During the daily debriefs at the Children’s outreach in Mt. Elgon, one man stood out. He gave the reports of his class in unadulterated Swahili, much to the amazement of the group. He used some words like, ‘mshike mshike, mawaa, bugtha’ and many more that some of us had not heard in a while and only thought they belonged in inshas. But they were not just words thrown in sentences to sound good, there was flow and cadence and order in his speech that was immaculate.
It’s not like when someone brought up in some upcountry village trying to speak Swahili with the coastal accent and you just want to close your ears. No, this guy had it. Did you know that Continue reading The Broken Vessel→
About mid 2017 I was called by a family member who asked me to look into a certain preacher on TV. He wanted me to investigate the preacher and recommend whether he should take a close relative for healing prayers to the preacher’s church. The vibrant preacher is based in Nairobi and runs a 24/7 TV station with dramatic church services that would put most Naija movies to shame. Continue reading How to recognise false preachers→
The faith one holds should be able to answer the bigger questions of life in order for it to be authentic and true. It concerns me when Christians and church leaders present a watered down gospel that only appeals to the physical and emotional psyche of the followers; a gospel that does not answer life’s most important questions and cannot be relied on when people face the true tests of life.
When we go for evangelism and we present a gospel that promises good life according to our understanding, then we misrepresent Christ and set up people for disappointment. Salvation is the most important thing that can happen to the life of an individual, it is the event that ushers them from darkness to the kingdom of light. The miracle of being raised from the dead is lesser in Continue reading What questions does your faith answer?→
Non-Christians in Australia behave better than Christians in Kenya. Those are not my words but the observation of an elderly Australian man I met recently who has lived in Kenya for the past 8 years. He has been frustrated by county and government officials and so far he has not been able to do what he came here to do. It was a coincidental meeting at a seminar in Nairobi. I sat next to him and as we talked during the break he mentioned that he lives in Kitale which is my hometown. My curiosity was aroused and I wanted to know more about him and what he does in Kitale.
So, this guy came to Kenya in 2008 with a friend who was doing some projects at Moi’s Bridge, Trans Nzoia County. He enjoyed his visit and decided he wanted to settle in Kenya. He went back home, packed his bags and a few months later he was in Kitale.
In one form or another most of us have encountered this question; that Christianity is not an African religion, that we Africans abandoned our gods in favour of the white man’s religion, that our traditional religious practices were good enough but then we embraced Christianity because of the goodies it came with.
My real encounter with this question came when I was a 1st year student in Russia. The few Russian friends I had made kept inquiring about my religion and when I mentioned that it was Christianity they would feel like the answer was not complete. They would comment that Christianity was the religion brought by the white man and so I should tell them my ‘African religion.’ I could not, Christianity is what I knew and still know to be my faith. From their comments I could tell that they could not reconcile the fact that I was a Christian, and I later realized that ‘being a Christian’ meant different things to us.
