That was Neil’s topic this afternoon while teaching in Kalolini, Kenya, a village near the Indian Ocean. Neil thinks maybe about 100 people came to the
church building that is on a hill. The people there thought it was much easier to butcher a chicken than to tell others about Jesus.
Then Neil asked them which they thought was more important. Well ---- when they
thought about it, they had to agree that it is much more important to tell
others about Jesus --- even though chickens are so tasty and help keep people
from starving.
Neil waxed strong sharing chicken butchering stories. He told about his trips to the mountains in Chiapis, Mexico when visiting our missionary friend David Garcia. Neil couldn’t speak Spanish, and certainly couldn't speak the dialect of the indigenous mountain people in southeastern Mexico. But Neil knew how to butcher a chicken. When Neil saw the women getting ready to prepare a chicken for dinner, he took the knife, brushed the women aside and and went to work. They were so shocked that the gringo pastor knew how to cut up that chicken!
Americans might have difficulty answering Neil’s question,
because so many have never butchered a chicken. In fact, most Americans have never
seen a live chicken up close and personal. Neil told of the time that a chicken
wandered away from a hatchery in a town about an hour from us. Our friends saw
the chicken in their back yard pecking around looking for food, so they put it
under a pail and asked the guys at the hatchery what to do with the chicken.
They were assured that they could keep the chicken. The only problem was that
they had never seen a chicken being butchered. So they called Neil. Neil sat
down in his chair in our living room and described the process step-by-step to the
teenaged son who cut up the chicken listening carefully to Neil’s directions while cradling the phone on his shoulder next to his ear.
Then Neil told the people in the Kenyan village this
afternoon that in the same way, the Holy Spirit guides us if we are willing to ask the Holy Spirit how to tell others about Jesus. When Neil invited people to give their hearts to
Jesus, no one raised their hands. Neil thinks most of them might already be Christians. But when Neil asked who would like the Holy
Spirit to help them tell others about Jesus, hands shot up all over the room. Oh,
if only all the churches in America would respond so eagerly to telling others
about Jesus!
Neil said he and Francis slept well last night. They had
been invited to stay at someone’s house, and they were both so tired from their
travels. In the 2-day trip to Kenya Neil had slept only about 5 hours on the
planes. Francis did all the driving on the 9-hour drive from Nairobi to the
village of Kaloleni near Mombasa where they are staying this week. They came
through some rain along the way. The roadway was slippery from the oil from the
diesel trucks, which was rather treacherous when wet. Neil thought he needed to
stay awake on that stretch of road helping Francis stay inside his lane and
avoid both the oncoming traffic as well as the road edges. The further they
traveled, the better Francis’ driving became, so Neil was able to drop off for
about a 3-hour nap. Neil said it had rained again after they arrived in
Kaloleni, which is good because it has been so very dry.
Please join us in prayer for rain to fall at just the right
times so the Kenyans can have good crops this year. Please also pray for the
people who attended the meeting to become effective in evangelism, so it would
become as normal for them as butchering a chicken.
Love,
Ruth