Losam Part 3 – The Real Work Begins

Definitely, the best part of the trip was the ministry.  Each morning, we woke up and had a short time of praises, prayer, and devotions together.  We then took breakfast and were off to work.  We divided up into four teams, and we took turns with the different responsibilities for the week.  One group collected water and one group cooked food.  Both of these tasks were challenging and took a lot of hard work.  The third group helped with construction and the fourth helped at the medical camp that we were providing for the people of Losam.  I have already discussed the challenges of water, but the food was also a challenge, especially when cooking for 80 plus people with nothing but a few stones, a few fires, and a couple really big cooking pots.  We had traditional Kenyan food the whole week, which consists of ugali, beans, or rice with no drinks.  Needless to say, there wasn’t a moment the whole trip where I was not thirsty.  Occasionally, we had some goat meat, which was very fresh as you can see from the photos.  Some even enjoyed it raw. 

The construction teams worked on building a school for the locals.  This is a huge need since there is not a school within probably about at least 30 kilometers, which is a long way to walk.  The youth did a wonderful job with the help of one construction worker.  All of the 2x4’s and poles were cut by either a machete or chainsaw, and the wood was carried by foot, sometimes for up to 5 kilometers or more.  Even though it was a lot of work, we accomplished our goal and the school was completed by the end of the week.  Now, the Kenyan missionaries need to find good teachers to run the school.  The medical camp was the last of the 4 ministries we had during the daytime.  This was also a very important outreach because medical care is very scarce out in this area.  I met several people who are currently blind because they didn’t have means of treating some of the eye infections that are so common in this area.  With the team that we brought, we had two doctors, a nurse, and several other medical staff.  Nicole was very disappointed that she missed out on this ministry.  We had the medical camp each day and the medical staff saw and treated hundreds of people.  They worked very hard and had a huge impact on the people of Losam.  During each evening, we had a church meeting with the locals.  The first night, we sang some praises and introduced ourselves.  I also had the privilege of preaching to the group, though I was not well prepared since I was asked to preach about 3 minutes before the sermon was to begin.  I decided to speak on one of my favorite passages from Luke 10, when Jesus answers the question, “And who is my neighbor?'”  The pastor of the church translated to Pokot and our youth really enjoyed my accent and attempts at speaking Swahili.  The following nights, we showed a Jesus film in their own language.  Though it was a great deal of work to set up and prepare the film, there was a huge response, and we saw God move in a powerful way throughout the week.  Around 300 or more people came each night to view the film, some who walked 30 kilometers or more to see it.  We did face several challenges though.  The first day we got there, the generator was broken.  Luckily, we were able to borrow one from a center not to far away.  On the last day that we were showing the film, we did not have our sound equipment because it was sent back to the church in Kitale for a wedding.  Thus, we had to use a very old megaphone type speaker that the missionary used in the area.  The problem was that the input for the speaker was a headphone jack, and we only had RCA jacks.  After some discussion, we decided that we could try cutting the headphone jack from one of the pastor’s headphones.  After about 30 minutes of work, we were finally able to connect it to the former RCA jack wire.  After some adjusting of the wire, we kept the sound from crackling as long as no one touched the wire.  We then switched back to our generator, which had been “repaired,” and we returned the old one.  After that, we set up the projector and discovered that it was not turning on for some reason.  The only thing we could figure out was that the generator wasn’t producing the proper voltage because it was powering everything but the projector.  After another 30 minutes or so, I heard a pop from inside the projector and then saw some smoke coming from the lens area.  Needless to say, there was no Jesus film that night despite all our efforts.  All in all, we spent about 3 hours and ended up with ruined headphones, RCA cable, and projector.  Hopefully we will figure out a way to replace the projector.  Even so, the Jesus film was a complete success and many people committed their lives to Christ.

In addition to the ministries that we provided, we were also able to give loads and loads of clothing and food to the pastors to disperse amongst those in need.  Several youth even gave much of their own clothing and shoes to help the locals.  We also donated a water filter and 3,000 Kenyan Shillings to each of the pastors and the Kenyan missionary family.  They really appreciated the gifts and they will go a long way in helping out the people of Losam.  The youth were also able to spend some time getting to know others from different churches and played many games together, such as Phase 10, Scrabble, and Uno.  We also showed a few movies, such as National Treasure and Batman Begins, which they really enjoyed.  On Saturday, our second to last day, we also went on a long and challenging hike up a local mountain.  We named it Mlima Wa Mzungu (mountain of the white man) because I was the first white person to climb it .  Overall, from what I have heard, they had a great time and were heavily impacted by the trip.  We appreciate all your prayers and support. ~ Jeremy