Saturday, February 23, 2019

Praying for rain

Recently Bryan visited with the land owners and elders of the community where we built a large catchment dam to collect rain water during the rainy season. There was still water in the dam from last years rains, praise God! Kenya is experiencing record droughts that seem to hit year after year. The men stood around Bryan and prayed that rain would return as well as for God to bless the work of his hands that he might be able to build more of these systems to help other communities. We are currently looking for funds to place another dam like this one in another community. 

The dam has allowed this Masai community, who depend on cattle, to experiment with agriculture. A few of the young men have been to agriculture training and have started growing some crops. Moringa trees seem to do well in this hot dry climate and they provide nutrition for people and animals alike. They also provide shade for other crops to grow as well as high vitamin content in the leaves and seeds.

Bryan and another missionary, Kevin Smith attempted to visit a village in far northern Kenya recently. The journey was tough, with the second half being extremely rough conditions. The bikes had problems and they were never able to reach this village. The two are planning a follow up trip and will use the lessons they learned on this trip to be better prepared. There is a Kenyan missionary in this village working among an unreached tribe. Our goal is to visit and see how we can partner with this missionary to see transformational development help him reach his community. 

Roadside repairs tested our mechanical knowledge on this trip!

We managed to find a flat rock that would serve as our work table as we rebuilt a carburetor.

Our last breakdown was on the way back to Nairobi. We were extremely grateful for a large tree that was nearby. We spent a couple of hours working on the bike and realized it was beyond our ability in that environment. We managed to find a truck passing by that would carry Kevin's bike back to Nairobi. 
Sometimes getting to the destination is just as fun as being there. In this case we were discouraged but we felt like God had spared us some real difficulties as the remaining 350 miles of desert crossing would have really tested us. We will make plans to visit again once we have all necessary repairs completed and have gathered all the info we can on the road conditions and security issues along the way. Thanks for your prayers and support! Blessings, Bryan and Kim