From: Kim Sandberg

At the Pastor's conference in Bungoma, Vicki Bartels and I were able to spend time with the Pastor's wives and a few of the other Kenyan women who are involved in some type of ministry role in their churches. Our time with these ladies was sweet, like honey. We all learned from one another. I think I have mostly learned to really live out the verses that I so love from Proverbs 3:5-5 and Philippians 4:4-8. Trust God and don't try to figure it all out, He is the Sovereign One in all that I do and He will direct me. Don't fret! Pray! Give thanks in everything and watch His peace fill and guard my heart and my mind in Christ.

During the second session with the ladies, Pastor Ann leaned over and whispered that some of the ladies had questions. So, I was really quite excited to hear what they had to ask and say.

“I have 10 children and work our farm. How do I find time to do God's work?”

“My husband and some others seem to trample on me when I want to do ministry.”

Trust God to have given me something months ago as I prepared for this very time that was so fitting. The day before I had talked on Psalm 119 on the wonders and delight of God's truths found all through-out scripture. In His Word is found all we need for all of life; the joys, the heartbreaks, strength and guidance, suffering, trials, etc.

Pastor Mike and Pastor Rich had been talking about living every part of our lives with a Biblical world-view, discerning what is the Lie and what is the Truth. What they shared overrides all cultures, all times and epics, race, gender, etc. Truly wonderful!

So, mostly I talked to them about what Titus 2 and 1 Peter 3 have to say very specifically about godly women:

• Older women teach the younger ones to love their children and husbands...workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands so that the Word of God may not be dishonored.

• A gentle and quiet spirit is precious in God's sight.

• A woman who respects and submits to her husband may win him over to obedience to God.

• Deuteronomy's admonition for us to train-up our children in the way they should go by talking to them of God's truths in the home, walking with them, at bedtime and in the morning, etc.

I shared from my own experience of feeling useless at times as a mom at home with four children, thinking I should be “Doing God's work!” Of my husband's encouragement that I was doing just that as I taught our daughter's about God and His ways day and night, in the car, on walks, at home, etc. I reminded them that if we get married and have children, that is God's work for us for a season. As we pray for and train up our kids to love and serve God, they also, whether they marry or stay single will be doing “God's work” and so on and so on. Is that not an amazing work of God through us multiplying “workers for the harvest”!

When I was done one of the older quieter ladies asked if she could share a story:

Her husband was a drunkard and didn't like her going to church. He wouldn't let her go at times, other times he locked their gate so she couldn't come home, often he gave her money to buy booze when she was on her way to church. She would pray over the money and do what her husband asked, he would interrupt her prayer time and so on. Eventually, he didn't let her go to church at all. One night, heavily burdened, she got on her knees and cried out to God. She felt the mighty presence of the Spirit. The next day, her husband told her she could go to church whenever she wanted and he didn't prevent her from praying or lock the gate or ridicule her anymore. The best part of the whole story is that he, too, became a believer. Hallelujah!

This woman's story spoke to the second lady's question above and confirmed the faithfulness and truth of God's Word.

The goal of API is to combine our on the ground initiatives, whether providing free medical care or training local communities in the manufacture and distribution of biosand water filters, with effective kingdom building evangelism, church planting and discipleship. To this end, API invested in training 22 Kenyans in personal evangelism. These trained evangelists partnered with the medical team in reaching two communities in SW Kenya with free medical care and the gospel. The first community, Osiliento, had no local church. The goal for this community was the planting of a new church with new believers and discipled by seasoned pastors and lay leaders. The trained Kenyan evangelism team witnessed to all who came for medical care. Once a patient had seen the doctor and had received their medications, they were offered an opportunity to hear the life giving word of God. Teams of two and three would also walk off to all points of the compass sharing the good news of Jesus with whoever would listen. In this way the gospel was shared with over 400 people and over 160 made first time professions of faith. Additionally, a new church was planted under a grove of trees with 164 people in attendance for the first service. At the second location, Osinunu, a church was already operating but was needed an injection of vitality. On three consecutive days, 9 of the trained evangelists traveled the local area, braving sweltering sun and pounding hail storms to witnessing to over 120 people and leading 60 in to a first time relationship with Jesus Christ. In the next several weeks we will learn about the impact on the local church from this renewed outpouring of the Spirit of God. All in all it was worth the effort in time, money and prayer. Thank you to everyone who has given to this project.

It's 6:30 in the evening here at Mabanga and we are having a thunder and lightening storm that lights up the sky with awesome clarity. It's been going on for about two hours and it began near the end of one of our afternoon Bible Training sessions. Since all the buildings here at the center have tin roofs – the sound of the rain pelting the roof is absolutely deafening – so we cut our session short and the students are studying while we wait for dinner.

