Week Review

Before I recap this past week, I'd like to begin by saying that today we saw four unbelievers give their lives to Christ. This afternoon from 3:45-6:00pm, Nathalie, Zoe, Cory, Victoria, Jimmy (local believer; worship pastor), Zack (local believer; Christian radio host), and myself dispersed throughout our little part in Kitale for the purpose of evangelism. Immediately the first two people we talked to surrendered their lives to Christ and were filled with the Holy Spirit! You can imagine how encouraging that was! I thought, surely everybody that we were going to talk to today was going to get saved. We talked to a total of 18 people; 10 of whom were Spirit-filled believers; and four of the eight unbelievers committed their lives to Christ and are being connected to local churches for further discipleship. So amazing!

Now I'll go back in time to quickly review the week.

On Tuesday our team, along with 15+ local believers (some were church pastors) went to the first gate of the city of Kitale to pray and prophesy over Kitale. We declared Psalm 24:7-10 over the gate of the city - that the King of Glory is exalted and welcomed in Kitale, and that every argument, sin, and false religion that exalts itself above Jesus would leave in Jesus' name. It was a powerful time of intercession that was only supposed to go for 15 minutes, but lasted for one hour.

On Saturday, Nathalie, myself and the team taught and modeled the Harp and Bowl prayer model to around 50 worship leaders and pastors. We also had a handful of the worship leaders and singers try it for themselves, and they had a blast. The teaching was very clear; Nathalie is an incredible teacher, oh my word. She did an amazing job. Then on Sunday we condensed the teaching to only 10 minutes and led a local church into intercession using the Harp and Bowl Model. The entire congregation was engaged as we prayed out of Romans 15, for God to unify the Church in Kitale, and Colossians 1, for worship leaders and intercessors to arise in Kitale. The Senior Pastor of the church that we ministered at (and he also hosted the Saturday teaching time) absolutely loves the Harp and Bowl Model and said that what we are doing will revolutionize Kitale, and that he wants to continue doing what we have taught even after we leave Kenya. How awesome is that! A worship-based prayer culture is being established in Kitale!

On Mondays and Thursdays we have decided to teach afternoon classes/clinics for those who are interested in getting trained in our prayer model and plugged in to the prayer room schedule. So on Monday we had six people come to the class form 2:30-5pm. Nathalie, Shannon, Cory, and I coached them on how to sing and pray the Bible phrase by phrase; at IHOP we call this Worship With the Word. We all sat in a circle together and one after the other sang/prayed Psalm 23 and part of Psalm 16 phrase by phrase. This was such a fruitful time of teaching. The six "students" quickly understood the concept and were able to do it with us.

Then this afternoon at 1pm, after our prayer room sets, Shannon and I went to a local church to minister for one hour. I preached from Matthew 9:36-38 - compassion for the lost, prayers for the harvest, and God making us the answer to our prayers.

I think that's all for this past week.

A week in Turkana

Wow. What a week. On Monday the 10th, our ACTS team hopped on a bus for a 12-hour journey North, Turkana. On the bus Cory Wasson preached to 50+ Kenyans out of the story of Mary of Bethany. After he preached, I followed up with a ministry time, where I prayed for 10-15 people who raised their hands saying that they want to give all of their time, money, energy and relationships to Jesus. I have no idea who I prayed for that was already a born again Christian or who was not. I wish I would have been more intentional to figure out what kind of people were responding; but nevertheless, it's really awesome that people responded to Jesus. 10-15 people said that they wanted love Jesus with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. Amen! After I preached, Cory played guitar as Eunice Njeri led the bus into worship.

At 11pm, we arrived in Kakuma - a simple Turkana town surrounded by the desert mountains. We slept that night, and every night, outside in the cool air and vigorous wind, underneath the most spectacular moon and stars I have ever seen. I got to see my first and second shooting star ever! I don't know how I have gone through 22 years of life without seeing one, but finally I have seen one. It was sweet:) In the morning, we were usually awakened to the sound of SHOUTING goats who roamed freely among us in our little compound:)

We arrived in Kakuma not knowing at all how we were expected to minister. But we agreed that regardless of how we ministered, God's primary assignment for us there was intercession to withstand the increasing influence of immorality and idolatry (Islam) through intercession.

