COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS - NAME THEM, ONE BY ONE!!!

THERE ARE MANY SCENES OF THIS KIND IN KENYA - EVEN CLOSE TO TESTIMONY FAITH HOMES, here in Eldoret.      On fringes of the Town Centre hundreds of thousands of people tend to exist in mud and squalor most of the year around - especially 2013 has been WET, and the almost continuous intermittent rain storms have things running with water - and even sewerage!   Not a lot of comfort to be found in a mud and wattle hut of some fifteen feet in diameter.    The grass roof may often leak, rotten with age, and floor of cow dung and mud, dried and hardened, can become damp and uncomfortable.     A husband and wife and MANY children will share the space.     All the usual fasilities of indoor sanitation, electric light,  seperate kitchen and so on just not there.   The toilet just a hole in the ground some distance from the house.    VERY DIFFERENT living to that of those of us who have grown up in First World Countries - even those of us who WERE in fact poor!
My own beginnings were lived inside a crumbling terrace house in a small town called STARBECK in the north east of England.      It was rented house costing about eight pounds (U,K,) a month; a house quite neglected by the owner, and infested with rats, cock-roaches and other vermin.     It had one room and a small kitchen downstairs and two small bedrooms above.     The toilet was in a shack at the bottom end of a small narrow yard where we also kept a few chicken and a rabbit or two.    We had no money in those days, and dreaded the knock of the Rent Collectors hand on the door at the end of the month.     It was in the early 1940s and the second world war was still continuing.   Food was very scarce, and very expensive. We had a small radio which crackled and hummed with bad reception.    NO T.V. or other electronic aids such as a phone or even lighting at times.      VERY different from today.
YET happiness was to be found there in the midst of the LITTLE that we had.     One of the factors that helped us was that we lived quite unaware how other, richer, people were living.     Everyone around us were also poor, and even those I went to school with were poor.      We found it difficult to covet what we could not see!     We may at times have 'wished' for more, but on the whole we learnt to make the most of what was there - and made merry with it.      There was love in the house!    There was food, however little and meagre, in the house, and there was laughter and fun in the house!       I am glad to have BEGUN my journey here on Earth in such a situation............       I guess JESUS may have felt the same.
Perhaps I might not DESIRE poverty, but I tend to think that to be rich or essentially well off, without having known poverty and learned to live with it, and to value those around you at the same time, is a great disadvantage.

When Testimony began it existed in poverty, without 'Western' essentials and necessities.     Our first home together with the children - almost twenty of them - was of mud and wattle, giving way to sun baked clay brick - even when we moved to the Town of Eldoret in 1972 we still found ourselves in a house made of mud - mud baked brick and wattle......Our first home was without electricity, running water, or sanitation. The ceilings were not there, and the windows had no glass     It was a warm, open plan, happy house. There was laughter in it - it exuded 'family' and provided security, and a place to find safety in.

HOW are we all here today?       The Town is now encroaching in upon us with all its urben temptations and attractions.     We are no longer secluded from the developing material and technocratic society  all around us.     We can no longer (the children that is) be CONTENT with what we might have - the NEW assets and baubles of the the new age being constantly thrust upon us by those with more money to wast on pleasure and luxury.       THIS is perhaps the greatest problem facing us.       The Lust of the World - its wealth, its power, and its idolatries.      
The House Esther and I moved into in 1972 is still here, forty years or so later.We lived in it with a family of 40 or so for twenty eight years    A MUD house showing wear and tear even in 1972 - it was well
over forty years old THEN!!       Successive owners have plastered the outside with a veneer of plaster but it remains a MUD house.     Everything in it second hand and subject to wear and need for updating and repair continually.         Across the road is Jacaranda Cottage, also a MUD house behind the plaster, though not as old as the other.      Then the two NEWER houses built in 2007, this time of solid stone with good foundation - well their furniture and contents are newer - but still experiencing daily wear.   Each home and family though not always having enough, are never as poor as they might have been.    For the first twenty years of our existence we were blessed with enough without craving for more.   BUT slowly, as the Town grew, and as our SCHOOL grew, and the lifestyles of those richer and with MORE began to affect us, things are changing...........Now we are being absorbed by the Town.     Infiltrated by not only the t.v, but now by the INTERNET via computors, laptops and even perhaps the most devious tool of them all, the mobile phone.  
There is still, for the most part, laughter and fun to be found in our four Homes, but also more temptation to aspire for MORE.        SO these days we are having to concentrate on showing the values that come from just being 'family' and from realising that true contentedness is not dependant on material wellbeing or excess.
Not easy.  

STOP PRESS!!!!!

WELL, today Daryl journied up to our Capital, Nairobi for some business.     At about 2p.m. our time he entered a Shopping Mall at Westlands, on the outskirts of the City and a well known tourist area and shopping centre.        Once inside there was the sound of GUNFIRE, and it became apparent that the MALL was being attacked / robbed / what-have-you, by thugs.         Alarms were ringing everywhere and finally the Police surrounded the entire area in efforts to contain the thugs.       The main problem was on the 2nd floor, which Daryl fortunately  failed to reach, valiantly deciding to leave the building whilst still on the ground floor.  VERY scary that  such a thing could happen - first time in our history.      Carol heard about it from Daryl himself as he was running out of the complex and she immediately phoned us.     Many were injured and some have died.   BUT for the Grace of God.      This is almost NEWS as I am typing.
AS I AM TYPING the Police are still surrounding the
Mall whilst the gang is holed up in the 2nd floor with hostages.     So far it is being said by Red Cross observers that at least 20 are dead and perhaps 50 wounded.     These figures cannot yet be confirmed,  but there is no doubt this was a major confrontation by the Police and will be a set back to the Tourist Trade - we wait to see from where this attack originates, but it would seem to be internal crime, and this will reflect badly once again on our internal security.      We Thank God that He got Daryl safely out before the worst happened AND
before he got to the 2nd Floor where the worst is still happening.      Truly he watches over us, and I am sure many are giving Thanks to night for His Care of them. But our prayers continue for those who may still be being held, and our cry goes up that no others will have to innocently give up their lives to the Greed of Men.
STRANGE that I should be touching on this in the Blog today -    It is truly covetousness that moves men and women to greed and discontent and to CRIME.    It can never be the way to true happiness.

This must  be all for today.      We are ourselves looking heavenward at this time for God's help and notice. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.



John and Esther