Chris Entwistle, on a Year 13 mission to Kenya, begins to weigh the struggle of ministry at ‘the ends of the earth’ with the joy of seeing Jesus’ Great Commission fulfilled.

I’ve got something to confess. I woke up this morning and counted in my head the number of days I’ve got till I go home. I’ve got to say, this makes me feel guilty. Because after all, I’m on Mfangano Island, such an incredibly unique part of God’s creation. I’ve been seeing some awesome outworkings of God and his amazing plan for salvation. As more and more people on this island make the choice to become Christians, it seems crazy for me to think about going home.

But the fact of the matter is that despite the moments of intense joy we feel when we see people decide to follow Jesus each afternoon, life on this island is hard. There is no electricity, so when night falls our site is consumed by a darkness like nothing I’ve ever seen before. There is also no running water, which means that we need to take our water from Lake Victoria. And we’ve got to treat it intensely. We already we might have picked up a tropical parasite just from walking alongside the water. The island has no roads and no cars. The only transport is by foot and by boat. The island is a incredibly remote although, funnily enough, we can still get mobile phone coverage! It makes me think of Jesus’ Great Commission, when he told us to spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. Mfangano Island must have been one of the places he had in mind.

Life for us has been very hard and often exhausting. Patience is a much harder fruit of the Spirit out here, especially when tempers are beginning to fray. Yesterday I held the group up, so we didn’t leave for our ministry until later than we’d planned. I’m sure I would have got really cross at anyone else if they had have done it, but seeing the way that other people tolerated me and forgave me, it reminded me about the unity that we have in Christ, and the way that we need to function on this mission.

There have been some amazing movements of the Spirit over here. Church on Sunday stands out in particular. I was rostered to give a sermon, which I prepared before I came to Kenya. And as I wrote it, I wondered about what kind of message would be appropriate to this foreign audience. Soon I found out that in spite of the huge cultural differences that exist between our two nations, there are many similarities between us when it comes to spirituality. Like Australia, lots of Kenyans call themselves Christians. And yet unlike Australia, most of them go to church on Sunday. And, many of these churchgoers still need to become true believers. As I’ve been involved in evangelism with the Kenyans, I found out that good works, like going to church, and baptism, are thought to be the things that make a person a Christian.

And so for this reason, I decided to base my sermon on the gospel, and give people a challenge to accept it for the first time or to rely upon it for their salvation. And from my message, nine people became Christians or recommitted themselves to Christ.

As I reflected on this later, I had to come to terms with the issue of pride. It’d be easy for me to boast in these results, as if it was my own human effort that made it happen. But the fact of the matter is that my message was very simple… it was just the pure gospel. It made me realise that when sharing the word of God, it’s not human effort, clever presentations or great illustrations that make the results. It’s just the Spirit of God. So that even the most simple message can bring about conversions to Christ. Which brought the words of Psalm 115 to mind: “Not to us Lord, but to you be the glory”.

In the coming days I’ll have many opportunities to share the message of Christ to people here. Please pray for me and the rest of the team that we will find the strength within us to minister with energy and passion, especially as we struggle with exhaustion.

Photo courtesy Adele Booysen