Prayer update from Kenya

Ed sends this prayer request this week:

The negotiations for peace in Kenya are at a critical crossroads and we are perplexed on how to pray. Politicians are offering worldly solutions that at best can only offer temporary calm. They offer bandages for a disease that requires heart surgery from the Great Physician. Even so, we honestly like the calm while it is here! Praise God that He promises that in our weakness of not knowing how to pray that His Spirit will make intercession for us with groanings that can not be uttered. Please join us to pray as political leaders meet with Kofi Annan to hammer out a so called grand coalition government for Kenya. Even so, please join us in praying come Lord Jesus come.

In the event that Jesus does not come, please pray for Calvary International Fellowship. God willing we will begin having two services next week. This will be our last Sunday with one service and we are busy making preparations for the transition. Please pray we can keep the sense of fellowship and intimacy that this church enjoys. Please continue to pray as we hope to purchase a plot in the very near future.

Please pray for the students and teachers at Disciple Support Ministries. Mathare and Kibera have been the hotbed for most of the post election violence within Nairobi and that is exactly where our campuses are at. Every one of the hundreds of students have horrific stories of violence. It is a humbling experience to stand in front of those pastors and church leaders knowing they have suffered greatly in this crisis. Please pray they would be God's instruments of change in the slums. We see God's hand on this school and pray that He uses this semester to begin the changing of hearts that
will lead to the transformation of churches and lives in the slums. Pray that the students would apply their classes to their hearts and not only their exams. Pray for the students and teacher's safety as they come and go from the campuses.

Shalom!

Ed

HT: Ed's Blog

Calvary International Fellowship: Update

This is from my buddy Ed who's a missionary in Kenya. That place is totally spun out. Do me a personal favor and pray for Kenya and our friends serving the Lord there. This is the third post I've put up on various blogs today bringing news and prayer requests from missionaries. Post 1. Post 2.

In 1998 I was a journalist in Albania covering the Kosavar refugee crisis. After spending days among the suffering and human tragedy I found myself in a quite café on the Adriatic. It was a beautiful sunset, the pasta was wonderful and the coke was cold. It should have been relaxing and joyful celebration of a completed assignment. Everything should have been great, except I had deep sorrow that words are not sufficient to express. The preceding days had been spent in refugee camps documenting horrific scenes of people fleeing the horrors of ethnic cleansing. For days I silently prayed for people as my Nikon snapped away. With no shame I was a completely biased journalist slipping one family some crumpled lira to help them get reestablished. Now I was sitting in a café enjoying a hot meal and knowing I was heading back to a soft bed in the hotel before returning to my comfortable house and family in California. It was difficult knowing that the airplanes flying over head were on sorties going into Kosovo to kill. It was difficult to know that as I sipped that coke that people were fleeing their villages and becoming refugees.

That feeling is back. Kenya has been absolutely terrorized by ethnic violence resulting from a corrupt election process in the last days. There have been riots outside Calvary International Fellowship and the last three nights we have heard gunfire. Official reports put the death toll at about 200 from across Kenya, but that is way too conservative. Police are guarding the morgues so journalists can not give accurate counts. The most sickening report is that one tribe burned a church full of people from another tribe killing 30 people in the process.

Read the rest of this post here: Link to Calvary International Fellowship: Update

Calvary International Fellowship: Q & A from one friend to another...

Our friend Ed Compean serving in Nairobi, Kenya, posted this interesting interchange between him and a friend that emailed him lately. This post fits nicely with the recent theme of why we should consider serving in the foreign field:

A friend recently contacted me through this blog. It has been great catching up with somebody I had not heard from in years. He had some interesting and tough questions about why I risk our family's safety by living and ministering in Kenya. I thought it would be valuable to post the response. This blog is primarily a place to keep our prayer team updated and allow people wondering about the ministry a place to learn a little more. This post is not normal, but again, maybe others are wondering these same questions and will find it valuable. While I asked this friend's permission to post this on the blog, I also blocked out his name. His questions are in the bigger and italic type

-Ed

Hi ****,

No worries about being raw. I'm the one that should apologize, getting back to you has been on my back burner for quite some time. We've been really busy, but ultimately that is an excuse. Please accept my apology.

Wow, your letter stimulated a lot of thought. To respond concisely and not wander I'll try to answer in the order you asked.

