Happy Thanksgiving! We now have internet access, but it is real slow. We are sitting at a hotel in Nakuru, Kenya awaiting our Thanksgiving Dinner. This morning we left Kitale and made the 5 hour drive to Nakuru. After a late lunch we had the opportunity to see several animals as we try to decompress from a wonderful week. I will try to give you an overview and we will add details and commentary when we return.

Monday we taught an overview of the New Testament to over 100 pastors and church leaders from at least 6 churches in the Kitale area. Bishop Geoffrey uses the description that the African Church is 100 miles wide and 1 inch deep. Hopefully we helped at least a little. We got wonderful feedback and they really appreciated the handouts in Swahili.
Tuesday we went to the prison. We were in with the major offenders and felt totally at peace and safe. The sang for us and the Kitale Growth Church praise band sang for them. Carter shared his testimony and we preached the Gospel. Today we were told that 179 men accepted Christ that day! We also went to the women’s prison and Dyer shared his testimony and James shared the Gospel. While there we were able to see Baby Brian that was born while we were there last year and named after Brian Word.

Wednesday was amazing. After spending the morning at the church with the children we went to the county hospital. We were able to pray for many patients and shared some bread and milk. Two patients accepted Christ for the first time as we prayed! As we left we stopped and Pat led the team praying for a young woman awaiting surgery. A few moments later when she was taken to the operating room they discovered that she did not need surgery and she was able to go home that day. The doctors were puzzled by the situation and were told that some American Missionaries had prayed for her. Praise Jesus!

Later Wednesday we went to the local orphanage. We brought several soccer balls, a bag of oranges, a bag of mangos, a 100 lb bag of rice, and left a donation to buy more food. The children there are amazing and the staff are heroes to us.
We finished the evening with a special dinner at Bishop Geoffrey’s house with his family and some church leaders. It was a special time of sharing and reflecting back on a wonderful week.

As we look back. Monday we taught, Tuesday we preached, Wednesday we prayed, healed, and fed.

-Chris McInnish

We are in Kenya! Arrived in Nairobe last night and will be leaving to go back to the airport in a few minutes for the flight to Kitale. When we land we will head straight to church and then will spend the afternoon preparing for tomorrow. Tomorrow we will be leading a pastor’s conference on the New Testament. Please pray that our words are blessed and we can further reveal this great mystery.

-Chris McInnish

The group is James Foley, Carter McWhorter, Patrick McWhorter, Dyer McWhorter, and myself. We will be with the Kitale Growth Church in Kitale, Kenya.

We packed some of our extra suitcases the other night. Lots of clothes, shoes, and soccer balls. Monday we will be leading a pastor’s conference in Kitale. We are using the Secret Church material from David Platt on A Survey of the New Testament. The handouts were translated into Swahili. Thanks to Andy Bartels for helping develop teaching materials that show us the Swahili and English side by side. We are copying books for each recipient and plan to teach for 6 to 8 hours. I hope our voices hold up. What an opportunity for discipleship!

Kenya is 9 hours ahead of Montgomery, so each night you go to bed we will be waking to start our day. Please remember us and say a little prayer.

- Chris McInnish

Kyle met us in the airport and we were escorted from there by our Haitian police friend who is lovingly referred to as “Mr.T.” Once we got to New Life we sat down and Kyle told us a little about how things were going to go. He told us that the leadership of the deaf community volunteered to organize the people in the community to be ready to have the photos taken.

When we arrived at the community we were quickly mobbed by all of the children who absolutely love Kyle. As soon as the car from 410 drove up children came running out of the huts to meet him. Many people are surprised to find out that even though the adults in the community are deaf, most of the children are hearing. It’s very common for this to happen, but especially in Haiti where much of the deafness comes as the result of illness rather than condition from birth. The children in the community love to sing. Kyle plays guitar for them and goes through the few praise songs that he knows – often translating them into Creole. One of the coolest moments of the day was hearing all these Haitian children singing at the top of their lungs ‘Wi Jezi, wi Jezi, wi Jezi…’ – the chorus from ‘Trading my Sorrows.”

Mr. T escorting us by motorcycle to the New Life Children's home Photo by Lori Mercer

We got to hear from several members of the leadership council most of whom are very young and all seem like very smart, determined people. Mackenson St.Louise is one of the leaders and he is determined that the community learn English as well as French, Creole and Proper American Sign Language. In an effort to help in their endeavors we delivered to them several books that help teach proper sign language. They wasted no time as soon as we were done they they all took one of the books and set down to read them. It was awesome to watch them as they devoured the books – each of them was trying out the signs depicted in the books and then showing the others.

Josh Brewer, our wonderful translator was there to translate several amazing stories as the leadership council each shared where they were during the earth quake and how they came to the deaf community. You can hear more about Mackinson’s awesome story on kyle’s blog.

