Bibles and baptisms

June 13, 2010

Immediately after walking through the huge metal gate of Sam's Place it was time to get to work. Although we have no orphans yet at Sam's Place, the annual Kenyan Deaf Prayer and Learning (KDPL) seminar is hosted at Sam's Place this year, and we had record turnout, so the place was packed. Last year we had 72 deaf Kenyans register for the conference. This year we had 144. And everywhere I looked were little clusters of deaf Kenyans standing around the yard drinking chai and laughing and signing.

The seminar actually started on June 10, and the rest of our mission team had already been here for several days. But because of some scheduling conflicts at home, I had to arrive late this year, so by the time I arrived the seminar was already in full swing. And although we loved having so many attend, it was about twice as many as we planned for, so I arrived at Sam's Place to find my teammates tired and overwhelmed but holding up very well. Alice Caughfield, Claudia Greek, and Sharon Arnold are women of amazing strength of character. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of benefit to planning things in Kenya because nothing ends up going as planned anyway, so an essential survival skill here is being able to improvise and just wing it. And, of course, anybody can wing it when they have to, but to be able to wing it and still keep smiling requires rare and divine strength. I count myself enormously blessed to be able to work side by side with these strong women of God who can speak words of peace even in the midst of utter chaos.

After a long Saturday of hanging out with the deaf, working on our Kenyan Sign Language, playing with kids, and putting out various fires, it was finally time to say good night. Last year when I said goodnight, I walked off to my guest house down the road and the left the Kenyans to sleep on their mats on the floor. This year, however, I got permission to sleep at Sam's Place with the Kenyans. It kind of doubled as being a fun camping experience for me as well as being a way to show our deaf brothers and sisters that the wazungu aren't too good to sleep in the same places they sleep. It was also really fun to get to stay behind and watch what happens after the white people leave.

Lights out was supposed to be at 11:00. That's when the generator shut off and everyone was supposed to be in bed. However, apparently the Kenyans weren't quite ready for bed at 11:00, so they went and fired up the generator again to run for another couple of hours. And, I'm not sure why they decided to do this, but they ended up bringing the generator inside the dormitory. I'm still learning KSL, so it was kind of difficult for me to figure out how to tell a room full of deaf Kenyans that the carbon monoxide in the generator's exhaust was a poisonous gas and would kill us in our sleep. So I ended up just running around the room pointing at the generator and signing “All die! All die!” Apparently, I got the message across to enough people that they helped me move the generator outside of the building before anybody passed out.

The next morning, after a restful night on my air mattress, we all ate breakfast and then headed in to church. The room at Sam's Place where we were worshiping was completely packed, so I wiggled my way through the sea of chairs and sat down in an empty one in the middle of the room. Back at my church in the US we have been making an effort to fully plan each Sunday morning worship service several days or a week in advance, but it seems that in this culture it is quite acceptable to plan the worship service 5 minutes before it begins. So, while various deaf people got up to lead us in spirited sign-language hymns, the church leaders made up the order of worship on a big chalk board. I thought that was kind of interesting by itself, but it got even more interesting when they wrote my name up on the board.

You see, I preached this little sermon in sign language to the deaf last year at KDPL, so some of them erroneously think that I am actually capable of signing. And I don't really know how to explain it to them, but I can't really sign; I just fake it. Last year I made up a sermon that only required about 20 signs and a bunch of pantomime, and I had a whole day to think about it and check my signs with Steve and Jerry. But today was completely different. I was scheduled to make some comments just before the contribution, and I had very little time to decide what I wanted to say about giving, but the deaf here are very patient with me. So, they listened attentively as a hearing mzungu bumbled through a short sermonette in broken KSL on a topic that they already understand 1000 times better than I do.

There were 8 responses to Carl Moore's sermon that morning, so we all took a short walk to the little stream just outside of Sam's Place to watch the baptisms. Unfortunately, Steve and I had some technical problems to work through first, so we got there late and missed all the baptisms, but we did get there just in time to get some really good shots of Carl Moore falling in the river.

After the baptisms, we walked back to Sam's Place and wrapped up KDPL with the closing ceremony. One of the low points of last year's KDPL was that we were only able to bring 20 bibles for the deaf, but we had 72 register. And we had to listen to 52 very touching stories about how badly they needed a Bible. Although it isn't too hard to get Bibles in Kenya, there is a special Easy-to-Read version for the deaf that you just can't buy in Kenya. So, each year we carry over a few ERV Bibles in our luggage and give them to the local deaf church leaders to be distributed as they see fit. Unfortunately, we just don't have enough luggage space to take a Bible for everyone at KDPL, so this year we decided to step out on a limb and try to ship Bibles to Sam's Place through the infamously unreliable Kenyan postal system. If they got lost or stolen in the mail, we reasoned, it wouldn't be a huge tragedy because at least someone would end up with a Bible, even if it wasn't our deaf friends. So, we shipped 84 ERV Bibles to Sam's Place knowing that, if they arrived, that would be more than enough to give one to each of the 70-ish expected attendees.

But several days after the Bibles shipped, the USPS website still had not even confirmed delivery to Kenya, and certainly not all the way to Sam's Place. And as days turned into weeks and the Bibles still had not arrived, I wrote it off as a loss and we went to the backup plan of shoving Bibles in suitcases. So when I arrived at Sam's Place and saw that we had 144 KDPL attendees I was very bummed at the thought that we only had 60 Bibles to divide among them. But later that evening I was talking to Simeon (the Kenyan director of Sam's Place) and he said to me “Brother Jeff, I want to let you know that just a few days ago I received 7 boxes in the mail.” I was so excited to hear this that I almost cried to Simeon. Apparently, all seven boxes of Bibles had safely arrived at Sam's Place and he had just been saving it for a surprise. So the 84 Bibles we shipped plus the 60 Bibles we brought in our luggage made a total of 144 Bibles! So for the first time in the history of KDPL we were able to give a new Easy-to-Read Bible to every deaf person who attended the seminar.

O God, speak to Your children through the pages of Your Word. Speak to them words of peace and joy and life and hope. Open their eyes to Your life-giving Spirit smiling back at them from behind the pages. Amen.