Bwanabob

February 24, 2007

Dear Friends,

We are all doing well today, the weather has been hot, upper 90′s in the shade. Yesterday, Edward came down with malaria, his temp was up most of the day and we had to keep a close eye on him. Today, he is doing much better and we are thankful wehave the means here at home to treat him, but would ask that you pray for him and us. This evening Vance started a fever and achy joints and we started him on the treatment. It is frustrating that we are all sleeping under mosquito nets, I’m spraying in and around the house and Edward and Vance still caught malaria.

The Lord’s work is moving ahead. One of our supporters gave funds to help pastor Geoffrey buy a plot to live on in Kakuma, he has been paying rent this whole time. He was so thankful to have received the gift.

Pastor Sammy here in Lodwar started a nursery school at their church this last week, the only problem was they don’t have a toilet for the children to use. There are a lot of things you can get away with in Kenya but having a Nursery school without a toilet is not one of them. So to keep pastor Sammy out of jail I’ve helped him start work on a new toilet. The church had tried to put one in but after digging the hole the rain came and washed dirt and gravel back into the hole they had dug. My part was just to assist what they had already started and help them see it through to completion, (before the health authorities come to inspect.)

Now my odd request of Cattlemen/ Ranchers/Cowpokes and Cowboys. There is a saying here in East Africa that goes something like, “A man without cattle is not a man.” A brief explanation, If you or your family do not have cattle or even goats and sheep you are considered poor and will never be lent anything or assisted in any way from someone who does have cattle or animals. Generally, the men here in Turkana who have animals resist the Gospel by saying that Christianity is a religion for women and children, because none of the “real men with wealth” are Christians. So, me being from America and from Barry/Lawrence County, Missouri where we raise more feeder calves than anywhere else except a couple of counties in Texas, I know that this Turkana line of thinking is just not right. Here is my request, If you own cattle or know of someone who owns cattle and is a Christian could you please use a digital video camera and record your testimony as a Christian while standing in front of your cattle, preferably in front of your 2000lb. registered herd bull. If you give tithes and offerings, please feel free to mention that and also if you give to missions out of the proceeds of your herd that would be helpful to mention as well.

You see, Turkanans with cattle have a lot of pride, and as Christians we know that pride is definitely one thing that will keep you from confessing your sin, humbling yourself and accepting Christ. Thankfully in America, we have many examples in our culture of wealthy, respected individuals who openly give God the glory for their spiritual and material blessings. But here in Turkana you can ask almost any missionary if there are wealthy, cattle owners in the churches and we would have to say no. All of the cattle owning men still hold very strongly to the traditional religion of diviners/witch doctors and worship the moon, cattle they own and pray to their ancestors.

My plan. If enough Cattlemen will send me their testimonies with footage of their herd, I will compile it together, have some of our pastors translate the testimonies into Turkana Language and show it when we show The Jesus Film. That way Turkana men can see that REAL MEN, with cattle, do serve Jesus.

All I need is to have the footage taken in a DIGITAL VIDEO format burned to a CD. If you could send it to my home church at:

Fellowship Baptist Church
17818 Lawrence 2200
Aurora MO 65605

Once the CDs are there I can have them brought over to Kenya by one of our visiting groups and we’ll edit and translate and give God the Glory. Please feel free to forward this request to any Christian Cattlemen you may know, especially if they might operate a feed lot. Wouldn’t that be something for Turkanans to see the spread at Cactus Feeders in Dumas Texas.

My wife had a good laugh after reading this e-mail. If you had a chuckle or two fine, maybe my brain is already fried after a couple of months back in the hot African sun, but I’m serious about this. If I don’t hear from anyone soon, then I’ll begin to personally write men who I know own cattle or have connections with Cactus Feeders. I believe that our personal testimony is a powerful way to witness, and something we should all be willing to share, weather with our neighbor across
the fence or to a proud tribe across the pond in Africa.