In any case, is there any part of you that is still connected to the real world? You seem so over the top with your ministry I wonder if you've lost all touch with reality???

This line if taken out of context would be a great compliment!

I will grant that from California the idea of ministry in the slums in Nairobi may seem over the top. It is certainly not where I imagined myself at this point in life. In response I want to hinge off the word "reality" because that word seems to be the core of your question. For me (I will get to my family below) reality is God's revelation of Himself in the Bible. As you mentioned, that may just confirm in your thinking that I have lost touch, but please hear me out.

I came to realize that as God revealed Himself in the Bible that He also has a standard for relationship with Himself. The reality is that by reading the Bible I realize I was separated from God. Most importantly for me, I realized my falling short of that standard was the cause of separation. I am a sinner separated from a God that is righteous and holy. Maybe by most "realities" I am a good guy, though you know enough about my past to know this is not entirely true. It's only by relative terms that I am good, but that contrasts the reality of God's objective revelation that my relationship with Him was willfully broken by me. The good news, also in the Bible, by God's reality I could have eternal life and the joy now by being reunited with Him through His son Jesus Christ. I realized that though I had been a relatively good guy, I had not kept the standard God holds. I was faced with the reality that I had only one way to have relationship with God and my being a good person, which I was not, did not help me.

I also came to realize that many of the things I had chased after for so many years had only brought temporary joy in the immediate - and absolutely no hope of eternity. The reality was that I was coveting things too small and things that do not last. God wanted me to covet something much greater - Himself. My eyes had settled on small joy but the Bible taught me to chase after fullness of joy.

To me, the reality is that God has given me the greatest gift and I can not help but proclaim it to others. I know this does not explain how we ended up in the slums of Nairobi, but I hope it explains the reality of God changing our life. Once that change took place there was nothing more real or more important than bringing the love of God to a world that so desperately needs it. The desperation in the slums is a horrible reality, but all man's efforts have failed to change that condition. Billions of dollars from the U.N. and humanitarian agencies have only resulted in more corruption and more poverty than when they began. Billions of dollars have not dented the HIV/AIDS epidemic except by creating an industry around it. By bringing the grace of God I can not guarantee a physically better life right now for these dear people, but they are assured of a mansion that Jesus is taking more than 2000 years to build. That is ultimate reality.

Seriously, I've not spoken with you for what, 30 years? Yet, I seem to remember the soulful nature of you; the happy go lucky - free spirited guy I was growing up with. But your blog entries paint such a dark and ugly picture of how you and your family are living. You seem to deliberately putting yourself and your children if life and death situations, yet your elders at your Calvary Chapel Church continue to live the life of California luxury.

We are old, but not that old! I think it's probably been 21 or 22 years since we've seen each other. I base that on my being 40-years-old and seeing you last when we were 18 or 19. Anyhow, in some ways I hope I'm still that same guy, only that God has changed my life so my greatest desire is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

I really do not wish to paint a dark picture of the work or the people here. The blog is mostly to keep the prayer team updated. Because of this it is filled with the "reality" of where we serve and real prayer needs. I have a much greater desire to share in the joy of this work and feel bad that I have conveyed a dark and ugly picture. Our life is far from that and I will be considering the way I communicate because that is the last thing I wish to express. Please know we enjoy our life and find it very full and rewarding. It is anything but dark and ugly. For clarification let me explain that there is a lot of darkness and ugliness around us, but that can be said of many places.

I can not speak for the leaders of our movement back in California and across the United States. I'll trust that their call to California (or anyplace else) is just as sure as our calling to Githurai. I can speak for us and say we are NOT putting ourselves purposely in danger. There are risks involved in ministry, which is true in the States as well as here or any other country. We try to be wise and directed by the Holy Spirit. I confess that I envy the California based guys as they enjoy more waves, more Starbucks and more Baja Fresh than we do, but none of our family desire to live there.