Pastor Joseph Lemeta                                                 Pastor's Conference

Pastor Moses Biketi

We finished our course for this year on how to read and interpret the Bible and began our sessions on the Doctrine of God last night (Tuesday), continuing today and finishing up tomorrow (Thursday). I have had many conversations with the students – mostly pastors and some lay leaders – and they all expressed great thankfulness for the opportunity to learn more about God. They send their greetings and thanks to Summit Christian Fellowship, Evangelical Reformed Church in Tacoma, and to API USA for the blessing they have been enjoying.

Friday morning I will be traveling back to Limuru to join my wife and Vicki Bartels who will both be flying back to the U.S. on Saturday. Sunday I will be traveling to Kitui, a city east of Nairobi to meet with a pastor there who came a spoke for one session to our pastors on entrepenurial initiatives, and then flying back to the U.S. on Tuesday.

Mama Kim and a very cute baby

God has been good to us all throughout this trip and we thank Him for His faithfulness. We have all sensed the power of God through the prayers of the many who are praying for us – keep it up! For all of you who have in some way contributed and participated in this mission, please know that your support has not been in vain, but the gospel has been extended through your generosity and support.

Here are a few snapshots of the people and places here.

Telephone pole replacement crew                            Road crew on the way to Kisumu

How many can you count in this taxi?

I'm pretty sure you learn to drive cars here - not donkeys

Girl with a basket                                                       Everyone loves roasted corn!

It is Sunday night and I am back at the Mabanga Conference Centre, trying to get ready for a week of Bible Training with 20 pastors and leaders from the churches here in Kenya. I am a little behind the curve here since both of my guest lecturers have been prevented from coming to Kenya so I have to prepare lessons I hadn't planned on having to prepare. However, that just convinces me that God has great things in store here because the opposition has been working overtime to throw obstacles in our path. Please keep us in prayer all this week, praying that God would grant us joy and strength, health and endurance, doing all we do for His glory and by His grace.

I have been greatly encouraged by the reports from the pastors who have come from Kilgoris to attend both the Pastor's Conference and the Bible Training. While the medical camps were going on, the evangelistic teams from the Masai churches spread out all over the Mara district preaching the gospel and one of the pastors told me tonight that over 260 people came to Christ as a result of their labor. And that means new churches, which means new leadership, which means more training up of pastors and leaders. Would you pray for God's direction and provision as we contemplate expanding our pastor training to twice a year in response to the increased demand?

Kim and Vicki are in Limuru with Lydia Kamau, the head of El Shaddai Orphanage where they will be helping with a field trip the boys at the orphanage will have to the Giraffe Centre and Elephant Rehabilitation Centre in Nairobi. They are also planning to meet with the director of the Nairobi Crisis Pregnancy Centre to see what is happening with crisis pregnancy centers in Africa and to support and encourage the work here.

We had a great trip to the game park in Masai Mara, and we were visibly reminded again what a great God we have who created all these things.

Many people must have been praying for us because the journey there was incredibly difficult. From Kilgoris to the western gate of Masai Mara is only about 50 km, but that little journey took us 4 hours. We started at 4 am Saturday morning and didn't arrive until 8 am.  The picture below gives you the reason why. But once in the park we had a wonderful time.

However, we didn't want to try to return to Kilgoris given the condition of the road, so we just headed back to Limuru. Unfortunately that meant that we could not spend any time with the saints in Kilgoris and they and we were very disappointed.  But we are thanking God for His wonderful protection and provision for us while we were on the road this weekend. 

We are heavy into our clinic schedule. The team is skilled in loading and unloading the vehicles and setting up a medical clinic under trees or in mud walled churches is now second nature!! It takes about 45 minutes from the time we unload until we are able to start seeing patients. They come slowly at first but when word gets out that a medical clinic is in the rural community, they come from all points of the compass. We do not know how far they walk but I do know that the Masai think nothing of a 10 mile walk, even when they are sick. In the first three days we treated close to 500 people. One woman who came in for sore knees and lower back pain, was accompanied by her 69 year old son. Turns out that she was 107 years old!


The Masai are generally healthy but they still lack basic health care. One young girl, three year old Anna, was brought to us comatose, malnourished and a high temperature. Our nurse carried her on the back of a hired motorcycle 18 miles to take her to the local hospital. We have had similar cases where the children were purposely starved and this appeared to be one of those situations. Today, we went to see her at the hospital and she was bright, smiling, and able to walk the hall to her bed with a small piece of roasted corn in her hand! What a blessing to our team as we had prayed for her extensively!!!

