Next Door to the Orphans: A Tale of Two Pastors

NDONYO, Kenya -- As we crested the hill in our two weather-beaten matatus (public transit vans), we could see in the distance a crowd of people jumping up and down excitedly, as if something remarkable and exciting were taking place.

It took a few seconds for us -- for me, at least -- to recognize that we were the reason for the celebration. As we drew closer, it became obvious; the crowd surrounded the vans and followed us into the New Life Church compound. Some were holding flowers; it was as if we were some sort of visiting potentates as opposed to a modest mission team from the United States.

Pastor Abel Onchari of Heroes of Faith Christian Fellowship in Kegogi, Kenya, shows visitors a vegetable garden which helps support an orphanage at the church. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge]

It was a remarkable way to begin our week of ministry. And yet, some of my teammates reported a sort of detachment from the people of the church for the first few days of our trip. They'd hosted U.S. mission teams before, of the standard let's-build-a-church variety, and perhaps they thought we were like that -- more interested in bricks and mortar than in personal interaction.

LEAMIS International Ministries, the Sewanee-based interdenominational mission group which organized our team, doesn't do things that way. Our trip was about partnership -- teaching cottage industry skills to the people of the church. Other members of our team were also helping to install a water purification system and teaching pastoral leadership skills to visiting pastors from throughout the region.

A normal nine-member mission team might have been housed in the bunkhouse of the orphanage so that they could keep to themselves in the evenings, when the day's work had been completed. LEAMIS likes to place volunteers in homes as much as possible; there were two homes located within the church compound, and so three volunteers were housed in one, along with their host family, and four volunteers were housed in the other one, along with their host family.

Guy McDonald and I were not in a home; we lived in a room next door to the seven orphans. The room was divided in two by a huge blue Mercedes-Benz flag; Guy and I occupied the back part, while the front part was where the team stored its excess luggage. Pastor Joseph Keango and his wife, Helen, who actually lived just outside the church compound, were our hosts; Helen would serve meals to Guy and me in a room next door to where we slept.

My cottage industry workshop was cold-process soapmaking -- combining lye and fat to make soap. Church members would like to be able to sell soap in the marketplace in the town outside the compound.

The top church officials, and a few of the members, spoke good English, but many others did not, and so our workshops all had to be translated into Swahili, or into the dialect of the Kisii region.

Some of the questions that I got over the course of the work week were insightful, and indicated that the townspeople were serious about following up on what they had learned. But other questions left me scratching my head, wondering whether the fault was with my own teaching skills, the translator or the students.

Guy taught a candlemaking workshop; one of the church's most boisterous members, a man who almost seemed belligerent at times (though I don't think that was his intent), later told us that he wanted to sell both candles and soap. He plans to call his candle company "Guy" and his soap company "John."

The total LEAMIS team was 16 in number -- nine of us worked in Ndonyo and Kegogi while the other seven worked in the Kibera slums just outside Nairobi, where the entire Kenya team had worked last year. Although I was disappointed not to be working with the Rev. Paul and Grace Mbithi again in Kibera, I looked forward to seeing a new, and remote, part of Kenya.

After arriving in Nairobi late on Aug. 4, we spent the night at a little hotel called the Olive Gardens -- obviously, no relation to the U.S. restaurant chain -- and then got up first thing the next morning for an 8-hour ride on a public bus from Nairobi to Kisii Town, the capital of the Kisii region. LEAMIS founders Gail Drake and the Rev. Debra Snellen were waiting for us in Kisii. We spent a day of in-country training in Kisii and then, on Aug. 7, we went to Kegogi to attend Sunday morning services at Heroes of Faith Christian Fellowship. Gail and Debra had been leading pastoral training sessions in Kegogi prior to our arrival in-country.

Pastor Abel Onchari was delighted to have the Kisii team for a visit and eagerly showed up his own little church compound, with its own orphanage, some crops and the church. After church, we were served lunch, including hard-boiled eggs from the church's own chickens, and a dish that Pastor Abel playfully called "cement" -- a darker, gummier version of ugali, Kenya's signature dish. Normal ugali, made from corn, is something like a pot of grits that has been allowed to cool and set up into a solid consistency. You're almost guaranteed to be served ugali at least once a day, and often more than that. The darker ugali, or "cement," is made from finger millet instead of corn.

Kenya, a former British colony and a leading producer of tea, serves hot tea, made with milk, water and sugar, with just about every meal. One of the great things about the trip from Nairobi to Kisii was the chance to see some of the huge Kenyan tea plantations. But if you did not like the tea, you usually had the option of coffee (also Kenya-grown) or Milo, a Nestle-produced vitamin-enriched hot chocolate. I have never been a habitual coffee drinker; I probably had more coffee during my Kenya trip than I'd had all year prior to the trip. I may -- just may -- have gotten hooked; I brought back some Kenya coffee and bought myself a little four-cup drip coffeemaker the day after returning from the trip.

You could tell that Pastor Abel wished we were going to be doing our cottage industry training at his church rather than in Ndonyo; he seemed reluctant to let us go. Pastor Abel, along with other visiting pastors, would attend several days of our programming in Ndonyo.

The contrast between Pastor Abel in Kegogi and Pastor Joseph in Ndonyo could not have been more stark. Pastor Abel is outgoing, effusive, extroverted; Pastor Joseph, rail-thin and with a goatee, is dignified, reserved and seemed to take a few days before becoming completely comfortable around us. Our visit to Ndonyo had been arranged with, and requested by, Pastor Israel, a regional leader (sort of like a bishop) whose territory includes Pastor Joseph's church. I've never met Pastor Israel, and we didn't see him while we were in Kenya. That's because he was here in the States -- he's taking classes at Asbury Theological Seminary in Willmore, Ky.

As different as Pastor Abel and Pastor Joseph are in their personalities, they are both passionate men with big dreams for their churches. One of the first things we noticed about the New Life church compound in Ndonyo is that between the orphans' bunkhouse and the church is a big and very rough-looking concrete slab with 10-foot pieces of rebar sticking up out of it, like an abandoned construction project. A clothesline has been strung between the rebar columns.

Rebar columns from an unfinished building project at New Life Church in Ndonyo, Kenya, are silhouetted against the cloudy skies of Africa. The site is supposed to become a vocational training center. (T-G Photo by John I. Carney) [Click to enlarge]

It's not actually an abandoned project, just a very slow-moving one. Pastor Joseph showed me the plans for a four-story education center which will provide vocational training for the people of Ndonyo. The plans were drawn up by an architect in Kisii Town, and the contrast between the crisp, precisely-drawn blueprints and the twisted rebar is heartbreaking. But Pastor Joseph believes, and his enthusiasm is infectious.

Revenue from cottage industries like soapmaking and candlemaking could help the church. The water purification system Guy began installing will eventually produce far more than is needed by the church compound, and the church may be able to sell the excess, providing another stream of revenue.

Pastor Joseph said that, while Kenya is considered by statisticians to be 90 percent Christian, the evangelical fervor he remembers from the 1970s has cooled, and many Christians have backslidden and don't actively participate in church. When I preached one of the evening sermons, several of the people who came down for prayer during the altar call described themselves as having backslidden.

Later, Pastor Joseph asked the full LEAMIS team to meet with himself and several pastors of affiliated churches. He showed us all the plans and talked about what our team's work had meant to the church and the community. At another point late in the week, a local official -- apparently something like a constable -- stopped by to pay his regards and to say that he and the church members had been looking after our safety during the week, whether we realized it or not.

The same, I think, could be said for God.

TOMORROW: Once bitten, twice ill