Imagine carrying with you two weeks worth of clothes, traveling non-stop more than 24 hours – 18 of which are on a plane – to Nairobi, Kenya, then spending the better part of the next two weeks with 13 people packed in a dilapidated overland truck that rattles like an off-level washing machine; and camping in remote regions with only four strands of thin wire separating you from wild animals that hunt at night while you toss and turn on hardened sand strewn with sharp burrs that make you wince when they stick you. Add to that a plethora of heady and hideous odors at every roadside stop to relieve yourself: a combination of stale urine and rotting feces that makes you want to gag. And if you really want to throw yourself into the action, visualize half the crew getting sick, including yourself, with the nearest hint of legitimate medical care nearly eight hours away over pothole-riddled roads past frequent checkpoints manned by armed soldiers. Once you have that image alive in your mind, then you might have an inkling of what John Beville and his mission teams from Living Hope Baptist Church, in Bowling Green, Ky., endure while they’re in Africa. In July, 2006, they provided worship music and childcare for a group of African missionaries who gathered for their annual Annual Missionary Training Meeting at http://www.lonrhohotels.com/aberdares/introduction.html“>Kenya’s Aberdare Country Club, which sits on the slope of Kamatongu Hill and overlooks the Laikipia Plateau that extends to the horizon directly in front of it, capped off with a breathtaking view of Mt. Kenya to the East and the walls of the Rift Valley to the west. So the rewards were equally remarkable.

John has been leading similar teams to Africa for the last two years, but he is not a professional musician, childcare worker or minister. He’s a pharmacist at the Medicine Shoppe in Glasgow, Ky. He did play trombone in the Bowling Green High School band and bass guitar for the First Baptist Church choir while he was attending Western Kentucky University, but since then he hadn’t had any contact with music until he started taking teams to Africa. “I lost my chops years ago and never got them back,” he said. Prior to his first mission trip, he also lost his Bowling Green business, The Health and Healing Pharmacy; an act of fate he now attributes to God.

“I lost the store in February 2003 and went to Africa for the first time in January 2004,” he said. “If that hadn’t happened, there’s a good possibility that I’d be dead now. My health was going downhill significantly but I was just too busy to pay any attention to it. I felt bad, but I couldn’t afford to take a day off to go to the doctor. When I finally had a check up, my blood pressure and blood sugar were out of control and I was well on my way to becoming one of my patients. It was a wakeup call. So I don’t regret losing the store, or for the reason that the opportunity came about for me to go to Africa. Had I stayed at the store; I never would’ve considered it. It just wasn’t an option. I might’ve sent somebody, but I never would’ve gone myself.”

John first went to Africa with Jeff Carlisle, Living Hope’s Missions Pastor, to help build a church in Francistown, Botswana. It was not intended to be a music ministry, but after their work was done, Jeff preached a commissioning service and Mark Phillips and Kent Bucy, two of Living Hope’s praise and worship musicians, played guitar and drums. Afterwards, a group of Southern Baptist missionaries invited Living Hope to return in 2005 to lead their worship music and provide childcare during their annual meeting at Tshipise, South Africa. John led that team and was asked to bring another to Kenya in July, 2006, and again to next year’s meeting in Malawi, Africa in 2007.

“It’s an opportunity because here you have a group of people that have given their lives on the field to learn other people’s languages,” John said. “Their annual meeting is the only time of the year that some of them are around other English speakers. For them to be able to sing and worship in their own language is a big deal. It allows them to worship God without having to think about the words and translate them. It’s kind of flowing the other way from what they do. The appreciation they have for other people coming and leading them in that is extraordinary. Music has been a way for us to make a lot of friends … all around the world.”

But if these excursions sound like a carefree vacation to an exotic location, think again. The two-week mission trips require months of preparation. From January to July of 2006, John met weekly with the other 13 members of the Kenya team, teaching them workbooks such as “Before you Pack Your Bag, Prepare Your Heart n Short Term Mission Preparation Guide,” and “Share Jesus Without Fear.” Jan Wilson, a former missionary to Kenya and a member of Living Hope, taught Swahili lessons. Each member was instructed to memorize a simple gospel telling story in case an opportunity arose to share their faith with someone who had never heard of Jesus. John divided the team into two groups: the music team and the children’s team. Both rehearsed their routines separately from the weekly training sessions, where John repeatedly warned everyone to expect the unexpected. “You’ve got to be flexible,” he stressed. “When you’re in Africa, you’re on African time. They don’t do things like Americans. If they say a meeting starts at 6 p.m., that often means they won’t leave their homes till six or later. You need to brace yourself for culture shock.”

