A Life in Mission

“I can’t believe i’m still here! This is not what I was planning on” I think as I sit in a car in downtown Nairobi. The driver begins driving to pick up the Elder… I think back to when I first arrived in Kenya. I met Gary and we laid groundwork for the new TV channel here. I had counted on there being someone to manage the station. What a wrong assumption that had turned out to be! The vacuum created by the lack of such a person sucked me into it’s place nearly 5 months ago. For 5 months I work to advance 2CBN and to do production of the local content that we need. I heard there was someone coming to take my place, but then it got postponed. “If only he could come now…”

We arrive at the Elder’s office but we don’t see him. After going around the block we see him coming. He gets into the front seat and we go on our way to look at a piece of land we are considering for a studio. So much has been happening here. I’m overloaded in work since I first started. I’m in a position I have no experience with or training in. I have more to do than I’ve ever had to do before. When people are interested in coming to work with us, they come to me. If people want to record something, they come to ask me. And as if that weren’t enough, the on the ground management of 2CBN rests on my shoulders. Of course I have people to consult when things come up, but when it comes to actually dealing with them there is no one else to handle the matters on the ground level. I’ve been so busy with everything that I’ve not updated my website for I think 4 months or more. All those poor people out there that check my site for news, and find old news instead!

We stop and Elder gets out to take care of something. Ahhh… I can type again! The bumps on the roads make it hard to type sometimes. I think of the way God is opening doors for 2CBN. Things are beginning to happen! It’s so exciting to see that I wish I could share it openly. But the time will come when I can share God’s workings with the world. He’s not just working here, but other places around the world as well. If only I could go and do what I really came to Africa for! Before I left to come I got a camera along with a little other equipment to use for making videos of our projects in West Africa and of the need of laborers in this continent… But there’s been hardly any time to use it! “If only I could just do documentary work like I had planned when I came! I felt like I really had been getting a creative eye in video and design when I first came to Kenya. But since I haven’t been using it much I feel like I’m losing it. I hope I can regain it when I have a chance to do more video work with my camera.”

I look out the window as an ambulance drives by. I doubt that he has anyone as he’s not in a hurry. But then no one here in Kenya ever seems to be in a hurry! At least not the way that we are in the West. In some ways I realize that’s good, as it seems that Kenyans don’t get stressed about things as easily. But then too, sometimes it gets hard to get things done. I think of my situation and I think… “God doesn’t seem to be helping me leave here. If only He would hurry up!” But at the same time I ealize that God is in control and He doesn’t hurry because He’s always planning ahead. I hope that His plans will send me to do the video work that He gave me a burden for… And in the meantime that He will give me strength in the enormous work that He’s laid on me for now. “Lord, please send more laborers into the field… You know the need there is in these foreign fields. There is so much work for the workers that are working.”

“I think when I get to Cameroon I’m might get sick because all the stress will be gone!” I had said earlier in the day. Now I wondered how accurate that would turn out to be…

The morning had gone smoothly. It was a first time for me to travel by matatu alone. The night before Gary had called me to see if I could come to town for the meeting planned with Pan Africa Network. It was a new TV network that the government licensing organization had referred us to. It was one of two broadcasting companies in the country available to broadcast the new digital TV signal. It was a company based in China with outlets and broadcasting in Asia, Africa, and developing in Europe. They offered a new type of delivery to not only the standard tv sets, but also customized delivery to mobile phones and TVs in buses as well. The system had worked well in other countries and was already in process of development in Kenya.

I had agreed to come to the meeting, as he was planning to leave the next day and it would give me more time to discuss things with him. He said to just meet him at 9am at the Shell station outside the Wilson airport. We met up with another board member of 2CBN, then went into the airport premises so Gary could take care of something with the plane. Then we were off to the meeting at Upper Hill. The meeting went well, and we left thinking more about the possibility of going on satellite and covering all of Africa. We started laying plans and discussing what would need to happen so we could go on satellite at a moments notice. The previous week we had streamed the morning and evening meetings of the Week of Prayer with Kepha Matena online so the whole would could watch. This had made quite an impression at the Division, even the President had introduced 2CBN on Sabbath morning and talked some about what we were doing. I knew that God was preparing 2CBN for something big. But there was one thing…

We had a couple of people that had come and were volunteering with us. True, there had been other people interested in working with us, but for various reasons they weren’t on board with us. We needed more people… people willing to work as volunteers, people with a real vision for fulfilling the Gospel Commission, people with an eye single for the glory of God. But most of all we needed a programming director, someone with the vision who could take the lead, and keep the project growing and on course.

“I wish there was someone that could come that is more qualified than me.” We were eating lunch at the place where Gary was staying. I knew there were many people who were more qualified than me… “This is the way it works in most of our projects…” Gary began. “There are people more qualified than me at getting TV licenses, they know the prices, and how all the stuff works, but they weren’t here, and I was the only one here to do it. There are people more qualified than you for training and managing production here, but you’re the only one here.” Even if I was only here for 2 months, I still felt like the task was too big. Why couldn’t someone else come? Someone who had experience in leading? Someone who had the talents in all the fields that we needed? It seemed that no one wanted to come to Africa… Why? Lots of people would go for some time to South America, even other places, but it seemed that only a few would come to Africa. And only a small fraction of those few had anything to do with media. Gary answered my question: “I think it’s partly because South America is close to North America. They speak Spanish which is already familiar to many people in the US. But Africa is so far away, and people in the West generally don’t know much about it… A lot of people think of the people in the bush wearing almost nothing when they think of people in Africa. I think it’s fear of the unknown that keeps more people from coming to Africa.” Fear is a powerful thing… But what if God called you to a place that you were afraid of?

“What denomination are you from?” The matatu driver was looking at the piece of glow I handed him about prophecy. The radio was playing a local radio station with a heavy rhythm which earlier had had quite blatant words about immorality. Every so often the bus stopped to let out passengers and for more passengers to board. I realized that God had put me in the front seat right next to the driver for a reason. When he told me that he was Adventist also, I was a little surprised… Then I got to thinking, what if there was a radio station in Nairobi that played sacred celestial music? Then it would be something that the bus drivers could choose to play if they chose, and it would bring peace into people’s lives whether they listened to it when they were at home or in the matatu, or even at work, it could be a little breath of fresh air in the midst of the Nairobi busyness.

I was on my way out to the Division with a co worker. We were getting busy with things regarding launching 2CBN. God had started to open doors, and we were moving ahead. He had given us the opportunity to assist the Division by streaming the upcoming week of prayer live on the internet. It would be in english, although with an African accent! We had scrambled the night before getting a website ready and to get things in place to stream around the world. Now I was going to the Division office to work with the media director there and help getting things ready for the event. I needed to test the streams and make sure we had enough bandwidth through the internet to reliably support an internet stream. After testing it, it all seemed to work properly. However I knew that the devil was going to try to do something to mess things up. I had learned that this is just to be expected when working for God. I prayed that God would keep everything working and rebuke the devil, and also that if there was problems that we could fix them without too much issue or delay.