Ken and Isaac

Meet Ken. He is not only inspiring, but contagious to be around! He and I had met before, but it was quite some time ago. That’s why I was especially happy to get to spend a couple of days together in western Kenya this trip. After catching up, I asked him to tell me a little about himself and what he is doing currently. Here’s some of what he shared with me:

“We live in an area where people live hand to mouth. It’s a slum called Matisi. There is extreme poverty. The people there often have so many problems with their feet because of the chiggers and they really suffer. We take them to public health for medicines and then we give them shoes to wear. We don’t ask them what tribe they are from and we have a lot of favor to go there. For example, we can go to any house and be received. We work with our wives and there is a lot of unity for us in that work. If someone has no clothes we will even take off ours and give them to them. Sometimes the suffering is so bad, I will even remove my shoes and leave them with that person and come home with no shoes. The need is so great in that place.

“For myself, I do small businesses of buying second hand clothes and also shoes and selling them. I have one disciple Isaac who joins me in the work. I told him one day, ‘You go this way and I will go that way.’ We dedicated one day a week at first for this work. Now there are so many house churches. I think there are around 35.”

Ken then introduced me to Isaac. It was my first time meeting him. His excitement for making disciples was contagious! Here’s some of what he told me:

“As for me, I focused on Posian Village. There was a man who was a drunkard on the street. He was asking for money for alcohol. We gave him 50KSH. We bought that alcohol for him and also prayed for him. We sat with him and listened to him. He was a very hard and tough guy, but he did agree to book another day to meet with us three days later. We found him again and he told us, ‘You did well to buy me that alcohol.’ We told him we wanted to share the Word of God with him and he said ok. He invited us to come to his house and share with the whole family. That family welcomed us with peace so we shared the Gospel with them. We prayed with them and they, the entire family, accepted Christ as the Lord.

“One week later we went back to that house because the family wanted to be baptized after hearing that it was what Jesus wanted for them. The family invited neighbors for when they meet at their home (to do Discovery Bible Study). Out of that man and his wife now there are 15 house churches. I go to them each week and meet with their leaders and disciple them so they can go disciple others.”

Ken was once a traditional pastor. He was frustrated continually trying to maintain his church. He had little money and had to pay rent for space and equipment to have a service so people would come. Today he is very excited because sharing the Gospel is easy. It requires no money. People are reached loving them in practical ways. They meet easily and simply in their homes in their neighborhoods, sharing life together in simple ways.