Surely John’s advice didn’t apply to me, I thought. After all, I’ve traveled to several third-world countries, i.e., Jamaica, Mexico, Egypt, and I must admit, I thought I’d seen it all. But as the Boeing 777 descended from 30,000 feet to the Nairobi Airport, I looked out of the window and realized John’s warnings were not without merit. Even from 1,000 feet above ground, there were no lights visible other than the runway’s. Nairobi’s in the news all the time; I expected an endless stream of headlights whizzing by below on a crisscross of infrastructure, but all I saw was a vast sea of blackness, dotted occasionally with a faint light, no brighter than a torch. The old phrase “Dark Continent” didn’t seem so old anymore. Montego Bay, Mexico City and Cairo are more brightly lit at 4 a.m., let alone 7:30 at night. It was a curious sort of culture shock. My perception had been skewed by media clips of politicians on the steps of embassy buildings in Nairobi. They don’t show the endless expanse of squatters villages we would later see that run for miles and miles with no electricity or water.

The airport staff obviously operated on “African time.” We wandered through the corridor in confusion before John finally found someone who could tell us where to clear customs. Our travel guide with African Christian Tours & Safaris, Sean Anderson, a sandy-haired Zimbabwean, came to our aid and directed us to his truck outside. Then porters came from nowhere, grabbing our bags, acting as if they worked for Sean. They moved fast with few words other than, “Your bags,” as they whisked them from people’s hands and threw them into the lower compartments of a 1984 Mercedes Benz ex-German military vehicle that bore an eerie resemblance to the giant sandcrawler the Jawa’s used to pick up C3PO and R2D2 in Star Wars. Sean was rearranging supplies in the passenger’s compartment, located on the top half of the customized blue overland safari truck, fitly christened the “Cocky Robin,” when he glanced irritably down at the porters vying for tips and grew tired of their con. “Sasa hivi, kwenda (go away, now!),” he shouted in Swahili, then added in English, “That’s enough, go on!” They disappeared as quickly as they had come and we had our first baptism into this strange society that sanctions hustling as long as it doesn’t go too far. Another culture shock. I would’ve expected that in Jamaica, but not Kenya. Hemingway’s hunting tales and Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa painted a picture of dutiful concierges patiently waiting their orders. But as the author Paul Theroux observes in Dark Star Safari “What all such books about Kenya have in common is an obsession with animals and a lazy sentimentality about servants and gun bearers. No crime, no politics…Hemingway’s Kenya might never have existed.”

“I need everyone to get inside the truck as quickly as possible,” Sean said, with a light-hearted smile. We skittered up the Cocky Robin’s steps into the passenger compartment. He locked the door and pointed out a button that rings into the truck’s cab, which can’t be reached from the upper chamber of the truck, then introduced us to his assistant, a blonde South African German girl who goes by the nickname Tez. Sean and John conversed. Then John asked for everyone to listen up.

“We’re going to have to be very careful,” Sean said. He then outlined the procedure for safeguarding valuables and passports. “We’ll all be perfectly safe in Kenya, but we can’t take any chances.” A reminder of Theroux’s criticism that Hemingway and Dinesen neglected to mention crime. If their Kenya ever existed, it disappeared long ago.

Sean also explained that he was carefully feeling out the Cocky Robin’s brakes, assuring us the truck had been fully inspected the previous week and all was fine. “I’m afraid we’re going to be moving a bit slow, but we’d rather be safe.” Apparently the Cocky Robin was on African time, too. After informing us that food was in the cooler, Sean gave a cheerful goodbye, “Are we all ready then? Good. I’ll join Tez in the cab and we’ll be on our way.” As he exited, he strictly charged John to lock the door. We dined on our first taste of African cuisine: the meat pie, sort of a Hot Pocket filled with bland meat, the closest thing Kenya has to a hamburger. The 20 miles to our first night’s lodging, Brackenhurst Baptist International Conference Center, was a surreal scene of tin-roofed shacks built from pieced-together planks. Light bulbs dangling from single strands of electric wire illuminated a smorgasbord of fading Tusker Beer and Coca-Cola logos painted on the slab-board sides of a phalanx of commerce separating the road from the squatter towns behind it. It was late. Stragglers milled about between the stalls, sparsely stocked with used clothes, toiletries and beer. It seemed all eyes turned to see the busload of foreigners passing through the night. Even in the dark, the Cocky Robin did not go unnoticed as it clattered and clanged along roads that could make moon craters look smooth by comparison. Most Kenyans rarely see an average American or European. The elite that vacation there are whisked from the airport to their hotel rooms, bypassing the urban blight, or they hop a turboprop jet to one of the national parks, where they drive Land Rovers kitted out in safari garb, neatly pressed khakis with a multitude of creased pockets designed to hold countless rounds of ammunition n despite the fact that big game hunting is illegal in Kenya. So the stragglers strolling along Nairobi’s littered streets seemed cautiously suspicious of the Cocky Robin’s zealous passengers who eagerly waved and shouted hello in an effort to share Christ’s love. The curious onlookers waved back, many extending their arms upward, probably hoping we’d come to share substance along with spirituality.