Our basic ministry schedule looked like two services every day - one morning and one evening service. The service would begin with worship, followed by a sermon on prayer, and we'd finish with a time of intercession or prophetic worship.

In our Thursday morning service, Tyler Andrews preached and led us into a time of prayer for God to establish a culture of prayer in the town. During this time of prayer the Lord released upon us a spirit of conviction through a word of wisdom given to Cory Wasson. We responded to the Lord with a time of open repentance and confession of sin from the church pulpit. This was the turning point for our trip. Previously we really were sensing a "blockage" in the effectiveness of our teaching and praying, and even in our team's internal relationships. But after this open confession and repentance of sin we saw a breakthrough in the response of the congregation we were ministering to, God began to answer the prayers that we offered up even before we left for Kenya, and the team felt a new brotherly love for each other. This was so cool. God changed our team and He changed those who we ministered to because we confessed our sins to one another.

On Friday afternoon the team spent some time sharing dreams that God had given us for the whole team. God is clearly speaking to us through dreams right now. Each dream explained and confirmed the other. There are far too many details to share about the dreams and what God is speaking to us in this update. But I just wanted to testify to God's good leadership, that He is clearly making known the direction that we should go, and the things that we need to intercede for. Thank you Jesus for speaking to our team so obviously!

After sharing our dreams, we spent an hour in intercession for the immorality and idolatry in Kakuma. We prayed that God would release purity in the Church, and that He would take every Muslim out of the domain of darkness and transfer him into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, and turn every mosque that stands at the gates of the city into a church. We felt a breakthrough in intercession during that time.

So on Friday evening instead of preaching the AWESOME sermon that I had prepared, I sensed God wanting me to preach from James 5:16 and lead the congregation again in a time of open confession of sin (there were more people in the evening services who weren't there for the Thursday morning confession). The message connected in the congregation, the Holy Spirit was present, releasing grace for confession, and after a word of exhortation from Cory (who carried the grace to lead people into repentance), the whole congregation responded by coming to the altar to repent for and openly confess their sin.

On Saturday, upon our request, Pastor Wilson (one of the main pastors in Turkana, and our host), took us on a climb to the top of one of the largest mountains in the area, for have a time of intercession, blessing and prophecy for the town of Kakuma and nation of Kenya. I felt God's presence on top of the mountain, and knew that He would answer out prayers. And I believe that our repentance on Thursday is the reason why the prayers on the mountain will be answered. James 5:16 says "Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective [or fervent] prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." Because we had confessed, because we had come into right standing before God, our prayers surely will accomplish much.

On Sunday, before I preached the second service, Tyler Andrews' "man purse" where he keeps his wallet containing his ID, credit card, copy of passport and visa, and both personal and team money was stolen by a little boy. Pastor Wilson and a couple others prayed that it would return before we left to go back home to Kitale in the afternoon. The "man purse" was found only a short while later. But this is the cool part - while second service worship was still going, a man who lives a few kilometers away stumbles upon Tyler's wallet, sees that there is a white guy's ID card in it, and decides to call Pastor Wilson to see if perhaps he has any foreign guests in town who may of lost their wallet. The wallet was returned with everything in it except for the cash. Praise God! He answers prayer!

Okay, so back to the church service. I got to preach the AWESOME sermon that I told you about. I preached on responding to the imminent day of Christ's return through intercession. The passages I preached from were Luke 2 (Anna), Matthew 24, and Luke 21. I really enjoyed preaching this sermon hahaha:) About 20 in a congregation of 100 or so came to the altar to receive prayer for grace as they commit themselves to live lifestyles of intercession and fasting like Anna the daughter of Phanuel in Luke 2. God answered a prayer of mine from Thursday morning in this sermon. On Thursday morning, as we were praying for God to set watchmen on the wall of intercession in Kakuma, I felt like God told me to pray for this specific family that we had the opportunity to meet earlier in the week. I felt like He told me to pray for the children of this family, that they would be intercessors like Anna; that they would give the best of their vitality to intercession and fasting, night and day, for the rest of their lives. One of the teenage girls of this family that I was praying for, came to the altar for prayer after my sermon; later with tears in her eyes she told one of the ladies' on our team, Carly Cerak, that she wanted to be like Anna. What a God we serve who answers prayer! He told me what to pray on Thursday; I actually prayed; and then on Sunday He answered that prayer. I love how God works!

