got to sleep. It was hot and sticky, and we thought sleeping would be a challenge. But we were safe and secure in a wonderful little house that was very locked down. In the places we have been, the saints have been very, very careful to ensure that each place we stay is guarded and protected with strong doors and windows to keep out thieves who would love to break through and steal. This has happened about five times in area hotels. Security is a constant matter of awareness, but it has not been a problem due to the loving oversight and forethought of all the saints we have been with. And they have taken great pains to care for us in these matters.