First off, the travel was pretty hard on me. I love visiting new places, but I hate traveling. I especially hate traveling long distances. It was a 2 day travel from Washington DC to Shimba Hills in a plane and on a bus. I never rest while traveling, so I got to Shimba really tired.

The first night I prayed that I would rest well. I planned on starting to lie out the playground and get a general idea on the plan the next morning and afternoon. I woke up at about 3 am with a horrible stomachache. It was probably one of the worst I’ve had in a long time. So here I am, just finished 2 days of straight travel and trying to get some sleep for tomorrow and I’m really not feeling it. I get up and head to the squatty (yes, we had squatties) and about 10 minutes after that I walk myself outside and around the corner to get sick. So now here I am after 2 days travel, I’m sick and one of the other team members had sprained her ankle that night as well. So I get back in my bunk and I lay there asking God, “What is going on? If this is what You have for us this trip, I’m going to have to disagree with You.” I put on my headphones and start listening to music. Before I know it, I feel 5 fingertips on my head and I hear one word in my head. “Rest.” Now for a long time I questioned why I came. I knew that I had a few personal reasons why I wanted to go, and I wasn’t sure that God really wanted me to go or not. At that point, and from that point on, I knew God wanted me there. I rested well that night; I wasn’t surprised after God told me to rest.

The next morning I woke up (on time at that) and ate breakfast with the team. We were going to go ahead and do orientation that morning, but we had to wait because, hey its Africa. I say this because it’s a major part of something I learned. When we were there, I was really concerned about the amount of things we were doing. I coordinated the construction of the playground and did a lot of the work, but there was a lot of other things that I felt we could have done as well. I felt that because I was there to do things I should be constantly working, constantly doing. God turned that around as the days passed. He showed me, through basically being too tired to do anymore, that sometimes He has work for us and sometimes He has rest for us. He showed that to me very clearly over the course of several days.

It came time for the kid’s camp and it was my turn to do the teaching. Now, I haven’t done a lot of teaching and I have taught even less children. I expected to have a lot of kids under the age of 10 and I was right. So God really showed me a lot of things, especially how to speak into young kids lives. I found myself just hanging and being around really young kids almost all the time and trying me best to disciple them as best I could in 10 days. A few days later I also led a guys discussion on what it means to be a man of God. At the time I thought it didn’t go very well. The guys were kind of unresponsive and seemed like they didn’t really care. It was good for me because I really kind of processed some things that God had been speaking to me. But the next day I spoke with the other guy on our team. He told me he had had a discussion with the local missionary that was with us to translate for us. He told us that he had sort of dropped the ball when it came to really bringing the guys up in a Godly way. He hadn’t made any real attempts to try and show and teach them about what it means to be a man of God because of the culture. The men are detached from the kids for the most part so the boys never really learn from their fathers. This really affects them because being detached from their families is not what men of God do and since that is what they saw as boys; that is how they are as fathers. We discussed with him some ideas on talking with the boys and left him a copy of a book called The Father Heart of God.

The “main” project for me over those 10 days was the playground. It was the thing I worked the hardest on, and it was what I spent the most time on. As we worked people would come by and just watch us work. One time a bus stopped in the middle of the road and watched us for like 20 minutes. I knew that this was one of the only playgrounds in the area. What I didn’t know when I started was this was going to be the only playground that the majority of the people in the area had ever seen. We spoke to the staff at the base and at the local church and schools and none of them had ever seen a playground at a school before. Some had never seen a playground. As we continued to talk with them and the locals, we discovered that this wasn’t just going to be a place for kids to play and have fun at. This was a place that would quite literally be a place of community. We spoke with a man that said he was going to bring his daughter down to play when we were done and before we even left we had kids from the base already there. The staff and kids at the base now have a serious place to minister to the community. They now have a place to start conversations. I honestly see it as the place where change will begin to happen in the area. That it will be the center of renewal if you will. And here I was, thinking it was just going to be a blessing to the kids at the base and the preschool. God thinks so much bigger then we do.

One of the things that we really concentrated on understanding and realizing was that we weren’t bringing God to Kenya. We were coming to experience and to be a part of what God was already doing there. I think that is so important for everyone going into the missions’ field, whether you are going into an area that has never heard about Christ or not. If they have heard about God, then seeds are planted and you are watering, if you are going to a new place, God as already gone before you. When I went in 2004, I missed out on a lot of things because of some health issues, but this time I was completely involved in the events that were taking place. When you go into the field, not only does He work through you, but He works in you as well. Let me tell you, God met and worked in me powerfully in both trips. They were different meetings, but powerful nonetheless. These meetings sparked change that will be with me always. It made me ask questions that I may never have the answers to.

Lastly I want to talk about provision. My trip to Kenya is a testimony of His provision. I got the money for my plane ticket in the most unlikely of places and only 2 days before I needed it. After the plane ticket I received support from people that I had not been in contact with in a long time. I was invited to a Super Bowl party and revived relationships with several people that supported me. I also received support from people who are a part of TF.com that I have never met in person. God provided everything I needed as far as money and strength. The work I did at that preschool was the hardest work. As I look back on the time we actually spent working, the conditions and the work we accomplished I am absolutely amazed. In my opinion, there is no earthly way we could have finished that amount of work in that amount of time with the heat and humidity we faced. I firmly believe that God not only gave me rest each night and strength each morning, but I also believe that God literally stretched our time to allow us to finish what He needed us to finish. I have no other explanation for it and that, my friends, is how God works. He came through in the nick of time and gave the team and me everything that we needed to complete the work He set before us. He is everything we need.

God bless.

DJ Saryn