All the non-potholed roads, non-corrupt officials and unpolluted drinking water can never make up for what my son Jackson, 13, and I did yesterday. We walked into a Bible college campus before dawn in Kibera Slum. Getting to the campus we helped set up for the day's teaching and then Jackson slipped out when I was busy. It was a cold morning so I knew where to find him. He was downstairs sitting around the charcoal cooker allegedly "helping" the cook make chai and bread for the students. Knowing Jackson I also know he was using it as an excuse to keep warm and near the food. The whole time he is chatting with people from Kibera. While in Kibera we stopped at a friend's home that we have not seen in about 18-months. Doreen and Zachio are dear Luo (a Kenyan tribe) people that run a school in for orphans and destitute children in the slum. When Doreen came to her gate she let out a yell and began hugging us and shaking our hands. She was asking about Mama Jackson (Kelli) and "the daughter" (they have a hard time saying Haley). Within moments we were in their home having milo (a hot drink) and ndazi (like a donut). We sat for more than an hour just catching up. That is not dark, it is light!

We would not trade the depth of relationships we enjoy here for anything. Surely there is great joy for serving in the States, but we can not imagine being back there, particularly considering the States are saturated with churches and Bible teaching and here there is great need.

This leads to your next questions...

Why don't you move your family back to California and take over the ministry? Why not let your church elders in California swap places with you?

Since going to the mission field in 2002 (first to Mexico, then to Kenya) we have had opportunities to return to California or other states. Some of those opportunities were very attractive, but none were tempting. While the decision was mine to make I did not want to be a dictator and discussed things with the family. We prayed. We fasted. None want to be in the States.

My kids attend a much better school than we could ever afford in the States. All the major universities come to recruit from these already multi-cultural, multi-language and globalized young people. Jackson thinks it is normal to chase baboons from his campsite and my daughter thinks it is normal to mix Mexican salsa with her Ethiopian injera. Right now Jackson is playing down by the river with some friends from Zimbabwe. They are probably looking for snakes or shooting frogs. When Haley has a sleepover it is normal to have eight or ten cultures represented. So the question becomes why would we move back to California? Particularly since at my kid's ages it would be traumatic to bring them into a strange place that they have little memory of. They identify more with Mexico than America anyway. Frankly, seeing my kids grow up in Africa makes me wish I was raised here. America is not their home.

All of that is important and surely plays a major portion of our decisions to remain on the mission field, but the overwhelming reason is related to your first questions. The "reality" is that this is what God has for us. We thank Him for it and rejoice that we get the blessing of living and ministering in Africa.

The other point you ask about goes into methodology of the church, but I think you were asking more on a pragmatic level. In short, I do not want to get into how CC works as a church movement, but I will say that to bring somebody else out would be counterproductive. As a pastor my role is to equip saints for works of ministry. In other words I should be duplicating myself by training up Africans to pastor churches and even take over the church I am currently the pastor of. To bring more Westerners cripples the Kenyans and sends a message that we are better than them.

To step out of the Biblical view of church planting, there is also my selfish reasons outlined above - we love it here.

Why do you act so selfish as to put your own children in harms way? Maybe that is the part of your church that I just don't get.

This is a fair question but know there is no safe place for ministry. This goes back to the reality of the Bible. With all respect, maybe you won't get it.

In short, ministers of the gospel from the earliest patriarchs, the prophets and through John the Baptist, Jesus himself and Paul faced harm. We notice the reality of the Bible expresses that these challenges are normal. We also notice from the reality of the Bible that patriarchs, prophets, Jesus and Paul all made strategic escapes so as not to purposely become a martyr or be injured outside of God's will. Because of this we do everything we can to keep the kids and ourselves safe. To the best of our ability we practice good security techniques. We do what we can to lower the objective dangers and try to keep the kids from the subjective dangers.

Ultimately people take risks for what they enjoy. Consider love. The joy of a soul mate far outweighs the risk of heartbreak. After heartbreak many people take a "never again" stance, but almost all come back around and allow themselves to be vulnerable for the joy set before them. The same is true of the high school kid that pumps iron and trains to be the best linebacker. He knows every year players are seriously injured or even killed on the field of play. Yet the joy of smashing his 90kgs into the opposing player outweighs the risk. Consider the .300 hitter in professional baseball. He stands inches from a 100mph projectile that will occasionally hit and seriously injure players. I can go on, but I think you get my point. All four of us value our relationship with God and desire it for others. Safety is not guaranteed, but we do our best to protect ourselves.

Simply put, I read about your struggles and sacrifices and wonder why? Please don't tell me it is in the name of Jesus Christ, because it will just affirm that you are crazy and you've gone off the deep end. And if that's the case I will pray for you my friend.

