We’ve asked a few of our friends who spent time this summer in Kisumu to share their thoughts and reflections on the experience.
I have been asked many times to share my experience and I seem to only be able to say the same few sentences. The world I know is forever a different place. It’s next to impossible to describe my experience in Africa. I’m sorry but my response is the same; you have to go there and see it for yourself to truly understand what is happening. I’m embarrassed to say that it took this long but about two thirds of the way through the trip something inside of me changed. My passion in pursuing myself and earthly things became kind of a joke. To think that I had control of what I could achieve if I just put my mind to it seemed frivolous, yet it is a line I’ve been taught and repeated to myself countless times. If anyone witnesses what we did, returned home and didn’t pick up the cause of local, national and international compassion for those in need and those who cannot provide and defend for themselves they have completely missed the point of why God had them on this trip. I have found that Matthew 25:31-46 still holds true today here in Louisville and around the world.
In the days leading up to this trip, I was thinking this would be an amazing experience where I would share the gospel, make new friends and have a good time. I couldn’t have been more wrong. What I learned from 250 orphans and 50 street children was their amazing joy and simple love for God; A love that I have complicated and made hard to attain. I was recently baptized by my roommate and pastor. I had been putting off this act of obedience to God for selfish reasons. I thought I needed to know everything about baptism before I would do it. It was my roommate who reminded me that the first Christians were baptized as infants in their faith in obedience to God and then grew in their knowledge of Christ. I still remember the water covering my face, it was as if it was happening in slow motion and the whole time I was recalling the sentence that was just said to the crowd that baptism is the emblem of burial and cleansing, signifying death to the old life of unbelief, and purification from the pollution of sin.
I have a family back in Kenya and the mission field is not only here in Louisville, but all around us. Don’t be afraid! It’s time to stop thinking “Oh some day I’ll…” and make that some day and some time here and now. I am constantly amazed by how people of my generation have stood up and said “I’m not what the world is making me out to be” and are showing their love for God by giving of themselves in so many ways. Please pray and seek that you’ll do the same. For things we crave of this earth will soon loose their shine and eerily fade away. Pursue which is eternally yours. Pursue God.
In His name,
Jason
Click here to find out one way to become engaged with LIA’s work in Kenya.
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Amy
09.03.09
Thank you for this.
So encouraging and inspiring to read about your experience and your heart to serve.
=)
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[...] Reflections on Kenya [...]