Submitted by Dr. Sam & Rose Gitarri, Bishop Simon
The Teach All Nations team — consisting of Fred Taylor, Terence Tan, Julie Mapatano, and me – began our ministry in Kenya by dividing into teams to minster in two different churches on our first day in the African nation followed by an afternoon teaching meeting with the people who are part of the Nairobi Charis Bibles Studies group. The pastor of the church where Fred and I ministered is the bishop over about a hundred churches. When the people came forward for prayer at the end of the service, one young man was slain in Spirit and knocked down like he had been hit by a football tackler when I touched him. There were no catchers; so, he crashed into the girl behind him and knocked her down. She was also overwhelmed with anointing.
The afternoon meetings and one the following Sunday with the Charis Bible Studies Group were something that was added to the schedule at the last minute, and I didn’t know about them until after we arrived. Our host had asked me to teach on Finally, My Brethren, but I had told him that I wanted to use Maximum Impact for the pastors’ conference. When he introduced me to the Bible study group, I finally understood why he was so insistence. He said that this class had impacted him and his wife more than anything else in this studies in Bible school. He described it like being struck with an electric bolt. He said that they had always believed that they had on the full armor of the Lord but that the class had stripped them of their armor and redressed them. He said that they were transformed by the course and wanted others to have the same experience. The group was really receptive. At dinner that night, John showed me the Whatsup group that the Bible study group had started. There were “tons” of comments about how the lesson had blessed the members.
Since the pastors’ conference didn’t start until Thursday, the group took the free time to visit Masai Mara National Park for a safari – a real treat including sightings of several of different kinds of antelopes, gazelles, wildebeests, monkeys, ostriches, zebras, giraffes, crocodiles a jackal, water buffaloes, warthogs, baboons, hippopotami, meerkats, some sort of beautiful red and blue lizard, mongooses, waterbucks, lions, and elephants. We were really fortunate to be in the park at the specific time that the wildebeests migrate from Tanzania into Kenya. Actually, the migration should have been a month or so earlier, but there was a fire in Tanzania that delayed their movement. Our guide said that the Tanzanian government set the fire deliberately to stop the migration, but I don’t understand why they would do that unless that just wanted us to experience it. The total migration is estimated to number up to three million wildebeest plus all the zebras that move with them. I understand that about twenty thousand of them will drown trying to cross the river that separates the two nations and that some of their bodies are washed as far as Lake Victoria – over two hundred miles away.
We hosted the pastors’ conference in a church a couple hours’ drive outside of Nairobi. Everyone is very attentive and so appreciative that we have come to them because other ministries always hold their conferences in the city and do not include the rural ministers. After the first session, the wife of the bishop commented, “I learned so much even in the first few minutes.” The bishop then followed up with, “This kind of teaching is what we need,” and then added that he wished we could come back annually. One afternoon, we invited the people of the community to the church for a healing meeting. One woman was healed of a headache that had been bothering her for three days. One man said he had been prayed for the previous day for bipolar disorder and that he decided to try to sleep that night without his medication that he has to use to go to sleep. He slept the whole night through, and someone had to wake him up this morning. One woman asked for prayer for her stomach but wound up getting healed in her legs as well. One man had suffered from a dislocated ankle for about fifteen years; the day after he was prayed for he walked over two kilometers (just over a mile) to get to the meeting. One man came up for prayer for his eyes – blurred vision and saw things looking the wrong direction. He wasn’t cross-eyed, but he had a problem that caused him to see things like they were in a different place than where they really are. After prayer, he was excited to see things in the right place. He also said that the pastor had prayed for him previously about not being able to move his fingers because of stiff joints. The fingers had been healed after the pastor’s prayer, but they got even better today. He also said that he wanted to get saved and was going to start coming to church. He came back the following day without his cane and responded to the altar call for the baptism in the Holy Spirit. When I prayed for our driver, he was slain in the Spirit – without a catcher.
In one session, we talked about the importance of having a personal time of fellowship with the Lord every day, but very few of the pastors said that they did so. The following morning, the pastor of the host church testified that the Lord had spoken to him during the night that he actually had two personalities – a minister and a child of God. He said that he was feeding the minister part of himself by studying for his sermons but was not feeding the child of God part through personal devotions. He said that the Lord told him to be careful that neither one of his personalities become malnourished. He said that he was committing himself to not just ministering but to also being ministered to. In the closing session of the conference, he asked that we pray against two spirits that are in the neighborhood – alcoholism because a man just next to the church makes illegal alcohol and witchcraft because of two women who live on the other side of the church and practice witchcraft. As we were driving away at the end of the service, the pastor ran up and stopped our car to tell us that one of the women in the neighborhood who had been oppressed by the witches had come and gotten born again and said that she would be in church tomorrow.
On our final day in Kenya, we concluded our ministry with services at two churches and a meeting with the Charis Bible Studies group. I really connected with the pastor in that he was a university chemistry and math professor who felt called into the ministry and went to seminary to get his doctorate degree in theology. He then started a big church in the affluent sector of the city and several branch churches under it. Eventually, he felt led to resign the church and move to the poorer side of town to open a church there. When I walked into his office, he showed me a copy of my Finally, My Brethren book and said that he had gotten hold of it a couple years before. He then said that ever since he had read the book he wanted me to come to Kenya and preach in his church. He also said that he had read a lot of Lester Sumrall’s books and had a friend in the US who had been to one his meetings. After the service, he and his wife went with us to the Bible study group. The room was full, and there were a good number of people who hadn’t been there the previous week. Everyone was very attentive and really seemed to be catching on to the teaching. We wrapped up with a time of prayer in which Terence ministered to those who needed healing.
Dr. Sam & Rose Gitarri
Bishop Simon