Church Events

PART I

A few weeks ago, we took our youth group on a day trip to Lake Bagoria, just a few kilometers north of the equator.  Seventeen of us packed into a matatu (van) and headed out for the lake, early-ish Saturday morning.  Lake Bagoria is known for having hot springs and an abundance of flamingos.  There is a geyser that shoots water 20-30 feet into the air, and in some places the water is boiling… so on the way up, we stopped and bought eggs.  The youth tied them to sticks and put them in the boiling water for a few minutes to cook themselves a snack!  See Pastor Wycliffe in the photo on the left standing on the rocks above the boiling water just to cook a few eggs…

After sight-seeing at the hot springs and flamingos, we got out a picnic of sloppy joes and carrots that we brought… it was the first time the majority of the youth had eaten sloppy joes.  Most really loved them and they especially liked the name, “sloppy joe,” after we explained it.  Below is a picture of Colleen and me serving up the ‘joes!

From the park, we left for a local hotel with two swimming pools.  One was a normal, chlorine filled pool, but the other piped water in from the hot springs… so it was a bit green-ish and felt like a giant bathtub of warm water.  The majority of the youth didn’t know how to swim, so we gave some impromptu treading water and dog-paddling lessons with varying degrees of success... It was quite funny trying to teach them how to swim!  There were water polo goals in the hot spring filled pool, so we had a fun hour or so of intense competition (in shallow water, so everyone could participate). 

On the left, Mathew and Aggy battle during water polo.  Below is picture of Colleen and Rael trying to be flamingos, as well as one of the whole group with the geyser in the background. 

It was a great day, primarily just of fellowship and community building.  We did have a brief discussion about how we want the youth group to progress over the next few months and how we can be encouraging each other to continue to grow in Christ.  Please pray for the kids as they face daily trials and temptations, just like all of us.  Also pray for us that we could encourage the youth and be Christ-like examples for them to follow.        Click this link to see the full album of pictures from our day at Lake Bagoria…The Ngata youth at Lake Bagoria. 

PART II

Another recent Sunday was “family day” at Ngata AGC, so after a combined (English and Swahili translated) service, we had a get together of games and fun behind the church.  Toro led some games and did a great job getting everyone involved… even the wazee (older men).  

For the first game that we played, everyone say in a circle and made a pointed their finger with their right had, then they put their left hand on top of the finger of the personal on their right… at Toro’s signal, everyone tried to grab fingers with their left hands while trying to get away with the right.  It was really fun and got everyone involved.   

Next they had three wazee and three mamas (women) place their shoes in a pile in the middle of the circle.  They were blindfolded, spun around, and then set lose to try to find their pair of shoes… it was complete chaos, but everyone was laughing so hard.  The crowd was all yelling instructions, and eventually most of the blindfolded contestants were reunited with their shoes.  The picture above is the blindfolded mamas trying to find their shoes. 

It was great to see the men and women willing to make themselves look a bit silly so everyone could have a good time laughing.  It is not as culturally acceptable here for a respected man or woman to be made to look ridiculous, so it was hilarious to all of the kids and helped reinforce equality among the different ages, tribes, and socioeconomic classes.   The last game was musical chairs, which they call “dancing chairs” in Kenya… can we all agree that “dancing chairs” is a much cooler name?  Even though I was the photographer for the events, they roped me into playing.  Again, it was great to see the adults, youth, and kids all mixing together and interacting.  I think I made it to the final 5 or so, but my mzungu (white person) butt wasn’t fast enough into the seats to stay in the game any longer than that. 

Family Day was a wonderful time of unifying and community building for the church, and I’m so glad that we could participate.  Being a part of a church body in Kenya has been such a blessing and encouragement to us.  It is always so cool to me to think about how just a few hours after we worship in Kenya, many of you praising our same Lord in churches in the US – what a big God we serve! 

Last week, I also made the church a facebook page where we can upload photos and post updates on Ngata Africa Gospel Church events.  Go to facebook.com/NgataAGC to see the page, and “like” it if you want to stay updated.  To see more pictures of the Ngata Family Day, click this link… Family Day at Ngata AGC. 

As always, thanks so much for reading. 

Here are a few more pictures of the fun at our church family day…

We had a chair casualty from “dancing” chairs:

An old mama watching the festivities:

Mrs. Kamoing’ was the life of the party!:

Pastor Paul’s beautiful wife and daughter swaying to the music:

Before and after the games, we had group stretching/calisthenics led by Toro… everyone stood in lines and danced around to the music.  I think that was my favorite part!: 

Thanks for reading!  We’ll try to post again soon about some work that we’ve been doing in camps for Internally Displaced People.  God Bless!

Links/Pictures

We haven’t put up any links to our facebook alums in a while, so this post is just our favorite pictures from the last few weeks and links to the albums…

Over a month ago we posted about Andrew and Malachi’s adoptions, but we never posted a link to the full album.  Here it is… Andrew and Malachi's adoption day.

Colleen also posted a while back about going to visit kids who have been adopted in their new homes, and here is the full album: Home Visits!

The picture above is Faith after Colleen took her to get her hair done from the album Faith gets a new 'do and others.

Here’s Grace who is just starting to crawl:

Brandon, my fearless flyer:

Amos, looking pretty in pink, learning to walk:

This is beautiful Dorcas… so see more of her and the other kids outside, click this link for the album Dorcas loves me:

These pictures are from a few weeks ago when they dressed Moses up in a duck outfit and he was so cute… click this link to see more photos from the album Moses the Duck:

That’s all for now… thanks for checking up on us!

We’re working on a newsletter, which hopefully we will have out in the next few weeks.  Thank you for your prayers and support!

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!