In Christ, Bob Clark

PS. Please don’t try to e-mail video files to me, we are still third-world around here and no one here has ever heard of High Speed Internet.

February 8, 2007

Hello Everyone,

We are doing fine, the weather is warming up a little to the mid 90′s, but it still looks like rain will come again in a couple of weeks.

The ministry the Lord has set before us is growing, there has been one new church started since we left, it is in a village called Nabwee. We are very encouaged by how receptive the local folks are to hearing the Gospel and the locals seem to like how the Pastors preach and teach. A mission that was started several years ago is finally doing much better. The Bible Institute graduate who had started the work at Lokwee wasn’t doing very well and fell into sin. As a result he stepped down from the ministry and that allowed another of our graduates, Kevin,  who had been very faithful in his local church at Katilu to go to Lokee and begin leading the mission. The latest report is that many are encouraged by his leadership, preaching and teaching. We are hoping that Kevin’s home church in Katilu will agree to officially commision him and send him as the missionary/pastor to Lokwee. Granted he has already gone to Lokwee, but we are trying to teach the local churches that it is their responsibility to lay-hands-on and send-out workers into the harvest, and if someone is given the title of missionary or pastor that should come from their local church where they were saved, baptized, discipled and trained in the work of the Lord.

This last Sunday I traveled to visit the church at Kalemenyang. I rode out on the motorcycle, about 35 miles. The church is doing well and growing, they have held four crusades/revivals with the other three churches in that region since we went on furlough. They have asked that I return in March for a batism service.Â

I’ll try to explain a little of what it’s like visiting there. When I arrived the pastor had gone to visit church members in the village and wasn’t home, but the pastors wife made me scalding hot tea with milk and it was already about 90 F. when I arrived in the morning. All five of his children were home, ages 7 yrs to 6 mos. I began making them little airplanes out of sticks, palm leaves and candy wrappers, they were thrilled and play with them for about two hours.  During that time I gave the pastors wife $1.30 and asked her to make chapatis for our lunch, the kids overheard this and began jumping up and down and singing, “chapo, chapo!” I’ll have to admit that I’d much rather eat chapatis or flatbread, than corn meal mush anytime. Just before lunch the pastor came home from visiting and we spent the rest of the day visiting and looking at his new irrigation well, which had gone dry. That evening was nice, but the half moon came up at about 3 AM and the local roosters crowed the rest of the night. On Sunday, services started at 7 AM and we didn’t finish until about 12:30, I’ve stopped wearing a watch now, it helps me be more paitent. There were about 20 children and 35 adults in the main service. I didn’t see anyone go to sleep and no one complained about the service  being long. After the service we returned to the pastors house and had scalding hot tea, the temperature had to have been in the upper 90′s. A little later the pastors sister and cousin came in from the bush. His sister, Martha, had been bitten on the finger by a puff adder 5 days previous, she still had enough strength and wits about here to walk 10 hours from where their herds were to Kalemenyang where Pastor Hosea lived. They asked if I had any medicine and all I had on the motorcycle was some Tylenol, Cipro and some antibiotic ointment. The Tylenol made here feel better right away and I went ahead and gave her the Cipro because they had sliced open her finger to try and get the poison out, it didn’t look good. We prayed for her and they offered us some buttermilk/youghurt that they had brought all the way with them. Immediately following the buttermilk/yoghurt was lunch, goat meat with chickpea greens and corn meal mush, I ate a respectable portion and then had to lay down. The tea, buttermilk and lunch were about all I could handle. Finally, about 4 PM the temperature in the sun started to drop a little and I loaded the motorcycle and headed for home, it took about 1 hour and 40 minutes to get back to Lodwar. So, that was what Saturday and Sunday was like for me. I enjoy visiting the pastors and it seems that life is rarely dull, but often hot here in Turkana.