Oh ya I almost forgot. That before I preached, God told me that there was somebody in the room who wasn't born again, but I wasn't sure if He was telling me to give a salvation call or not. No matter, after ministry time, Pastor Wilson gave an invitation for anybody who wanted to be born again to come forward. One of the town drunkards who had disrupted one of our team meetings came forward to give His life to Jesus. He knelt down, and prayed; then Pastor Wilson prayed for Him to receive the Holy Spirit. As he was going back to His seat, he was wiping tears off of his face. This man was not just praying a prayer, he was not drunk, but he genuinely repented and gave his life to Christ. Hahahaha! Yes!

There are even more testimonies from this week than I am not sharing. I hope that none of my team members read this update, because they'd certainly yell at me for leaving stuff out. All this is to say that God is working through us. We have been sent by God to Kenya on purpose.

Overnight prayer meeting, and Imani Radio Station

This morning our team is leaving for Turkana on a ministry trip for one week. Turkana is an arid area, located right on the equator, inhabited by a tribe called "Turkana" :) From what I know there are many Christian converts among the Turkana, but I am not sure if there is any syncretism - it seems as though there may be. We'll find out when we get there I suppose! :) haha

I want to highlight some of last week's important events.

On Friday night, our team was invited to minister at an overnight prayer meeting to about 100 people - this was our first chance to preach. We arrived at the prayer meeting at 9pm, and at around 10pm three of our team members, Thalia, Shannon, and Nathalie, shared a testimony in front of the assembled intercessors. Each testimony was powerful. Thalia testified about how God made her fall in love with the house of prayer; Shannon shared about how God made the love of the Father real to him (everybody cried, or wanted to cry); and Nathalie shared about how Jesus Christ is the only thing that has satisfied and sustained her heart. All three testimonies could have had an altar call - they were anointed. After those three, I preached a sermon out of Mark 14 (Garden of Gethsemane) on friendship with Jesus in intercession. After my sermon, Cory led worship on acoustic, Nathalie sang along, Shannon played drums, Tyler played bass, and one of our Kenyan friends, Tony, played keys. It was an anointed prophetic worship time. Cory and Nathalie had a spirit of prophecy on them. A catchy chorus that the whole congregation loves came out during that time that goes like this: "I wanna be your friend, faithful to the end; I wanna be the one, who weeps in the garden." I've been singing it since then:) So good.

On Saturday the team split up. Nathalie and I went to Imani Radio Station, and the rest of the team went to a youth conference. I'll share about what happened at the Imani since I wasn't there at the youth conference. Basically we were interviewed on a popular Saturday morning program that targets young people specifically; this program is where they mostly play the cool, contemporary Christian music as opposed to the boring, old people stuff:) hahaha. Anyhow, we were asked some questions, in front of an audience of 1.5 - 2 million listeners, about who we are and why we are doing what we're doing in Kenya. Nathalie and I both felt the anointing of the Holy Spirit on our words; we spoke with clarity and boldness about the worth of Christ, and the necessary convergence of prayer, worship, and missions. Our radio hosts were obviously taken aback by the content of our words, and the confidence with which we spoke. One of the questions went something like this, "Wow, that's deep. You mentioned three things: prayer, missions, and worship. How do these things go together?" This was the most beautiful question that he could of asked! I responded to his questions with three verses: Mt. 9:36-38, Mt. 28:19, Rev. 7:9-10. In summary, I said that we are praying for the harvest, for the purpose of missions, unto eternal, international worship. It was awesome. Nathalie and I were feeling the presence of the Lord as we were talking to maybe a couple million young people. We were also able to share some of what we think is the prophetic destiny of Kenya - that Kenya would be a light that penetrates the unevangelized darkness of North Africa with the Gospel. It was such an awesome opportunity.