We arrived at Brackenhurst just after 10:30 p.m. It wasn’t chilly. It was downright cold. Brackenhurst’s elevation is 7,400 feet. We’d been traveling since 6 a.m. the day before. Every muscle I had ached and I couldn’t wait to get into a warm bed. It was not to be found. The rooms had no heat.

The trip’s main objective was to minister to the missionaries at the Aberdare Country Club. But that was two days away. So John had scheduled some ministry oriented stops enroute. We traveled through the Great Rift Valley, a series of fault lines from the Dead Sea to Mozambique that divide Africa into the forest land to the west and the savanna to the east. The tentative plan was to spend the first day in Naivasha with a retired Southern Baptist missionary couple, Vance and Cherry Kirkpatrick, and the second day in Gilgil with a group of pastors. The itinerary had still not been finalized when we left the states. Not to worry, John said. “We’re on African time.”

And even though the Cocky Robin was a retired German transport, it apparently had fully adapted to its new country. It too operated on African time. We were several hours late leaving Brackenhurst the first morning. The truck was temporarily replaced with rental vans so the brakes could be inspected; pretty much setting the tone for the trip.

We were hours late getting to the Kirkpatricks’, who it turns out are only retired on paper. Their retirement home, located in an animal reserve – complete with ditches dug around it to prevent the hippos from wandering through their yard – is surrounded by land that once belonged to Lord Thomas Delamere, mentioned in Out of Africa, and Gilbert Colville, two Englishmen infamous for the wild parties they threw for the privileged, often requiring wives and husbands to trade partners when they showed up for a week of partying. “We still battle their legacy,” Cherry Kirkpatrick said. “Most Africans with any association with the rich Europeans who once ruled this land do not view white people as Christians. They were so wild that a saying was coined in the early 1900s, ‘Are you married or are you from Kenya?’” The Kenyan government recently purchased the lands that once belonged to these men and decreed the descendants of those who had worked the farms could claim three to four acres of free land. Our visit turned into a fact-finding mission when John found out the Kirkpatricks plan on ministering to the 100,000 people that are expected to move there in the next three years. “What can Living Hope do to help?” John asked.

“We’ll know better how to answer that once more start showing up,” Vance replied, adding that he already knew of a teacher’s income at a local orphanage that could be subsidized. “But one thing’s for sure, they’re coming.”

The Cocky Robin arrived with working brakes and carried us to our campsite, a beautiful shaded area on Lake Naivasha, with showers that trickled cold water and toilets with partial doors in the stalls beside them. We quickly learned our Western idea of privacy was going to need readjusting. The Cocky Robin served as the chuck wagon with a fold down countertop in the rear. John’s style of leadership is that of a silent role model: first to start unpacking the camping gear; setting up tents; helping prepare dinner; and the last to eat. Due to food and waterborne diseases in Africa, sanitation is of supreme importance. All the plates and pans had to be sanitized and air-dried by swinging them back and forth with our hands. The team’s water came from steel storage tanks located on the Cocky Robin’s underbelly. Its bitter taste was a far cry from Perrier, but Sean assured us it was both boiled and chemically treated. John’s mission trips are not for quick-fix Americans, addicted to a lifestyle of convenience, fast food and good tap water; setting up camp started long before sunset and it was 10:30 p.m. before John air-dried the last plate. And the stereophonic sounds of monkeys fighting and animals hunting just beyond a rickety fence did not serve well as meditation music.

