Day 3 – AN INCREDIBLE DAY
Our poor team was operating on very few hours of sleep. We arrived at the Nairobi airport at 8pm sharp, but didn’t manage to get through customs until 10:30pm. The problem was the customs agents spotted all of our humungus bags, 29 in total, and flagged us into the customs area. The head man called me in and wanted answers. “I noticed all your bags”, he said! “What are you bringing into the country?” While I explained to him that we have recently opened a children’s home in Kakamega and our kids have a lot of needs, the rest of the team was getting their pictures taken just outside the door with the rest of the customs agents. When they found out that it was Paul Tomlinson’s 79th birthday everyone burst into a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”.
Suddenly the mood of the head customs guy changed. He looked at me a smiled and said, very nicely I might add, “When a party brings this much stuff into a country is usually appropriate to pay a customs charge”. “How much”, I said and he said “How about $200. I can’t tell you how happy I was about that, because if they had looked inside our suitcases, I sure it would have been an enormous fee. Unbeknownst to us our friends at the Mwiki Deliverance church were praying that we would pass through customs without an inspection.
We finally got to our hotel room around 1pm, but we had to get up at 6am for church.
Now church was something else. Visiting the Mwiki Deliverance church is always a great experience, but this morning is was beyond belief. When we sat down, I look to my right and saw a Kenyan man who looked vaguely familiar. His name was Dr. Patrick Opiyo! He was looking at the program and looking back at me and then back to the program. When Pastor Peter Wawere invited him up to greet the church he said; “In 1980 I was a young electrician working in the city of Kisumu. I wandered into a church meeting at the Kisumu Social Center. A man was preaching a powerful message and I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. The man’s name was Richard Vicknair. When I saw his name on the program I was blown away because he was today’s speaker.” He told how 4 years after he accepted Christ he left his job as an electrician and moved into full time ministry and at the present time he was on a mission to visit 100 churches to invite pastors to come together in prayer. What a blessing to see long lasting fruit.
All of us were greatly blessed by our fellowship with this wonderful church. I have visited many churches in Kenya over the years, but this church is truly a special place with a special pastor and kindred spirit.
Tomorrow we will be up at 5am to catch the 7am flight to Kisumu. Then it’s on to Kakamega for a weeks of ministry.