Fuel has really jumped in price since we left, gasoline is now $5.41 per gallon and diesel is $4.82 per gallon, I’m using the motorcycle a lot more and trying to plan trips so that I can kill three or four birds with one stone.

Life here can be odd at times, but it is nearly normal for us. I often laugh at the things we see and do; for instance, our old house cat which we super glued back together several years ago is still alive, but is now completely wild and killing the neighbors chickens. We are thinking of snaring him. When we fix dog food we just keep the food that the kids don’t clean up, all the scraps, potato peels, carrot peels, bones, ect. Then cook it all together and add corn meal to make a gelatinous goo, let it cool a few hours and that’s our Puppy Chow, (dog food as we know it in the States can’t even be purchased here). This may seem odd, but consider if we spent the same amount of money feeding our dogs here in Turkana as we do in the US, people here would say we love our dogs more than them, because most families here eat on less than $1 per day.

Ericka here now.

Please pray for our workers Esther and Peninah, they are having a lot of trials right now. Since we have been back their children(4 of them)  came down with a severe strain of malaria, Peninah has been feeling very weak and feeling pain in her chest, she also had 2 family members die in 2 days time last week. Last night (Sun) Esther’s son was bit by a dog in his lower thigh, a gaping wound. Then this morning Peninah came in with a deep chest cough, then at lunch time she got a call that theives broke into her house and stole everything, down to the bed. Just before the phone call I was talking with Bob that we need to pray over these ladies because of all the trials they are going through, after she got the call about the theft we prayed together. I took her into town so that she could go to her place and find out what was going on. Two hours later, we    received a call that they caught the robbers and found half of the stuff stolen and were taking the thieves to the police. All we could say was Praise God, thank you God! Please remember to pray for them, that God will stregthen them and bring health and protection. Thank you!

Hope this wasn’t too long for you all, but this is how things are here. Please keep praying for us and God bless you all.

In Christ, Bob Clark

February 6, 2007

Dear Friends,

Just wanted to send a note that we are back home in Lodwar. We are trying to resume use of our old e-mail address of bwanabob@multitechweb.com  Unfortunately, the day our e-mail service resumed we saw that 1204 e-mails had accumulated in our account and at 14.4 kbs we didn’t even try to download them. Later that afternoon I was able to get to an internet cafe with satellite uplink, faster connection, but the multitechweb server had been struck by lightening in the meantime. So, when and if you get this e-mail you’ll know the server is up and I will have gotten the thousand odd e-mails taken care of.Â

Our flight home was good, but the road from Eldoret to Lodwar, 240 mi, took us 10 hours to travel.

The Bible Institute classes went very well, we have two new students this year, one young man and one young lady. Ericka really enjoys teaching again. . The second year students have been making good grades on their tests. One of our graduates from two years ago, David Ekorit is now in Sudan helping missionary Julius Gitau. We hear he plans to return to Kenya in February.

The boys are glad to be home and Vance has started “baby school” or what we would call pre-school. The school building is mud with palm leaf roof, but the ladies teaching are nice and every day when we go to get Vance he seems very excited to have been at school with the other children.Â

There has been rain around the district this week which is very unusual for Turkana this time of year, so if things continue as they appear now we will be having floods May through Sept. It rained on Sunday while I was preaching in the church, it was so heavy on the tin roof that I had to finish quickly. We then began to sing, but again the rain was so loud on the roof that the members in the back couldn’t hear what song we were leading in the front. On the way home from church there was so much water in the road that in one mude hole the water was so deep it came up onto the hood of the truck.

Many people have had malaria because of the unseasonable rains, please pray that our boys will stay healthy. Pray for Pastor Geoffrey’s family they were all very sick this last week and a few weeks ago their house was robbed of everything; beds, pots, pans, clothes and money they had saved and even some of the church offerings.

We are glad to be home, our kids are loving the warm weather and running with no shoes. Please drop us a line when you can and we hope to get this out to you within a week, this is Africa.

In Christ, Bob Clark