The Cocky Robin was back on African time as we traveled to Gilgil the next day. Sean gradually drove slower and slower on the hilly terrain as the brakes became weaker. John kept a steady composure during all this. “No matter how late we are, we’ve all got to keep one thing in mind; God is the one who is ultimately in control.”

When we reached our campsite, next to the Lake Elementaita Lodge, we met eight Baptist pastors who’d waited for us all day. They originally planned for the team to do a door-to-door survey of the people considered to be “unreached” with the gospel in the Gilgil area. It was mid-afternoon, but they didn’t seem disappointed that their plan had to be scrapped because we had to set up camp. Instead they were gracious and thanked us for coming. They were Kikuyu, the same tribe that had once lived on Isak Dinesen’s land and true to her description of them in Out of Africa, “The Kikuyu are adjusted for the unforeseen and accustomed to the unexpected.”

Half the team stayed to set up camp while Christopher Muturi Kihara, a lean man with intense eyes, took the other half of the team to Kariandusi Baptist Church and Muguga Baptist Church, both small stucco buildings with dirt floors. This too turned into a fact-finding mission when John questioned how a two-week mission team from Living Hope might help later on.

“We’d like to have door to door evangelism teams,” Christopher said. “And someone to teach the basics of the faith … And then we’d like to have a crusade. Many people here like crusades. This will reach people who you could not reach door to door.” Christopher also explained that he lives 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Gilgil with only a bicycle for transportation. He’s a clinical counselor at a hospital and a full-time pastor with little time left to educate the lay-pastors in his area. “It would greatly help if someone could come and stay for a month to teach our part-time pastors theology.”

Three team members, Beth James, Robbie Wagner and Peggy Duncan, couldn’t sleep that night – and went inside the adjoining lodge to play cards. Kevin, a Maasai herdsmen dressed in the tribe’s traditional red robe, also came in to rest while his cattle slept and the women taught him how to play gin rummy. “I asked him if he believed in Jesus, and he said, ‘Yes,’” Robbie said. “Who ever imagined we would be sitting in a lodge in the middle of night talking to a Maasai about Jesus? It was the one of the greatest things that’s ever happened to me.”

The next morning, we started for Aberdare to minister to the African missionaries who were in Kenya for their training session. Gilgil is a sprawling community. By the time we reached the city central, the Cocky Robin kicked into African time and we were stranded with no brakes. After walking with Tez through the densely populated downtown and receiving numerous inquiries, a hotel manager who we had not talked to n the buzz about the stranded foreigners had hit the streets n approached us with welcome news. “I’ve found you a mechanic.” The Cocky Robin crept at five mph through a marketplace of mayhem to the mechanic’s makeshift open-air shop, located off the main drag. Worried for the team’s safety, Sean had everyone stay on board while some twenty people gathered and examined the truck and its travelers.

Two and a half hours later, we were rolling again at top speeds approaching 30 mph with everyone holding their breath on downhill slopes, which were plentiful. John was silent, in prayer I suspect. The thing that separates Kenya from other third world countries like Mexico and Jamaica is you can drive all day long and never see a house as sturdy as a storage shed sold at Wal-Mart. Sometime after 4 p.m., we entered the guarded gates of the Aberdare Country Club, once the private residence of a wealthy English family now converted to a hotel suitable for conventions complete with warthogs, baboons, impalas, eland, peacocks and giraffes freely roaming the grounds. People quickly grew accustomed to the baboons lounging outside the rooms and the warthogs sniffing around the restaurant’s patio. Even though there were signs posted on the premises warning wild animals could be dangerous, they seemed docile and smart enough to figure out free food could be obtained from humans without a fight, so I wasn’t worried. But walking from my room to the lodge late that night, I caught a glance of a black-cloaked figure firmly holding a bamboo shaft, just in front of me. I jerked back. It was a man armed with a bamboo bow and arrow. “What’s that for?” I asked. “The animals,” he assured me, with a smile.

