Stories from the McDonald's trip to Tenwek

We start today's blog post with an excerpt from "Mornings with Tozer"

We See God's Purpose

That... he might gather together in one all things in Christ... in heaven, and... on earth. Ephesians1:10

We trust the Word of God—and the inspired revelation makes it plain to the believing Christian that all things in the universe have derived their form from Christ, the eternal Son!

We are assured that even as an architect builder gathers the necessary materials needed to fashion the structure he has designed, so God will ultimately gather all things together under one head, even Christ (see Ephesians 1:9-10).

Everything in the universe has received its meaning by the power of His Word; each has maintained its place and order through Him.

Jesus Christ is God creating!

Jesus Christ is God redeeming!

Jesus Christ is God completing and harmonizing!

Jesus Christ is God bringing together all things after the counsel of His own will!

I can only hope that as we grow and mature and delight in our faith, we are beginning to gain a new appreciation of God's great eternal purpose!

Stories from Tenwek by Mike McDonald

We had an amazing and humbling day (Feb 14) at the Kenduiwo Orphanage near Tenwek. We are staying at a guest house at Tenwek hospital, and have been meeting many doctors and medical staff that are volunteers from the U.S. What a fantastic group of people that come here and work tirelessly to provide medical care at this missionary hospital! There motto posted on the signs here "We Treat, Jesus Heals."

After all of the email exchanges, we finally got to meet Dr. Paul Jarrett, a humble man that works all day at the hospital and then goes throughout the community providing care and spiritual help to the community. He often works alongside the pastor here - Pastor David Kilel who we learned about at AIU (more on that below). They are humble spiritual giants for Christ. Daily there are many converts to Christ as a result of the missionary work here at Tenwek and the spiritual and physical help that is provided here.

After a dusty, bumpy ride through some lush, beautiful mountainsides, we arrived at the Children's Home, high atop a mountain. What a fantastic view they have from there. When we first arrived, the children were still at school, so we met with Pastor David. He and his wife, Sarah, are the caregivers at the Children's Home. They were very glad to see us and were so happy that Heritage is continuing in supporting the home. Living conditions here are primitive with cement floors and spartan buildings with only basic furnishings, but much better than many other orphans. It's hard to explain how you feel when seeing the things that they are so thankful for and we would throw out as trash. The girls dormitory has beds for about 16 girls but they have several more, so many of them are sleeping together. Pastor David wants to get enough beds for all of the children because there are 5 children at the home that have HIV/AIDS and isn't good that they are sleeping together. The mattresses were breaking apart on many of the beds but they all had blankets and sheets.

Pastor David and the Director of the Home were saying that just over the weekend they were discussing what they were going to do about the food supply as they were running low on maize and rice, the basic staples of food. We arrive today with a bag of maize that was nearly 100 pounds, along with sugar, flour, 100 lbs. rice, and much oil. They were so very thankful as it supplied their needs. We had a local driver along with our driver and he stopped along the way at stores he knew would carry bulk items at a lower cost. Glad we didn't buy these ahead of time at Nakumatt, as they were much cheaper and it supported the local economy (plus we didn't have a bit of extra room in our vehicle)! Big lesson learned...don't buy items like toothpaste in the U.S. and haul it all the way here...when you can buy it off the shelves locally at much better prices (and not pay baggage fees)!

Valentine's Day is known here as the Day for Lovers and we passed out suckers, pencils, erasers, and some small toys to celebrate the day. They also received toothbrushes and floss. Twenty three of the children received shoes too. These were the the children that did not receive shoes when the last visit was made from staff at Heritage. The biggest hit were the soccer balls we had picked up at Nakumatt, as the boys said "AHHH!" and began to clap. We unloaded five suitcases full of items for the children and they were grateful and (I think) a bit overwhelmed by all of the stuff. They were proud of the new shoes and excited about the little gift bags of items and the items donated by Heritage Christian.

There were 7 new children that needed to be taken in by the Children's Home last week. They only had money for 4 of the children but didn't want to refuse the other 3. Dr. Jarrett told them, "let me phone some people." Well, he sent an e-mail only to us and amazingly, God had provided almost the exact amount of money needed via the donations that people had given us and through Heritage and Kathy's work. Late last night we met later with Pastor David Kilel, a graduate of NEGST and personal friend of Dr. Douglas Carew and Habtu from NEGST, along with Dr. Jarrett. We extended our greetings from them to Pastor Kilel. He is a very busy man with responsibilities for the hospital, area churches and area orphanages. He is overwhelmed by the needs of his community and humbly appealed to us for resources from our home churches. The churches here are overwhelmed by their needs, and the church members are mostly at the poverty level. He shared many stories of how God has provided for him and his community. He is hoping we can convey these needs back home and continue to build a relationship with churches who can partner with him to provide badly needed support. His needs are urgent, and in the Kingdom Economics standpoint, relatively few dollars have a massive impact over here.

Blessings to all back home.

In Christ,

Mike, Kathy, Luke and Jacob McDonald