Ants in My Pants

The ground is hardpacked and dry. While the cattle are suffering for lack of grass, some of God's smaller creatures are also in a fight for survival. The fight to find moisture, anywhere! And, sometimes that
"anywhere" can also mean our own home.

Our phone rang one night around 10:30 P.M. For those of you whom live in cities, the night is still young. For us bush dwellers, that's already an hour and a half past "missionary midnight". The phone call startled me because it was from the contract employee that is staying on our mission property.  By the time I got alert enough to find the phone,  the ringing had stopped. But, by then my imagination had started...was he in trouble...did he hear something or someone in the compound...was it a call for help?

The answer to that last question was, YES!

Rather alert now, I quickly got dressed and armed myself in the best way I could and then ventured outside of our front door. Looking for "bad guys", I didn't see any so I slowly sauntered through the pitch black down to his house. "Alex, you okay?" "Yes Mzee (respectful term for older man) but, I have mchwa all in the house." Going through the door, I quickly saw that the walls, floor, and even Alex' bed were inundated with ANTS.
Circling the small perimeter of the building, we found the whole back and left side of the house, an area of about 40 square feet, with every inch literally crawling with ants. For the last couple of weeks, we've been watching the long lines of ants as they transversed our yard in an seemingly endless line in their hopeless search for water. This night, they were just everywhere. And before we knew it, we were standing in the middle of them.

Once African ants get in your pants there is only one solution...just drop your drawers. Don't think about the embarrassment, don't think about what you may look like in your skivvies, because the longer you wait the more you pay. Two weeks before, this happened to me in broad daylight (yes, I dropped them right where I stood) and fortunately, no one was around. This time was even better, for the ants were in my pants in the dead of night. Although some local Maasai who may have been up that night might have wondered what was that flash of white running across the mission.

And Then There Were Three...

Two Sundays ago, something quite unusual happened. For our Sunday morning study, we have been going through the Book of Genesis and we made it halfway through Verse 26 of Chapter one, where it is recorded how God created the land animals on the sixth day of creation. Ending the service, I gave an invitation for anyone in the service who would like to come forward and receive Christ as Lord and Savior. Now, in our fourteen years of mission work here, at no time had anyone ever come forward to do such a thing. Although we have had people come to know the Lord it has always been in one-on-one conversations or small-group settings. It is very unlike a Maasai to walk an aisle in front of one’s peers and to make such a public display. That Sunday proved to be very different. I no more than got the words out of my mouth that the invitation was open and looked up to see Mary, a young Maasai mama, standing before me. I was taken aback by her sudden appearance, and stumbled over my words as I asked her why she came forward. “I want to be saved”, she flatly stated. And, after much conversation making sure she knew what all that meant, she bowed her head to pray and ask for God to forgive her sins through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Hallelujah!!!

While visiting in the manyattas (groups of huts) the next day, Tari stopped in to see Gladys, Mary’s sister. After the proper greetings are exchanged and small talk is ended, Gladys abruptly tells Tari that she has done some pretty bad things in her young life and wants to pray to receive God’s forgiveness for her sins like her sister did. Tari reviews the gospel with her to make sure that she has an adequate understanding of the price that Jesus paid to remove her sins, and Gladys prays to receive Christ’s forgiveness.

Nongishu has been in our employ for several years now. Coming to morning devotions before work and hearing the Word of God, and being in church on Sundays has had a big impact on her life. After Laura Sawyer taught in Ladies Fellowship several weeks ago, Nongishu voiced that she wanted to be saved but had to receive her husband’s permission first. Even after explaining to her that believing in Christ for the forgiveness of sins is a personal thing between her and God she remained steadfast with her desire to have her husband agree. Two missed appointments later and now with a planned safari that would take him out of town, her husband just sent up word to the Mission that he is in agreement with Nongishu becoming a Christian. Later that morning, Nongishu met the Savior and had her name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Gladys and Nongishu were among others who attended the weekly Ladies Fellowship this afternoon. Both giving testimonies of what is happening in their lives, Gladys, with such intent that it seemed that even her eyes were smiling, beamed as she told everyone that her husband now wants to be saved because he has seen such a difference in her life in the last week. Perhaps there will be four!!!

Please pray for these three ladies and their husbands. And, please pray for us as we begin the discipleship training necessary to help them in their new walk with Christ. Thank you for your prayers and continued support that makes this ministry possible. God bless you and may His grace abound.

Planting a Church and the Ark of the Covenant

In January 2009, we were invited on an expedition to Ethiopia with Mosaic Church in Orlando, to look at the probabilities of starting a church there. Leading the safari was the adventurer and acclaimed "modern-day Indiana Jones", Bob Cornuke of BASE Institute. Also, joining us in Ethiopia was author and reporter for Christian Broadcasting Network, Chuck Holton.