After breakfast at 7 a.m. for the next four days, John rotated tirelessly between both teams, making sure everything ran smoothly. The childcare team was made up of Amanda Chandler, Hsiu-Ching (MoMo) Chen, Emily Gilliland, Beth James, Robbie Wagner, Jennifer Jones and John’s daughter, Chelsea Beville. They often worked as late as 10:30 p.m. while the missionaries held special meetings. The music team had Jacob Stevens, Kathy and Dave Benz and Leslie Plumlee on vocals, Peggy Duncan on piano/vocals and myself on percussion. The original plan was for John to play bass and me to play drums, but no one in could find a place in Kenya to rent a drumset and after John spent weeks exploring various shipping options, it became obvious it wasn’t economically feasible to ship drums, nor was there much likelihood of obtaining a bass guitar and amp. As John advised from the beginning, flexibility was the key: the plan evolved into me playing tambourine, wood block and when necessary, a makeshift cardboard box substituted for a bass drum. Good thing too. John’s job as the coordinator, overseeing the needs of his teams and the missionaries kept him running nonstop.

While the 18 missionaries worked through the study book, “Learn to Lead Like Jesus,” Beth supervised the team that provided activities and Vacation Bible School for 11 of their children, ages 1 to 13. The music team led the missionaries in praise and worship before and after their morning study sessions and afternoon meetings.

To go all the way around the world to provide childcare and music seems like a maximum amount of energy for a minimal task, but Tim Gillihan, the International Mission Board’s Strategy Associate for the Eastern Section of their Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa (CESA) missionary division, said it rejuvenates the missionaries. “A lot of these people live in isolated places. One of the biggest jumps, culturally and emotionally, people that are called to missions have to make is most of them come from strong churches with good worship, fellowship and support. They come out here and they don’t get that, especially in their heart language. Having John’s team here makes it possible for us to come together and focus on the Lord and to focus on one another. You don’t know how critical that is. We’ve done it in the past where we didn’t have teams come and everybody’s had to lead the worship and take care of the kids. They can do it, but it doesn’t get them focused. We only get to get together once or twice a year and it’s critical you have a good experience. To help facilitate that is invaluable. It really is.”

The missionaries came from all walks of life. Several of them serve in hostile, war-torn, areas and are classified “level three,” which means if their identity is exposed it could jeopardize their lives.

“We’ve been looking forward to this for four months,” said a Southern Baptist research analyst who asked to remain anonymous. His youthful hairstyle, goatee and hip clothing gave no hint of clergy. “You’ve got to understand, where we live there’s extreme poverty; every time we walk out the door people are begging us for money and food. It’s very draining, so this is like a breath of fresh air to be around regular people again and have you guys taking care of us.”

Jon Sapp, Regional Director of CESA, said, “Our main purpose is to get the gospel into places where it’s never been and to plant churches. And we’re redefining what churches look like. We’re not talking golden little buildings like American churches. We’ve got churches meeting under trees, in homes or in quiet places. We’re all the time trying to find ways to get churches to fit nomadic peoples, let’s say, ‘how do you have church on the back of a camel?’”

During the conference at Aberdare, peace talks started between Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni and Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army who has been trying to overthrow Uganda. “I’ve seen the results of his work,” Sapp said, referring to Kony. “I’ve seen people who’ve had their arms chopped off or their faces cut; their lips and tongues gone. I’ve had people in there during the war, but they can’t live there… So I’ve been keeping a close watch on these peace talks. If peace comes, that’ll open up areas for us to get into, and we want to go there. Southern Baptists have taken nearly a million dollars worth of food and assistance to people that have been chopped up and persecuted during the war, and we’re talking 10 and 12 year old children. It’s sickening. Kony’s affected a whole generation. It’s like Rwanda, those children that lived during the genocide are now in their twenties. They’re not okay. They’ll never be okay. We have to find a way to minister to them. We deal with a lot of war here in Africa.”

Prior to the trip, Jeff Carlisle at Living Hope said, “Our teams that go to Africa are touching groups of missionaries that are touching thousands of people. We’re trying to recharge them through the Spirit so they can go out and impact that whole area for God.”

In June, 2006, two missionary children at the conference, Paul and Karrington Spann, both 13, went with a youth group to the eastern side of Madagascar to an area called Ambatomasina, which means ‘holy rock,’ and worked with the Mahafaly tribe who had never heard the gospel. “They had a big idol in the middle of the village,” Karrington said. “It was so cool to be the first people to talk to them about Jesus.” Paul helped chop down 30 trees to build a bridge over a stream and Karrington taught the Bible to the children. At night they ran a generator and showed “The Jesus Film.” When their provisions began to dwindle, their father, Matt Spann, loaded up a Toyota HiLux 4X4 truck and got stuck in the mud on the way there.

