Yesterday morning I preached at the church led by Pastor James, who took me to the pastors and leaders conference on Saturday. Their building is interesting – it is built in at T shape, with three separate areas joined by the main altar area. I have tried to put photos of two of the areas together in the hope of giving you some idea what it is like. (I tried to make it a panorama of all three areas, but the third pic just would not co-operate.)
Even more interesting than the building itself is their seating policy – kids in the first area, women in the middle area, and men in the third area. I’m assuming that this also means that husbands and wives have to sit separately. I found this particularly strange, given that they have (and celebrate) several lady pastors in their denomination.
I had quite a good chat with Pastor James before the meeting. Among other things, he shared that their denomination has a policy of transferring pastors, and that he had been transferred from a large, thriving church to this one, which at the time was very small. I can understand the thinking that a pastor who has been able to build a successful church might be able to take one that is struggling and build it up, but it must be terribly discouraging for the pastor. It opens up a nasty possibility of corruption on the part of denominational leaders (“my church is small and struggling, yours is large and growing, so I’ll just take over yours and transfer you to mine.”) Even worse, it means that the pastor can never develop a true fathering (or mothering) relationship with the people, as he/she could be ripped away from them at any time. Just another reason why I hate denominationalism!
After I had preached and prayed for almost everyone in the house, while they were doing the announcements and offering, a little girl from the congregation came up to the altar area and handed me a little bag of what I thought at first were figs. When we went back to the house and I had a closer look, it turned out they were not figs but the African version of passionfruit. I love passionfruit, so thought I would try one straight away. As I cut it open, I was squirted with blood-red juice. I definitely was not expecting that! Turns out they are very different from our Aussie passionfruit, both in appearance and in taste. The first one I tried was not fully ripe, and was quite bitter. A riper one was more pleasant to taste, but still not something I would rave about. I definitely prefer the Aussie version.
Another African taste I had the chance to try was Kenyan porridge, which we were given while we were talking prior to the service. This is made with millet, and is of a consistency that is thick but drinkable. My opinion? It’s ok, but not something that I would seek out.
We had to leave Kisii after the service, as Enoch had to go back to work today, and the kids had to go back to school. So the house was cleared and the car packed, we had a quick lunch, and around 3pm left for the long journey back to Kitale. For those at home, this is almost 300kms, so like driving from home to Melbourne and almost back again. It was hard driving conditions – bad roads, bad drivers, rain, and for the second half of the trip night – so by the time we arrived in Kitale it was 9.30pm.
Today is a rest day, tomorrow we will be heading to Kisumu for a meeting there before going on to Busia where I will be ministering Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Next Monday I move on to Uganda.
However, it wasn’t a total farewell to Kisii. Pastor James has asked, if possible, for me to go to Kisii again when I am back in Kenya in April, to do a 3-day pastors’ conference.