Rural Church Youth Meeting

A few weeks ago, we had the opportunity to go to a rural church at the invitation of our night guard, John.  He is the leader/organizer of 8 small churches in the rural area towards the Mau forest.  We spoke at the same church a few weeks before coming back to the US in June, and we were invited back to share at their Saturday youth meeting.  The photo above is Colleen with John and 4 of his 6 children, and below is Cason, Amber (a Baby Centre volunteer), and some of the pastors/elders of the churches.  

I (Cason) didn’t know what to expect going into it, and most of the “youth” at the meeting were quite a bit younger than I had anticipated.  I adjusted my message accordingly, and I think they really enjoyed it.  We discussed 1 Corinthians 9 about “running the race to win the prize,” which is a passage that has been constantly in my mind lately.  During the lesson, I brought up some volunteers for demonstrations and visual aids, which the kids loved – they couldn’t stop laughing at some of their pastors racing around the room trying to run for the prize!  Like the last time I spoke at that church, my message was translated into Kalenjin… it is tough to find the right rhythm when you are being translated, but I think the message got across. 

When we first arrived, we had about 30 minutes of worship and singing… a designated song leader would start the songs and everyone else would join in.  The only instrument was a cow hide drum, but there was lots of clapping, dancing, and swaying! 

One interesting/frustrating thing occurred when we tried to ask the pastors about the problems they see facing their congregations.  It may have been because we are American (and therefore they think we have lots of money), but they focused completely on their churches’ economic hardships.  Sentiments like “If we only had a keyboard, better schools, dispensary,” etc. were what they kept talking about even though we kept asking about the spiritual issues facing the congregations. 

Our hope and prayer is that we can all learn that you don’t need a keyboard, sound system, or padded seats to worship the Lord… most of the time we now prefer the acapella songs with the cowhide drum!  I guess anywhere we can get distracted by the accoutrements of religion, either by having them or not, and not focus on actually communing with our God.  Our prayer for the churches of the Mau, and for all of us, is that we would discover and cling to a genuine relationship with our Savior; realizing that we can run our race much faster if we throw off the distractions and focus only on the Prize. 

Thanks so much for reading our blog and for partnering with us in ministry!

Cason (& Colleen)

Click HERE to see a few more pictures of our time ministering to the youth.

Here are a few more pictures from our time:

Colleen and Amber showing off our name tags… somehow we ended up being “Pastor Carson USA,” “Pastor Collins USA,” and “Pastor Amber Colleen USA.”  :  )

This is just a picture that I liked from the school on the same compound as the church… a solitary desk in a dirt floor school room. 

As always, thanks for reading!