The trip was a one-week whirlwind as we were in four different cities in northern Ethiopia in almost as many days; Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and the location of the palace of whom it is believed descends from the throne of Solomon; Lalibela, where churches were literally carved out of the rock; Axum, where the Ark of the Covenant is believed to be guarded; and Bahir Dar, from where we rode in a boat charter to the island of Tana Kirkos, where the Ark of the Covenant is believed to have been kept from 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.

It was the trip of a lifetime and we are very blessed to have been included on it. CBN Reporter, Chuck Holton has just finished editing his video that was shot during our trip about the Ark possibly being in Ethiopia and it will be aired on CBN on July 21st. If you can't wait till then and would like a pre-viewing of the video, you can follow the link to Chuck's video website (http://vimeo.com/5628126) or just watch it from this blog.

Do you guys think the Ark of the Covenant can actually be found in Ethiopia? Well, it sure seems that historical evidence points in that direction (peruse BASE Institute materials or read Graham Hancock's, THE SIGN AND THE SEAL; but one can never be sure unless one looks upon it with one's own eyes. And, I am not doing that because I saw the Indiana Jones movie and and there is no way I'd do it after what happened to those guys. :)

The Unfortunate Demise of Sonic

Sonic, our eleven year old Daschund wasn't just a dog, like any other dog; no, Sonic was as much an event as a pet. Something was always cooking with her, for when she was around, she commanded the entire compound. Afraid of absolutely nothing, Sonic had a history of attacking anything that came into the yard; that included mongeese, badgers, baboons, small antelopes, a porcupine, and even her share of hedgehogs. There are even a few Masai walking around with scars on their ankles because they didn't wait to be escorted in from the gate.

Sonic met her demise on Saturday night. I got out of my normal routine and forgot to pen the dogs up before I went to bed. The next morning, Sonic was no where to be found. Knowing what type of environment lays outside our gate, we can only assume that she was taken by the leopard that has been the cause of a few other lost dogs, sheep, and goats in our area.

Sometimes we think, if we ever write a book...it will be about the extraordinary life of Sonic. In it we would record the time that sonic chased a baboon out of the yard and when the baboon jumped on the fence to climb out, it had a 16 pound Daschund hanging on its back leg. Or, we could write about the night that she went she went head-to-head on our front porch with a cobra, dodging the cobra's strike and then striking in herself trying to get a mouthful of snake. Or, we could just write about how we could make her smile and show her teeth and then every time she did it she had to sneeze.

Sonic really was a happening.

Our First Ministerial Student

The obvious goal in church planting missions is to do just that...plant a church. The modus operandi of achieving that goal, and the theme verse for our mission can be found in 2 Timothy 2:2, "The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also."

Michael Pesi was just a young primary school student when we first came to Masai Mara in 1995 to plant a church. Later, in his teenage years he responded to the gospel and gave his life to Christ and has steadily grown in his walk with Christ. Even in the midst of great trials and against ominous pagan tribal pressures, Michael has stood strong and has proven himself to be one of those "faithful men".

Two months ago, we had a conversation with Michael and about God's calling on his life. We discussed that God calls a person to salvation and also to service, and in lieu of that what was God's desire for how Michael should serve Him? After praying about it and seeking God's will, Michael responded that he believes that God is calling him in the ministry to be a pastor. Praise God! Michael will be our first Masai young man since the start of this church to give his life to the ministry.

In mid-August, Michael will begin his studies at Moffat Bible College, located at Kijabe, Kenya (a four-hour drive from us). He will be working toward a four-year Undergraduate Degree in Pastoral Ministries.

Please pray for Michael and his studies. Michael has been out of high school for a number of years and it might take some adjustment to get back in the mode of a full-time student. Also, pray for Michael's family during the months he will be gone. Michael is a main bread-winner in his family supporting his mother, Narutadi, as well as his sister and three brothers.

If you would like to have a part in Michael's education, please contact me at srussell@mastersmission.org, and I can elaborate on Michael's needs in a more specific way and how you can help meet them.

Our Niece, Julia at The Giraffe Center in Nairobi

I am in my office today working on our newsletter, The Russell Report. It has been too long since I have published one (please forgive me) and I want to take advantage of cheaper postage by sending them to the U.S in my niece's luggage. While working, I was also chatting with our daughter who is currently stationed somewhere in Iraq. Multi-tasking is never my thing, but everything came to a complete halt when I received this message from her, "Hold on... we just had a mortar attack"!!!

Now, I can't imagine any of us would like to hear those words coming from anyone else, much less one's own daughter. Sitting here dumbfounded and numbed, she then added, "the alarm is going off in the compound, I hate it when they do that". That statement wasn't too comforting either. But her last expression brought me a little ease, "it's so annoying". She wasn't scared. She wasn't concerned. She was just annoyed that her day off had been spoiled by the blaring siren signalling a mortar attack. Yep, she's a soldier alright. Hoooah!!