Saturday – Eldoret

The road to Eldoret is a fairly new road and the best highway in the country. In some places, it was a really good road (still no stripes), but most places it would be the equivalent of Highway 22 needing a resurface. In the places where we had to divert to the old road, it was like a moderate four-wheel-drive Jeep trail. And Willy said the old road was still the best road in Kenya.
At the Equator, we received an outstanding demonstration. A man had a bowl of water and was demonstrating that on the line, the water drained straight down. About 4 feet north of the line, the water drained clockwise, and about 4 feet south of the line it drained counter-clockwise. I had always heard that, but this was the best demonstration I could have dreamed of. It was fascinating!
Our van overheated on the way, and Willy was trying to get the radiator cap off when it blew. The radiator is inside the van, so there was boiling water and steam blowing inside the van, but praise the Lord he was not burned and no one else was either. A boy came out of the hills and volunteered to go fetch water for us. He came back in about 10 minutes and we gave him 30 shillings (about 45 cents) and he was thrilled. He wasn’t expecting anything. Back in the van and on to Eldoret. We passed the spot where one year ago a tanker truck turned over and was draining gasoline. People came out of the hills from everywhere and were taking the gas when it blew up. Hundreds of people were killed and hundreds more injured. They have a mass grave and memorial with 130 people buried there.
In Eldoret, we got to our hotel and had a bite to eat. We met Ben Buhati who pastors the church here and has planted 58 churches in Kenya, one in Tanzania, one in Uganda, one in Congo, and one in Nigeria. He took us to the Kamkunji slum just outside Eldoret where the church pays $3.25 per month for rent of 10 rooms. These are one room mud-wall apartment buildings with metal roofs. They make a cook fire in one corner and relieve themselves outside. The slum is spread out over about 20 acres, and there are about 50,000 people living there. Ben has rented these 10 rooms and put street children in them – usually 4 to 6 per room, although there is as many as 17 in one room. These are children who would otherwise be sleeping on the street. Many of the children are not Christians, so church feeds them once a week on Saturday with a beans/rice meal that they can eat right out of the wrapping. There will be much more to say about this, but suffice it to say that the poorest of the poor in America are rich compared to these children.




At our hotel, the West Africa Road Race starts tomorrow and most of the drivers are staying here. The parking lot is full of high performance Toyotas, Nissans, and other foreign makes I don’t recognize that are highly modified for off-road racing. They will probably start their engines early, so we will likely be up early.

Spiritual Observations
There seems to be a clear difference of those who are Christian and those who are born again. The name “Christian” is almost like a nationality, meaning they are not Muslim. But if someone is born again, they have surrendered their life to Christ and are living for him. When conversing with people, the question is, “Are you born again?” and they are very quick to tell you one way or another. At Mombasa, all but one of our waitstaff was born again, and Geoffrey told us he was close.
Here in Eldoret, the method the church is using to reach those children in the slums is close to what Central uses in the apartment ministry, based on Luke 10 – bless them, care for them, and share with them. They also do street crusades, but the difference here is they try to meet the hunger need to win the right to share the gospel.
We met two very special people in Kamkunji slum – Lucy and James. James is a teenager who loves the Lord with all his heart. He has his own business selling pineapple, and met Lucy while doing that. She was living on the street with no roof, prostituting herself when he shared the gospel with her. She received the Lord and was moved into one of the slum rooms, where she has taken in three other street ladies, shared Jesus with all of them including her grandmother, and many have accepted Christ. That’s just one of hundreds of stories like this.
More tomorrow!