“They washed our feet!”

“Insisting we sit, they told us that this was how they wanted to express their love for those who had come to the Banjuri people, not to get something from them, but to tell them about God and his love for them, a message they had never before heard!”

John, the Kenyan team leader, along with several others had traveled a very long distance from western Kenya to the heavily populated Muslim coastal region to check on a new church planting work they had begun a couple of years ago.

The Banjuri tribe lives in this region. They are a small tribe of less than 100,000 with a heritage of both African and Arab. The Banjuri live in small huts made of coconut leaves and branches along the longest river in Kenya, the Tana. Life is simple but often challenging. Currently, the locusts are everywhere, eating everything in this dry and barren land. One day, two years ago, a Banjuri man by the name of Kosholo, welcomed a church planter into his home. Kosholo and his family listened to the Gospel, received it, and began sharing it with others in their village.

The day that John and his team visited, Kosholo was adamant: “There’s a new house church close by. Please come visit and train those new disciples.” As it turned out, ‘close by’ meant a distance of almost 50 miles! But the extra road trip was well worth it!

After they had spent time teaching the new disciples, John reported:

“Later in the day I watched confused as the new disciples started bringing timber to one of the huts in the village and then they built a fire. Large yellow jerry cans were standing in a row already full of water from an earlier trip the women had made walking the long distance to the river. Then the new disciples beckoned our team to come and sit. They explained that they wanted to wash our feet and legs. Insisting that we sit down, they told us that this was how they wanted to express their love for the men who had come to the Banjuri people, not to get something from them, but to tell them about God and his love for them. A message they had never before heard!”