At Church yesterday morning, the radio host came up to me and said that since we shared, people have been sending in text messages and phone calls talking about "Nathalie and Mike" (everybody in Kenya calls me Mike, even though I introduce myself as Michael) and how much they loved it when we shared. So in a couple of weeks when we get to share on Imani Radio again, hopefully we'll read text messages saying, "God is calling me to the 10/40 window to preach the Gospel." Amen!

Thank you for all of your prayers and support. Be praying for us this week. As I mentioned earlier, we'll be in Turkana for one week, and we want God to overcome these people with the power of His Holy Spirit, and leave a lasting impact. We want to see them awakened in radical devotion to Christ.

Base Com Established

Today Team Kenya arrived to K after a 7-hours today. We where able to check out the grounds and meet the wonderful staff that is working here. The prayer Room is legit and we are supper excited to be meeting with local pastors and intercessors over the next couple of days. We will be discussing vision and practical of the prayer room and what it will look like for the house of prayer here in Kenya. The team here is phenomenal. Even after dinner tonight we are bonding so well. There is so much life and joy here amongst the people. The Lord has been so faithful to us as we where able purchase some instruments for the team here. We plane to work with and train at least 3 full time musicians for the house of prayer in the time that we have here. Thank you Jesus for such an opportunity to bless and be apart  of the body of christ in Kenya.

Ps 32. Dwell in the land do what is good and feast upon his faithfulness.

Arrival in Nairobi

I have arrived in Kenya! I landed in Nairobi (the nation’s capitol) with my ACTS team at 1:00am on Tuesday the 4^th (5pm on Monday 3^rd, U.S. Central Time I believe), and at approximately 3am our team lodged in a Pentecostal Christian guest house.

I woke up on my own accord at 6:15am, but forced myself to lie in bed until 7am. I ate a normal American breakfast (bummer), and spent about an hour and a half on the balcony reading my Bible, praying, and journaling. Afterward, our team gathered together for a little worship and prayer together before we departed ways for the day to run some errands.

One of those errands was to buy three acoustic guitars to bring to the house of prayer in Kitale. Having grown up in a guitar-saturated community, I was shocked at how difficult it was to find any selection of acoustic guitars in the emerging city of Nairobi. We walked around with our taxi-driver/tour guide for a few hours before we accidentally stumbled upon a music shop that sold some decent guitars for a cheap price.

I am thrilled about bringing these guitars to Kitale, because one of our team’s strategies in accomplishing the objective of establishing a culture of worship-based prayer in the local Church is to have every one of our team members personally disciple a native Kenyan in prayer. We are each going to make a friend, and bring them into everything that we do in the prayer room. So, the three guitar players on our team are going to teach guitar lessons and give a guitar to three young men or women who are committed to be pillars of intercession in the house of prayer in Kitale for an extended period of time. This is such a cool idea! Hook a young adult with the worthiness of Jesus, give them the vision of leading worship and prayer in their city to welcome Him back, teach them the lifestyle, tools and instrument necessary to do it, and then get out of the way! I believe that by the grace of the Spirit this is possible. Pray that God would give us three passionate worship leaders to carry the censer of intercession in Kitale.

Anyhow, I could continue on with my observations of the culture, feel, architecture and people of Nairobi, but I am already running the risk of writing too much! I promise my updates won’t always be this long.

I’ll end with this:

- I sense the Spirit challenging me to be radical and risky.

- God is going to do something magnificent while we're here.

- I think the food thus far has been pretty good.

- I embark upon a 7-hour drive to Kitale tomorrow morning.

Love,

Michael

Here we go!!

Here we Go! The greatest journey our hearts have ever known in less then 3 days and counting...

4 more Days!

Hey everyone!

So in just 4 days, we'll be on our way to Kenya, Uganda & Thailand!!