Again I feel I must not be clearly communicating what we feel.


In one sense we do have struggles. Trials are normal, even for somebody living in California, but sacrifice? I feel we have not made any sacrifice; instead we have actually gained beyond anything we deserve. We feel bad for people in all their self-sufficiency struggling to see God, yet we see Him work every day. People pay thousands of dollars for a religious retreat or experience, yet we witness God daily. Who is really sacrificing? Have you ever heard of people wondering if God is real or if He ever interacts on behalf of the people He created? WE NEVER WONDER. We see it every day and would not trade it for the world. It would be a sacrifice to go to America.

Maybe it is just semantics and worry about words but I will say we are NOT doing this in the name of Jesus Christ. Instead I'll say we are doing FOR the name of Jesus Christ to be made known and for God to be glorified among the nations.

You wonder why we do this and I believe your question is asked in true concern. We value God and proclaiming His value. Everyone testifies to what they value, we testify to the greatness of God.

I don't want to read about you and your family's death, but I fear that is the next topic on your blog... Time to come home son. Raise your family properly and not under the umbrella of religious fanaticism. You will get killed and they will simply replace you. No martyrdom, no sainthood, just a forgotten soul.

Again I know you say these things with genuine concern. We also do not look for martyrdom or even seek any suffering at all.

Religious fanaticism would be doing crazy things as I try to manipulate and please God. That is why religion always results in death. We are simply responding to love we were shown to us by God and our reasonable worship is our life as a living sacrifice.

Is it more fanatical to go into debt for a home in Oceanside, a new SUV every couple years and struggle to keep my kids in the newest fashions? Would it be fanatical to be getting my daughter plastic surgery to help with her self esteem? Could a desire for a new kitchen, expensive vacations and my kids to have their own vehicles be considered religious fanaticism? We honor most what we worship.

Again that is not to say we are looking for any suffering whatsoever, though we know from Gods very real Bible that suffering is very real for all His people no matter to their geography. We also know the promise of joy even in that suffering.

Finally, I know God is in control. That means I am not prideful enough to think I'm irreplaceable. In 100 years we will all be forgotten anyway.

So ****
I tried not to ramble on, but I'm realizing that I have been typing for an hour. Sorry. I really appreciate your concern and willingness to communicate it to me. You said if you felt I am off the deep end you will pray. Whom will you pray to? How do you objectively know about that God? I ask these questions so you are not influenced by feelings, experiences or other people, but by objective truth. It's my experience that many people are influenced by their smorgasbord of experiences (family background/traditions) but have not really asked these three questions:

1. What do you know about God? That is not what you think, fill or have heard, but what do you know?
2. How do you know it? Is it something you have held from tradition, feelings, presumptions or a real knowledge based on objective truth?
3. If you come to the conclusion you were mistaken, are you willing to change? u find you do not know what you thought you knew are you willing to change?

If what the Bible says is true it changes everything and I would have to say that is reality. That does not mean one has to leave their homeland, or what we are doing is the ultimate expression of that reality. I am saying that we are blessed to be here in Kenya and look forward to what else we'll see here.

Blessings!
Ed

Ed Compean
Calvary International Fellowship Githurai,
Kenya
ccnairobi@gmail.com

Source: Calvary International Fellowship: Q & A from one friend to another...

Compean Postcard

Ed and Kelli Compean live and serve as church planters is Nairobi, Kenya. Recently, Kelli was part of an outreach team in Uganda.

Dearest Friends,

We are truly blessed to be in ministry with you. My trip to Uganda and western Kenya was a joy. We had a total of six clinics in local churches. The medical team saw over 4,000 people and wrote over 10,000 prescriptions. The Gospel went forth and relationships between the community and five churches were established.

Praise God!

Your servants,
Kelli, Ed, Haley and Jackson Compean

Haley and Jackson are Ed and Kelli's teenage kids.

The photograph below was taken by Jackson. Ed Compean is professional photographer and it looks like Jackson is following in dad's footseps.

The caption on the photo says, "Roday tries chocolate cake!" Believe or not, there are children on this planet that have never tasted sweets!

The Compeans are missionaries with Shepherd Staff Mission Facilitators, Inc.