Journey to Kenya Part One: Brother Joseph

We certainly have had a lot going on in the last two months, and now I am at a point to process some of our experiences.

It will be hard for me to process the Kenya trip shortly so I will start a three part blog post so that people will actually read this. (your welcome shannon and daniel)

The most significant part of the trip for me was building a friendship with Joseph and learning from him as a leader. For a year, we spent a lot of time emailing and talking on the phone and felt a strong connection, but had not actually met in person because he was in Georgia doing work on his PHD. Honestly, I was a little nervous about how we would connect, and if it would be a long two weeks.





The connection with Joseph really couldn't have gone better. Besides for a few small culture 'moments' (one is a really good story that involved "Serious" preaching and Jason being forced to play the guitar at one of the most funny church scenarios I've ever experienced), we couldn't have asked for better experience with Joseph. He took us all over Kenya from the slums of Kibera and Soweto to his childhood town in the mountains north of Nairobi to a tribal village in the Northern region of Kenya to where we spent most of our time in Kayole, a rapidly growing area of Nairobi where his central ministry and the Hope Center is located.

The focus of this blog post is to process what I learned from Joseph and share his story. Joseph is a very savvy, passionate, and servant-oriented leader with a great sense of humor. He has more character and faith than I can ever hope to aspire to. Joseph grew up in a peasant-tea farming family about 2 hours north of Nairobi. He grew up taking care of cows, his family, and the farm and his father died when he was young. In high school, he had a radical conversion experience and he became passionately involved in ministry. We laughed that he had so much zeal that his first pulpit was the mountain outside of his house where he preached his devotionals to his town every morning when he would wake up. While we road up to visit his mom (who is 89), I really enjoyed hearing him laugh talking with one of his friends from former ministry days about their often misdirected, but radically passionate zeal to spread the gospel (which I could relate to a bit). Joseph got very involved with the evangelical, pentecostal movement in Kenya, and was very active in street evangelism and outreach from an early age. He did very well in school and went to the prestigious Nairobi College where he continued to be more concerned with crusades and Jesus than school and degrees (again, I can relate to that).







After he graduated from college and got married, he and his wife moved into the slums of Kibera (the third largest slum in the world) and planted a church for two years. Then, God called them to plant a church in the growing area of Kayole. Since then, that church has become a sending ground for other churches to unreached areas of Nairobi and Kenya. Currently, they have a missionary living in an unreached tribal group in Northern Kenya that we visited and helped deliver medical supplies to. (That was the day I was more afraid of my life than any other before we got on the plane). In that culture, since Joseph is the overseer of about 6 churches and various ministries, he is considered a bishop.

One of the things I love about Joseph is his great sense of humor and humility about his role. He does not want to be called a bishop because he thinks titles are too important in his culture and people end up relying on their leader more than serving their community in the character of Christ (sound familiar). That is inspiring. Rather than just only focusing on preaching (which he is very gifted at), he is trying to empower his community to take risks as ministers, take care of the orphans, and take risks to love and serve those that don't know Christ. That is inspiring as well.

His continual relationship with Christ was contagious as well. I learned from him in a different way what pray without ceasing looked like. After spending time with the leaders of the orphan center, I said that I want to pray for those people- meaning tonight and when I get home, and Joseph just said okay, pray. I thought, why do I wait to pray for people so often? I appreciated ability to not take himself too seriously, but to take Christ very seriously.

I came away with a great friend that I pray we can encourage each for a life time.



Next post coming soon (yes that was a retraction)