Home visits

Precious (now called Angela Chepto) is growing up so fast!  This picture was taken last week in her new home:

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to visit 8 of the children that have been adopted from the Baby Centre in the last year or so.  It was an incredible experience to see them in their new homes and to see how drastically they had all improved since getting parents. So many of the kids were confident and outgoing, and the parents were so excited to show them off. One set of parents actually pulled out all of the school work their child had done from that year and showed us every single paper. As much as I didn’t want to look through a huge stack of kindergarten papers I was so moved by the pride the parents obviously had in their new son. Some of the older kids remembered us, but most did not.  Momo even decided to pretend we weren’t there, which was hilarious and his parents played along.  Here’s Momo reading with his dad:

It is humbling to see how God is taking care of each one of the kids and how He has blessed each one individually. He is also taking care of the families that have adopted these kids. Most of the families have no other children and their single child is their absolute pride and joy. In so many cases it is evident that God has sent them the perfect child for their lives. It also amazed me how many of the children looked exactly like their parents! In a culture that sometimes puts too much importance on tribalism, an adopted child looking similar to his or her new tribe can make things much easier.  How great is it that we have a God who takes care of all of the small details!  This cutie is Elizabeth, who is now called Joy:

In other news…. The summer traffic of volunteers has slowed down and now we are trying to manage without all of the extra help. Instead of 7 children that I need to provide with physical therapy, I now have 15 each day! Please be praying that I am able to keep up with all of the kids.

We’re getting up early tomorrow for an all day outing with your youth group to Lake Bagoria.  Pray for us if it comes to mind… we’ll try to post again soon!

Thanks so much for reading!

Colleen

A few more pictures… here’s Ronny with his wonderful parents:

Jeremiah with his mom:

And finally, here is Joshua who is now called Leo.  He was adopted before Cas and I came to Kenya, so we didn’t get to meet him at Baby Centre. 

 

Please pray for all of these children and families, and ask the Lord to bless the current Baby Centre kids with families of their own.  Thanks!

Ngata United FC

A few weeks before Colleen and I went home in June, I looked up my old soccer club (South Central Select from Greenwood, Indiana, now called South Central Soccer Academy)  on the internet and emailed the marketing director to see if they’d be interested in donating anything to my team in Ngata.  Jeremy Neely, VP and marketing  director of SCSA wrote me back and was amazingly receptive to the idea.  While we were home, my dad and I went down to the SCSA fields (a trip we used to make together 3-4 times a week) to meet Jeremy.  He was incredibly nice and gave so much… jerseys, balls, T-shirts, shorts, cleats, pennies, socks, medals, backpacks… it was amazing!  Fortunately we had some additional bags to use for coming back to Kenya, because we had 2 and a half bags of football gear! 

The last few weeks, I’ve been so excited about giving these things to the team!  I had some of the shirts resized and numbers put on the few that didn’t have them, then last week made a big presentation of the gifts to the team at practice.  It really is so much fun to give things away!  We sorted all of the shirts (about 50) and gave some to the junior squad, keeping the red ones to use as their first set of uniforms.  They were so excited!  Then the senior team tried on all of their new gear and posed for some pictures – they especially loved the red jerseys and the backpacks!

After presenting all the gifts and getting team pictures, we had a meeting with speeches and thanks, where the guys expressed their gratitude to me and to SCSA.  I wish I had taken a camera with a video recorder so I could share it!  They were really touched that people in the US want to send them things and support what they are doing.  They said that without the cleats and other donations, they wouldn’t have been able to join the district league that we began a few weeks ago. 

Most of the guys on the team are poorer on the socio-economic scale, and with unemployment in Kenya being around 40%, they don’t have any job prospects.  The football team, Ngata United FC, is really the best thing that many of them feel they have going in life.  Some of the older guys around the team have told me what a great thing it is because it really keeps guys from getting into gangs, alcohol, violence, drugs, etc.  Being supported and encouraged by “wazungu” (white people) from the US is an incredible blessing for them.  We are so thankful to Jeremy Neely and all of South Central Soccer Academy for their generous donation, and we hope to make you proud in your former uniforms this season! 

This past Sunday, we had our third league match on our home ground.  Despite the fact that the linesman didn’t understand the offsides rule, we won 3-1.  It was our first game wearing the kits donated by SCSA, and the guys were excited that they looked so good in all red.  Attendance at home matches continues to go up, as we typically have 150-200 people from town watching on the sideline.  It was a gorgeous day and a great win (we now have 7 points from 3 matches in the league).  The only bad thing was that I missed a wide open header!  The guys teased me a bit after the game, but I definitely deserved it… Here’s a post-victory picture:

It always amazes me how sports can make us feel… some of my most happy and most disappointing moments have been on a basketball court or football pitch.  I love seeing how excited the guys get after we score a goal or win – without sounding too hyperbolic, I really thing that football brings hope to the community.  I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with the guys since we’ve been back, and more have been coming to church with me.  Please pray that this team can continue to be a ministry and bring hope to the players, our opponents, and the town of Ngata.

The guys were asking me if it was possible for me to make them a website, so I made the team a facebook page.  If you’d like to keep up with us, you can “like” the page at facebook.com/NgataUnitedFC.  Also, you can CLICK HERE to see an album of pictures from when we were distributing the uniforms, and CLICK HERE to see one from our game on Sunday.  A big thanks to the lovely Colleen Wittig for taking most of these photographs. 

Thanks so much for your prayers and support,

Cason

“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”  -  1 Corinthians 9:24

Some of our fans from the Baby Center came with Colleen to a practice:

Tossing my buddy Brandon into the African sky at football practice – he loves it and keeps saying “tena… tena…” which means “again… again…”:

Some of the cutest fans from our game on Sunday that were all crowded around Colleen:

And finally one of our post game prayer… please keep these guys in your prayers!:

Thanks so much for reading!  God Bless!