“We’re talking mud you could barely walk in,” he said. “It was so deep it came up to the bottom of the truck.” He walked two and a half hours and spent the night with some natives, then walked two and a half more hours the next morning to find his children, who fortunately, had a cell phone. Matt called Heli Missions, a Swiss helicopter mission team, and they picked him up, rescued the supplies and flew them back to Ambatomasina. It was exciting when the helicopter came, Karrington said. “When Daddy flew in with the helicopter, the whole village ran out there. They all kept saying, ‘the bird from the sky is coming.’”

After four days of work at Aberdare, we left for Nairobi. We’d been gone from Kentucky for nine days, working non-stop, and I was feeling the wear and tear. In less than 30 minutes, the Cocky Robin was also showing signs of fatigue. The going was slow and the road was bumpier than ever. The only shock absorbers I could feel on the truck were my own vertebrae. It’s normally a two-hour trip to Nairobi by this route, but we were on African time again and the clock was slowing down. On the first of several stops to work on the brakes that day, the Cocky Robin came to rest beside a common site in Kenya: African men standing on the roadside; a few of them whittling furniture, the rest congregating under a tree. There’s little else for them to do with an unemployment rate of 40 percent and a culture where most of the farmwork is done by women. On the other side of the road lay another nameless village of tin-roofed shacks thrown together in the same chaotic, ramshackle way as hundreds along Kenya’s roadsides. I leaned out the Cocky Robin’s window and asked Sean if it was okay for me to use the restroom. He glanced nervously at the men peering at us from under the tree then whispered to me, “It’d be better if you can hold it, it’s not safe here.” Another stark reminder of what Paul Theroux wrote in Dark Star Safari, “I knew I was…near an African town or city when the crime warnings became numerous and specific… The nearer I got to Nairobi, the worse the warnings. If you are involved in a carjacking, surrender your car…Hand over your wallet without hesitation: a man was slashed to death by muggers…literally disarmed, his limbs lopped off with pangas (machetes).” Sean’s eyes conveyed that same fear.

The next time we broke down it was for several hours. I thought we were going to get harassed when two police cars drove by slowly, checking us out. They set up a roadblock a few hundred feet away. They never approached us, but as the Cocky Robin was getting ready to leave, I saw them packing up: a likely sign their roadblock had been a way of protecting us unawares. Yes, there are angels!

The Cocky Robin ran out of African time and died on the outskirts of Nairobi. The brakes were shot and Sean used his cell phone to call two vans to pick us up. Half the group went on to Brackenhurst to take some of the luggage with them; the other half went to the trip’s planned visit to the Mogra Star Orphanage in the Nairobi slums. Living Hope contributed to the orphanage a few years back and the owner, Hannah Njoroge, wanted us to visit. Of course, by now we were several hours late.

John’s warnings of culture shock couldn’t have prepared anyone for the Nairobi slums, where children ran barefoot over fields of trash that served as makeshift playgrounds. They chased us as we drove by, their tattered clothes flapping like flags behind outstretched hands, shouting, begging, pleading for anything we could spare, even time. Hannah welcomed us to the orphanage and gave a guided tour. It was a shabby structure, five or six stories tall, sitting in the middle of several old tenement buildings. It reeked with the stench of soured sweat, and was filled with gaunt-faced children packed into dimly lit classrooms on each floor. Hopelessness creates a hole in the soul that could easily be seen in the hollows of their eyes; dark pupils opening to a void of emptiness. Their sleeping quarters were rickety bunk beds with barely enough room to squeeze between them and what few clothes they had hung from the ceiling. We left that facility and wound through a maze of dreary buildings with dingy facades, down narrow dirt streets running with sewage, rampant with hucksters, pickpockets, and merchants in tattered clothes who’d thrown wooden slats together and set up shop to sell buckets of coal, the only thing the destitute have for heat, and it’s the lucky ones that can afford that: a scene disturbingly reminiscent of Dicken’s London. We were rushed through back alleys n probably for our protection – into a classroom filled with young girls. Through a doorway to an adjacent room, Hannah pointed out two workers stirring the students’ supper in a huge cauldron: a white goop resembling the pitiful porridge that made Oliver ask for more. “Very nutritious,” Hannah said, taking a seat at the front of the room filled with more than 70 orphans. Three teenage girls led a lively service, thanking God and those who gave to support the orphanage. Tears streamed down the faces of many of the female staff, shouting out praises for what they had. From there, Hannah took us to the orphanage’s church, located near the garbage heap we’d driven by earlier. A tiny girl stood chewing on a garbage bag as I made my way inside. Hannah showed me all the things she had planned for the church building program, but I couldn’t concentrate, my mind was on the tiny girl outside, whose eyes also echoed despair. I should’ve heeded John’s warnings of culture shock.

