The Saturday Before

So tomorrow I give my first sermon in the big church here. They have 4 services here every Sunday. Two in the new hall oriented towards the youth and two in the main sanctuary. I'm preaching in the sanctuary to about 1000 people before the day is done. That is a much bigger audience than my classmates in Preaching class. I also get to preach on every one's favorite topic, Stewardship. People live hearing about giving more of their time and money to the church. I'm going to take the approach that we are supposed to be responsible with the resources God has entrusted to us.

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite however as within 4 days I had money stolen from me twice. First incident happened while I was on a mission trip with the college students in Kitui. Kitui is in Akamba area and the Akamba people are known for practicing witchcraft. They believe in curses and being possessed by demons. Now most everything happened in Kswahili so I rarely knew what was happening but I'm told we did exorcisms and many people gave their lives to Christ. While we were there I became the object of desire of a couple of the guys who went. As flattering as it is to have two guys fighting over you I can't be sure if it was my winning personality, my pale skin color, or my nationality that was the attracting factor. One did profess his deep love for me and said God told him in prayer that his job for the rest of his life is to take care of me and to be where ever I am. That is very sweet. One big hang up for me is this guy is 24 and I don't know how much we really have in common. So at the end of the week when my money was stolen out of my wallet, which was in my bag on the church bus, these two guys were the prime suspects. Everyone was searched and the money was not found. One of the trip leaders also had his cell phone stolen. So that was last Saturday.

One Wednesday I finally managed to get out to see the Compass School in Kikuyu. Evans, a classmate of mine at SFTS, worked in Kenya for a year and spent some time at this school. I have been trying to go see the school and meet the people there since I arrived in Kenya. So someone from the school came to Nairobi to ride back to Kikuyu on a matatu with me. Matatus are vans that work as public transportation around here. They manage to squeeze 14 people into them so it is a very tight fit. While riding the matatu I was pickpocketted and this time I lost my entire wallet. So they got cash, my atm card, a credit card, my driver's license, my school id, and my insurance cards. The guy who rode with my also had his cell phone stolen. So once we figured it out we went to a cyber cafe so I could cancel my cards. No purchases were made so really it was just a huge inconvenience to me. Now I've ordered new cards and my parents are going to send them to me so I can have access to money again. Thankfully I kept some American money in my room and I simply exchanged that so I can eat and such in the mean time.

So right now I don't feel like a good steward of my money. God is most definitely humbling me before this sermon. I have no written out a transcript for this sermon. I have my main points on a single sheet of paper. This sermon is supposed to be between 20 and 25 minutes. I have never preached for that long but I am a good talker so I hope that helps me take up the time. I will also have to speak slower than normal because of the language differences. Yes we all speak English but my accent is different and I want to be sure I am understood. Mostly I am just praying that God takes over and the words are all His anyways. I do not feel like I can say anything on stewardship based on my week so God will have to do the talking.

So that's about it for now. I'll write next about how the sermon went.