By the grace of God we have safely returned from an amazing two month mission in East Africa. Originally we had planned to split our time between Kenya and Zambia but God had other ideas. Bishop Paul showed up at the mission station in Maseno, Kenya on December 23rd and asked us to stay an extra week in Kenya and postpone our ticket to Zambia from the 24th of December to January 2nd. We spent the week transitioning over projects we had started and work on to longer term missionaries that had just returned from furlough and preparing for an upcoming international conference on evangelism. At the end of the week, the bishop suggested that we take a two day trip out to our mission station in Tanzania before heading out to Zambia. On December 28th, the day after general elections in Kenya, we drove to Musoma, Tanzania, a small town on Lake Victoria.

Sherry and I have previously visited the mission in Musoma in 2000 and 2005, both times we found that the devil was vigorously battling Christ’s work there and the mission was struggling. Thank God, two years ago, He led an amazing couple from Kenya to dedicate there lives to serve the people there. Father Joshua and his wife Pendo moved from Nairobi to Musoma and God through them has brought new life to the mission there. This new spiritual base in the mission has opened doors for the opening of a medical center and HIV/AIDS clinic.

Once we arrived in Musoma, we found the medical center still required quite a few finishing touches before opening for full scale public operations, so we dived in full force and started putting together equipment, hanging curtains, installing fans, etc. We tried to break away once a day and visit people in their homes to share the gospel. The day after we arrived we hear the news from Kenya that the sitting president has called the close election and had himself sworn in for another term. The popular opposition party cried foul and called the people to protest which unfortunately turned into violent rioting.

For the next week, we prayed for Kenya and planned every night to leave the following morning, hoping that the riots would cool down. We were getting reports of roads blocked by marauding gangs who would throw rocks at vehicles and then burn them. Shops and gas stations were set ablaze in Kisumu, the opposition stronghold that is located next to our mission station in Maseno. During the days we continued work on the clinic and began visiting the marketplace where we would preach to large groups of men and women, sharing the gospel and advertising the new medical center as well. Things in Kenya didn’t get better and the Bishop wanted to attend Orthodox Christmas (January 7th) in Nairobi so I hid the SUV in the church and we hopped on a bus to Mwanza, a lakeside city in Tanzania, and caught a flight to Dar al Salaam from there.

We met with some of the Coptic believers in Dar el Salaam (there isn’t a church or mission station there yet), the bishop gave them a bible study at night and in the morning we celebrated the liturgy in the hotel room together. From there we parted ways with the bishop and the rest of our group. They flew back to Nairobi while we stayed in Tanzania because we had rerouted our flight to the USA so that it leaves from Dar al Salaam to Johannesburg, London, then home.

Bishop Paul shared with us some inspirational bible studies which we hope to share with you here over the next couple of days.