It was dusk when we left. Our driver sped past the street urchins like they were contagious: nobody with a way of escape stays in Nairobi after sundown, especially the slums. The exodus to leave the city was on; four and five lanes of traffic frantically fighting to cut one another off: like a scene out of the fall of Saigon. Barely a word was spoken in the van. We were shell-shocked from the slums, thorazine numb. On the way to Brackenhurst, we stopped at Sean’s house, a gated middleclass residence on the outskirts of town, to grab more luggage off the Cocky Robin. A man armed with a bow and arrow opened the gate. After winding through dark weed-covered driveways, we found Sean’s house. A different man wearing a black-hooded jersey snuck up behind us with a bamboo bow and arrow. The taxi driver told him who we were. I examined the arrow’s three-inch, razor sharp tip. “Is that for the animals?” I asked, remembering what I’d been told at Aberdare. The taxi driver laughed at my naiveté. “Animals?” he asked. “It’s for your protection – thieves!”

The next morning, John asked for feedback from the team that had visited the orphanage to assess how Living Hope could be of assistance. Figuring out ways to help third world countries feed and clothe the poor and needy sound much easier on a 60-second commercial than in real life. Decisions like that don’t come quickly or easily. They take time, research, prayer and guidance. And it gnaws at you knowing lives might hang in the balance. I could see it weighing on John as we left Brackenhurst and over the next two days as we visited Amboseli National Park, where the soil itself was a constant reminder of what we’d seen. Its dust covered our clothing and lined the corners of our mouths. Sharp burrs lay just beneath the sand like landmines: one step without shoes could bring you to your knees. What was supposed to be a place to relax before we headed home became an object lesson of how most Africans live everyday. This is Maasai land. Their circular villages, comprised of mud and manure huts, are located on the outskirts of the animal reserve and surrounded by thorn bushes to keep the lions out. We camped on the edge of the park with only four strands of thin wire on scraggly fence posts separating us from the wild animals – elephants, waterbucks, wildebeests, zebras, lions, hippos and hyenas. You didn’t dare wander about at night. That’s when the animals do their hunting. You lay in your tent, trying to sleep, and listen to the shrieks of death cutting through the darkness as the food chain starts into action. It’s a different animal delivering death than thieves and cutthroats in Nairobi or the armies in Uganda and the Congo, but the fear’s the same. You wonder if a lion is going to tear through the tent and realize there are African children who live with that fear every night.

With 1.2 million of Kenya’s people being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 2003 and an average lifespan of only 48.9 years, her problems are many and not easily solved. Africa is a troubled country and few countries mend themselves without help. When we were in Naivasha with Vance Kirkpatrick, he’d remarked that, “Short term missions don’t have long term effects. You’ve got to come and live here among these people.”

And that’s what John and his wife, Laura, who went to Africa last year, plan to do. He enrolled this semester at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with plans to become a missionary. His daughter, Chelsea plans to follow that path as well. John’s interest in Africa was first kindled when he read a blurb Jeff Carlisle wrote in the Living Hope Baptist Church bulletin, stating six people in sub-Saharan Africa die of AIDS every minute, many of them without ever hearing the gospel.

“The generation that’s behind me, maybe they’ll consider giving a couple years of their lives to a cause to better mankind,” John said. “Southern Baptists are just one sending agency, but there are 1,600 sending agencies here in the United States that are Christian affiliated that put people in places all over the world doing all kinds of work. But the basic tenet behind all of it is to spread the gospel. There’s really no reason for people to think of it as not an option. It can be a fascinating, life changing experience. It’s kind of like joining the Peace Corp only it’s for the Prince of Peace.” §

Special thanks to God, John Beville, Living Hope Baptist Church, Brian Greninger, Richie Sears, Andrea Ford, Richard Oldham, Mike Breen, and my sister, Alicia Duncan; who made this story possible.

Living Hope Baptist Church plans to have an exhibit about the mission work they do around the world at the International Festival, located at Fountain Square Park, Bowling Green, Ky., September 30, 2006.

All photos by Mitchell Plumlee & Leslie Plumlee