The evangelism team, a group of 20 Kenyans, trained by Rev. Joe Michael, a country director for E3 Partners, worked hard over the first three days, talking to almost 400 people and leading at least 170 to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. What a blessing to pray for them and then send them on their way: two walking towards the river, three towards the rising sun and others towards groups of huts. One group was invited to speak to a public primary school about God. About 55 kids were there and 17 of them asked Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior. On Sunday a new church was started under a group of trees. Our team was honored to be with over 160 people who were there for the first church service!

We are now on the home stretch and some are looking at our return home with mixed feelings. We are eating well, sleeping little and feeling very blessed and honored to be serving the people of Kenya!

From the Pastoral Development Team:

Today is Thursday and things have been very busy here in Mabanga. We are up around 5 and back in bed around 11 or 12, but we are enjoying every moment – even the power outages and the fact that we have running water in our rooms at odd moments – usually when we don't need it.

We traveled all day Monday and got to Mabanga late Monday afternoon and opened the conference that night with the first session and then fell into bed around midnight. The next three days have been a busy, but wonderful time of fellowship, worship, prayer and teaching. There are over 30 churches represented here and we have 51 pastors and wives attending the conference. We have four new pastors this year from Turkana which is in northwestern Kenya. It is a hot, dry and desolate region that is quite inaccessible even to Kenyans. In fact, the pastors who came from Turkana talked about coming to Kenya – even though they live in Kenya. And they told me that they had to travel at night because to travel during the day is impossible, because the tires of the vehicles get overheated and burst. But they were so happy to be here to take part in this conference.

Kim and Vicki have been such a blessing to the ladies here. Each day, they take the ladies for a couple of sessions by themselves and from the sounds of it they are enjoying themselves very much. We hear a lot of singing from the ladies' meeting room. They will have so much to share when they return.

Tomorrow morning we will be heading down to Kilgoris which is an all day trip, and then Saturday we will be in Masai Mara Game Park for a look at the wildlife. We'll say goodbye to Rich that afternoon as he takes a plane from the park back to Nairobi to head to the US.  Kim and Vicki and I will be in Kilgoris Sunday to worship with our Masai brothers and sisters.   Keep us in your prayers.

Jack Bauer could not have performed better than our team on Thursday. We rolled out of bed at 4 AM and were in our rented Matatu by 4:30 on our way to Masai Mara game park. Our medicine was 4 days late in arriving and forced us to cancel our Sunday day off and move our trip to the park from Monday to last Thursday. One wrong turn on a pitch black road early in the morning led to a 3 hour detour. So, instead of arriving at the park at sunrise we  were there at 11 AM. The road was very rough with several places of mud that required us to push and pull a bit. The migration was in full swing and the savannah was cover with wildebeast, elephants, giraffes, zebras and everything else you see when watching “Lion King.” Frequently we paused to wait for the animals to cross the road and occasionally we simply pushed through them with the car. Just before leaving the park we found a small pride of lions, four females and one very regal male. We left the park just at 5 PM when the rains began. We were excited to return to our base because of the great news that the medicine arrived. We had four hours of sorting and filling our pharmacy boxes and planned on returning home by 8 PM. At the top of the escarpement overlooking the park, the rain came, African style. Mix rain, unimproved road and a heavy clay soil and you have a  lot of fun. About 13 miles in to the journey the vehicle high centered while turning off in to the bush to avoid the worst of the road. After several hours of digging and jacking we were still stuck and called for help. Cold, wet and in the dark we huddled together in the van to keep warm. Some slept, others talked or listened to music waiting for a Land Rover with proper mud tires, four wheel drive, diff locks and a winch. They used everything but the winch to pull us out. Another route was selected, almost three times our 50 mile original route, but navigable in the rain. The rescue vehicle pulled us through 6 miles of slick, muddy bush tracks to get to the new route. Gasps and several “no, no, no’s” followed by the rolling down of windows came as a final river crossing placed us on the new track. At 11:30 PM we prayed with the two men and the Land Rover and set out on 35 miles of the worst road imaginable. We only managed 10 miles an hour until we reached the paved road. After another 2 hours we arrived safely at 4:30 AM, exactly 24 hours after departing. Our day was just beginning though as we cleaned the mud off, ate breakfast and began processing all of our medications. We left for our first clinic day and ministered to the Masai people until 5 PM. Back at base we managed to eat, restock a bit of our pharmacy and crawl in to bed at 9 PM. Thank you to all who have prayed for the medicine to arrive, and for our travel challenges.