NO SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE!

A LOT OF KIDS SMOKE IN KENYA TODAY!  This little man in the picture is being forced to try a smoke by his peers.     TOBACCO has its place today in Kenya, with the many other Substances taken into the lives and bodies of our young people.

Way Back in 2003 I Broadcast on Radio Sayare here in Eldoret.  I had been prompted by a reported case in the DAILY  NATION's Saturday Magazine.  The article described how Eston Irungu Gakunga had lost a leg due to a smoking habit.

He told the reporter - 'I started smoking when I was 16, after I succumbed to peer pressure.  My friends who were smokers made fun of me, calling me a 'woman' just because I didn't smoke!   I finally gave in; I mean who wants to lose their friends.   NOW when I look at my leg, I wish I had lost my friends instead.'    

SMOKING in Kenya has diminished among the adult population since 2003, but young people are still increasingly Users.       I said, in 2003, in my radio broadcast  -  (edited)

'  A good deal of the Western World is now actively waging war against the use of Tobacco.  This has  seriously affected the industry so that they have been forced to seek alternative markets for their products.   They have increasingly turned to the third world.    10 million people annually can expect to die of Tobacco related diseases (circa 2003) - 70% of them from the Third World, and many of them will have begun to smoke in their teenage.    The bottom line is that the Industry wants to SELL Cigarettes, and they do not regard or care how many smokers eventually end up MAIMED, CRIPPLIED, OR DEAD from becoming addicted to their cigarettes.

Listen, this is the Truth about Cigarette Smoking;  these are just SOME of the results that come from this habit.    -     Diminished or extinguished sense of smell and taste;  frequent colds; smokers cough; Gastric Ulcers; Chronic Bronchitis; Increased Blood Pressure; Congestion of the Lungs; Heart Disease; Strokes; CANCER of the mouth, larynx, pharynx, lungs, pancreas, cervix, uterus, and bladder...AND this can lead to other complications such as Gakunga's loss of a LEG!     Cigarette smoking is, perhaps

the most devastating, preventable, cause of disease and premature death.   Cigarettes are highly ADDICTIVE.   One Third of young people who 'try one' end up being addicted, by the time they are 20, or even before.    TOBACCO smoke is as dangerous a substance with more than 500 known poisons.  Every time a smoker lights up he, or  she, is risking self injury by inhaling these poisons.

Many will know the Brand name of MARLBOROUGH CIGARETTES.  Our own Kenya Safari Rally used to be sponsored by them.   I wonder if you remember the man on the horse, depicted on every packet?   He was real person, an Actor named Wayn McLaren.   He died in 1992, aged 51.   At the beginning of his advertising career, he used to brag that he smoked at least 15 cigarettes daily.  Later on he refused to smoke at all!...Just before his death he went from a Meeting of the Shareholders of Marlborough Cigarette Company, and asked them to limit their Advertising.  He was then near to death with Cancer of the lung, and fully believed it was tobacco related.    They did not listen to him.

MANY TURN TO CIGARETTES to bolster their own ego, or to give themselves self-confidence.    A cigarette is said to comfort and calm the nerves and banish isolation or loneliness.  One Brand used  to advertise itself with a picture of a man walking alone down a dark street, in the rain; and putting a cigarette, with a glowing end, to his lips.   The caption read 'You'll never be alone with a Strand Cigarette.'   But the Truth is that the smoking of tobacco releases Epinephrine, a hormone which creates physiological stress in the smoker, rather than relaxation.   Tobacco IS poisonous, and CAN progressively damage, and eventually take you life.     Tobacco is a false crutch that will let you down.   There is no ultimate happiness in Smoking; no lasting comfort, or  profit.

I used to smoke cigarettes - about ten a day.   I had begun when I was about 16, due to peer pressure just like Mzee Gakunga.    One day when I was 22, I was travelling seated in an empty compartment of a train on the way to work in the London City, in England.   I had my Bible with me, and was reading in the New Testament in the Epistle to the Romans chapter 12 v1 ' Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable, unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to the world around you.'  A noise made me look up, and through the window saw that we were passing an industrial area with tall blackened factory chimneys belching out even denser smoke, which was spreading itself over the entire locality.     I was actually smoking a pipe of tobacco as i gazed at the passing scene.    Immediately, I seemed to hear clearly in my mind a voice quietly commenting ' You are as one of those chimneys.  You are corrupting yourself, and all around you, with what you are putting within you.     Suddenly my spiritual eyes saw it clearly.     I opened the window and taking  my pipe from my mouth threw it out and away, quickly followed by a leather pouch full of tabacco that I carried with me, AND a packet of cigarettes as well.       From that day I have never smoked.    I suddenly felt CLEAN.

GOD  wants us to LIVE and not to DIE.    He wants us to be filled with HEALTH and not SICKNESS.

Remember Mzee Gakunga once more.     He  smoked to make himself acceptable to his friends, and he finally sacrificed his leg, his mobility, his wholeness.    Looking back he wished he had sacrificed pleasing his friends instead.       Beware of being Man Pleasers at the expense of your LIFE.

HOPE you will all have a A SMOKE FREE WEEK.     God Bless you all, and every one, and prove to you that He Loves you thoroughly and  completely,   with all  His Heart.

SAY NO to DRUGS of any kind, and SAY YES to the REALLITY of the ONE GOD who loves you truly.

Sincerely,   John, Esther, and Daryl Green

and all at Testimony Faith |Homes and School