Here is an excerpt from a letter from Pastor John (the Kenyan lead pastor of the Lamu area and former President of the Covenant Church in Kenya) to Pete Ekstrand at Covenant Headquarters in Chicago.
Dear Pete and Cindy,
I hope you are fine . Are you in Congo or US.? Wherever please pass my greetings to our friends.
I want to inform you that the Centennial Covenant Church was well represented well here by our brothers Lee and pastor Randy and the team .We had a beautiful medical camp both in Mpeketoni on 4th and Manda ECCs on 5th February. Then on 6th we fellowshipped together at Lamu Island and in the evening we had a meeting of the local pastors with Pastor Randy and Lee where we talked much about working together for the glory of the kingdom.
On 14th we met again with the team except the doctors who had travelled back to US with the moderator pastor Simon at Nairobi and we updated him with the issues we talked in the meeting.
The medical camp was very successful , over 300 people were attended and the doctors and the nurses worked tirelessly even beyond their time remit to catch up with the number of the patients. Tom and I were involved in registering the patient, Lee ,Jody and pastor John and pastor Michael were interviewing the patients before they see the doctors. Arlene and Lonika were in the pharmacy and Solomon , my wife Freshia and Justus from Manda were translating to the doctors Matt and Stephanie Pastor Randy was coordinating faithfully the team , though he was sick but with high spirit. People were really happy about that and this is the only and the best way to express the love of Christ to the needy. Even Muslims entered the church though it was not a service may be for the first time breaking the barrier which existed for a long time.
We got a little resistance at Manda but that one served for good since it was influenced by Muslim leaders but later we came to agree and even the hospital management gave us free medicines which were not available and we agreed in future we will help one another.
The hospital management also gave us a doctor to work with in Manda and the work was very good and admirable.
Dr. Matt had a problem and was sick and we are praying that he is feeling better.We pray that Centennial Covenant Church will be able to send more to such trips in future.
We also agreed that they will bring more to come and visit before we start any longer relationship in partnering and may be on October they will send some who will explore Lamu district Covenant churches as an example of expanding our commitments to further the Gospel of Christ.
God bless you for now.
In his vineyard ,disciple John.
John may as well be named Paul. What a man of God he is. He has been preaching in a hostile area for years. He is a church planter and planted each of the 6 churches in the Lamu district. He stayed for about 2 years in each location and then transitioned each to a new pastor. The churches continue to grow in a hostile environment. Talk about a man of faith! He has been faithful and seen the Holy Spirit grow the church in an area of Islamic domination under persecution at times. He tells the story of how one of the churches met resistance from the muslim government as to the location of their meetings. The church arrived at their location one day to find that the government had moved the goat grazing area to the area in front of their gate. The church moved on and continues to grow. They do so with continued joy.
Amazing how God uses great men like John and the other Kenyan pastors as well as the fools like me (reference my first post on this blog) to serve his Kingdom purpose. Thank you Lord for including me in your family.
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