Kenya Rediscovered - Part II

Neema Bible College~

Kenya's Present~

During the next ten years, Mike and Pat would visit us while they were in the States. They wanted me to come back, but in the process of opening the Gathering Place and all the transitions we had as a result of our move back to Iowa, it wasn't something I could do at the time.

Finally, in 2017 I told Mike I could swing a second trip.  I asked Pastor Kent Coates to go with me and he immediately said yes. We went in February of 2018.  It was a very full schedule starting on the East coast of Kenya in a town called Kilifi just north of Mombasa, on the Indian Ocean, ending in Kitali on the Ugandan border.

Pastor Ken Coates

From the first day of ministry I could tell things had happened and God was doing something wonderful in Kenya through Mike and Pat's Ministry. I met their regional director of Eastern Kenya, Pastor Victor, who told me how I had ministered to him in 2008. He was a student in the first school in Meru where I taught on 'calling those things that are not as though they were'.

I asked him what happened. He said, "Nothing for six years, but I kept praying. Then the first thing, I became a Pastor, the second thing, a man gave me schillings to build the church, and now I'm the Eastern District Director for the Bible schools. Thank you, Linus, for teaching me these things."

Dennis & Linus, 2008

 In the ten years since my first trip to Kenya, Mike and Pat's ministry has grown to 26 churches in two countries, 27 Bible schools, and over 1,000 graduates. I was able to meet all the regional directors: Pastor Victor, Pastor Stanley in the Mountain District, and Apostle Obed in the Western District. I also reconnected with Dennis Mugambi who is now Mike's assistant director of the Bible schools. On my first trip, Dennis had been my guide. He was 15 and already teaching in the schools. Now he runs all over Kenya being where Mike can't be and helping the directors and visiting ministers.

Apostle Obed, Pastor Victor, Pastor Stanley

All of these men are a tremendous help to Mike and Pat. I was beginning to see where they wanted to go with the growth of the ministry, but how to get there became the question during the trip. How do we get the graduates involved with the schools? How do we recruit students out of the churches? How do we train more Bible School Directors?