Careful What You Teach

One thing I learned during my time in Jr. High ministry was to be careful what I teach...God has a habit of forcing me to conveniently have to live out my lessons for the kids in my own life each time I teach. It always irritated me because teaching a principle and living out a principle are two different things entirely. Like the week I teach on family conflict, I end up having family conflict at home, or the week on patience, something happens that really makes me wait, it's much easier to teach something than live it out. When I finally recognized this pattern, I realized I needed to be very careful what I taught cause I should surely see it in life experiences that week. As effective as this habit is for giving me live teaching examples from my own experiences, it did make me want to carefully consider what i would teach in succeeding weeks.

With Empower A Child Kenya, I also do times of teaching. Our team takes every Friday morning to spend time going through a book on leadership to learn how to be more effective, godly leaders as a team. It's a great time of sharpening, growing, and learning together. Yet I was reminded last week about the importance of being careful what i teach again.

This particular Friday morning was on "Tests in Leadership" and we went over some of the tests that all leaders have to undergo during their time of leadership, such as jealousy, ambition, impossible situations, etc. We had a good discussion over this difficult topic...who likes to be warned of the hard things they will face in their life?

Afterwards we went to a primary school and then split up in town. While some of the team was making the long, hot journey back to the ministry house, I had to go and run errands around town. The first was the new rental company. They had called me in the morning and told me to come but I wasn't prepared for what they had called me in for.

"The owner of the house has decided that he doesn't want you in his house because you will be too many people," said a receptionist. "your deposit will be refunded to you on Monday."

I sat dumbfounded, mouth agape, on the brink of tears. "Is there anything we can do to change his mind?" I asked.

"You can call this lady," she said and gave me a phone number for a member of the company, "and maybe she can help you."

I walked out of the office in a daze, and down the seven flights of stairs. The skyscrapers of downtown Nairobi towered over me, just beginning to reflect the golden rays of the disappearing day. Men in suits with brief cases, beggars holding cups, and carefully primped and preened women all passed me on the streets without me noticing them. They may have noticed me though and questioned my sanity because it probably looked like I was talking to myself.

I wasn't talking to myself though. I was praying.

"God...you brought us to this house. I am sure of it. It has everything we were praying for, even down to a large water tank and a shamba. This is our house. It has to be our house. God, please, change his heart. I'm begging you. Don't let your servant be put to shame.

"God, you know. You've heard my prayers. We can't stay where we are. We can't go back to looking for another house. This is our house. Please. You move mountains...move this one too."

After fighting the chaotic jam and traffic of the eastern end of Nairobi, I finally made it back to Fedha. Already MSTs were hard at working making bean burritos. An electric lantern was their only light, as usual. When we moved in December of 2009, the kitchen light of that house was broken. We were promised it would be fixed. Six months later it was fixed, but four months later it was broken again. We had been promised for the last three months that the rental company was sending someone to fix it. Yet this illusive handiman never showed up, so they continued their work by lantern light.

They had to get the jerrican man to bring us water on his wheelbarrow too. Ever since the rental company had "fixed" the water tank, we hadn't been able to get a drop of water from the city council into that house, leaving us in a full house with no water. Once again we were being told "we will fix it right away," but the months were still slipping by with our pipes remaining dry. This was only few of the neverending wrangles with the previous rental company. It became clear that while they were given money to fix our house, workers in the rental company pocketed the money, which leaving us in a broken house. This had been going on for months and I had to sit through meeting after meeting with various representatives of the company, which all ended the same way. "We are working on it." While they continued to "work on it" I also decided to "work on it" and move as soon as a house opened up.

And a house had opened up. Miraculously, we had been able to see the house, immediately put down the deposit, given our notice for our previous house, and start preparations for moving the next week. Yet, that was when I got the call. That horrible call.

I walked into the house and straight into my room. I needed to cry out to God more and more. I picked up my guitar and started to play and play, not even listening when I was finally called for dinner. I was done. I knew it. I couldn't handle more months of four hours a day on a matatu. I couldn't handle more wrangles with the rental company or more months of no water. The long, dusty days of fruitless house hunting and extortionist house brokers needed to be over. We needed to move.

Not that we hadn't enjoyed and appreciated our house in Fedha. We had made friends in the area, loved our peaceful quiet days off and the sunshine in the garden. We learned how to make do without water. We also learned how to make the time on matatus tolerable (I read more books and novels in this past year than I have since Jr. High).

However, all things must come to an end and for us to grow as an organization, we couldn't stay there any longer.

I tried calling the lady they told me to call. Her phone was off. It stayed off too...all weekend. So I just kept praying. Then I remembered our lesson during training that morning-"Tests of Leadership" and realized it was my day to be tested with an impossible situation.

The next day we were preparing for a welcome home party for Sean, one of my old AIM team friends. The team came over to help with preperations. In telling them the housing situation, Martin volunteered to call the owner of the house and seek to find a solution. I immediatly handed him my phone and tried to clean while actually waiting in anxious anticipation.

He came back inside after five minutes. "We are fine. The owner has given us permission to move in. It was all a misunderstanding," he said. I almost cried again, but this time in relief and joy.

One week later, we moved in. I felt like the Israelites coming into the promised land. Our big, beautiful house flowing with water, hot showers, working lights, and working doors. To my happy surprise, the few issues we saw that needed to be fixed were fixed immediately, without any arguing, false promises, wasted time, or shoddy workmanship. It was wonderful. God heard our prayers. We got our house.

We are still getting used to our new schedule and our new environment. We can walk to three out of our five projects now. When a project starts at 10am, we can leave at 9:30 instead of 8. When a project ends at 4, we are home by 4:30 and not by 6. The water runs everyday. Everything works. As a team, we can have our meetings at the house, meaning we can have meetings with our computers, account books, and craftsupplies all with us...making our meetings more effective. We can eat lunch at our house and not have to live on French fries for lunch everyday. And on weekends, we have visitors stop by. We have friends in the area who stop by just to visit, something we couldn't have at our old house cause it was too far away. And in case we don't want to cook, we can walk up the road and visit Java House for some tasty icecream and coffee. We are going to get spoiled with all this luxury.

This last Friday, in our huge new living room, we reviewed our lessons from the previous week on "Tests of Leadership" and I really laughed and rejoiced. We survived. God brought us through.

Then this week, we talked about "the Art of Delegation" and I laughed some more. Can you guess what lesson I needed to learn this week? I had better be careful what I teach next week.