Finishing reading this post which includes more photos on Will Adam’s blog by click here

Written by Will Adams at www.w-hue.com – Video Production Director at Frazer

As some of you know Frazer, my church and place of employment is currently partnered with 410 Bridge to help house, educate and disciple the deaf community of Haiti. We’re also now working with Mission of Hope which miraculously helped us find land free of charge for the deaf community in exchange for our partnership with them to provide spiritual development for an entire community of Haitians, both Deaf and hearing. You might be interested in reading the posts from my first trip to Haiti to hear were we were back in april, and then check out this video to hear the most recent update from Kyle Reschke, our missionary on the ground.

This is my second trip to Haiti and my first Help Portrait event – What is Help portrait you ask? Well you can visit their website for more detailed information or you can simply check out this graphic:

And this is what we’re going to do for the Haitian Deaf community. Frazer’s November mission team to Haiti will arrive in Port Au Prince tomorrow morning. We’ve got three pro photographers and myself (an enthusiastic hobbyist) as well as a couple of people to assist and an interpreter for the deaf. We’re going to take high quality portraits of each family in the community and return in december to give them their photos, matted and framed as a christmas gift from Frazer. It’ll be the first picture they’ll have to hang in their new homes. Many of these people have had photographs taken of them, but they’ve never had a portrait of their family that they could keep. For some of them it may be the first photo of themselves they ever owned. But more than the photos we just want to love of the deaf community. Relationship building is always the number one goal of these trips and we’re hoping that through those relationships we’ll see more and more people in Haiti – deaf and hearing – come to know Christ.

The Team: Billy Pope – photographer, Josh Brewer – interpreter, Lori Mercer – photographer, Diane Klaaren – Assistant, Myself, Butch McPherson – director of missions, Nick Drollette – Photographer

Today we traveled to florida and took a few moments to get to know each other and talk about how we’re going to be working as a team over the next few days. It’s a tall order to get high-quality portraits for over 150 families over the next three days, but I believe this group is up to the challenge. So far our team has really enjoyed hanging out – just check out their Facebook pages for some of the fun pictures from today’s day of travel.

We’re all very excited about tomorrow and the team is very appreciative of the support we’ve been shown on Facebook today – lots of people are praying for us and that is a huge encouragement. We’re hoping that more than giving them great portraits that we’ll get a good opportunity to relate to the community. You can be praying for us in several ways: That the language barrier isn’t a barrier, that we’re able to use our time there wisely and that the weather holds out so that we can get portraits of the whole community.

Will Adams
Video Production Director
Frazer Memorial UMC

Will is blogging throughout this trip from his personal blog which can be found at www.w-hue.com

Our Haiti Photography Missions team will head out tomorrow morning for a five day trip to the deaf community. The team consists of Billy Pope, Josh Brewer, Diane Klaaren, Lori Mercer, Will Adams, Butch McPherson and Nick Drollette. The team will be taking family portraits of all 168 families in the deaf community. The portraits will be processed and framed here in the United States. On December 9th, another missions team from Frazer will personally deliver them to each family for Christmas. Please keep the team in your prayers as they travel in the morning.

Gary Cochran and Pastor NaveaMartin Perez Methodist Church

On the September mission trip to Cuba Gary Cochran presented a clown suit to Pastor Navea for the Martin Perez Methodist Church in Havana Cuba.  Jo Grooms, a member of the Listeners Sunday School class, sewed the clown suit.  Over 50 children live in close proximity to this curch and the clown ministry in Cuba has been very instrumetal in introducing children to Christ.  Many children have joined the church after being invited by Pastor Navea and other church members.

 

Working at Camp Canaan

My Trip to Cuba

First impressions! How many times have I misjudged people or places by first impressions?  Far too many I suppose.  My first mpression of Cuba was it was a rather poor nation:  Most of the buildings and roads in need of repair – Interesting though with all the neat classic cars everywhere.

My second impression as we traveled into the country side was it was still a poor nation with most of the people not having cars at all, signs glorifying their past with frequent billboard signs looking backward to the Cuban revolution. Many horse drawn carts and still many people walking to their destination.

My third (and last) impression as we left Cuba was entirely different.  Cuba is a nation undergoing a spiritual revival.  The Methodist church is own fire for Jesus Christ.  The gospel is being spread from house to house with the many house churches.  Although the building may be substandard by our standards, the worship in these services was spirit filled and lively.  The Cuban Methodist did for less complaining on what they didn’t have and focused more on what they did have  Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy
Spirit.

My only regret in going was I wish I could have packed my last impression of Cuba in my suitcase and brought it back to Frazer.

In His Name,

Charles Jones

Charles giving sermon

Sharon and I had a wonderful experience on our first mission trip.  Cuba is a very interesting country with a warm and hospitable people.  We felt their joyous spirit of worship when we attended 4 worship services.  Our group even mustered the courage to stand in front of the congregations and sing some songs in English and Spanish.  The Cubans were very appreciative of our contributions of labor, material and our
presence.  We wish we could have brought home with us some of their love of the Lord.

Sharon and I had our first experience in public evangelizing when we went to the market.  When asked by vendors why we were in Cuba, we explained we were on a mission trip with the Methodist church. This led to genuine interest on the part of several vendors.  One said he was a Christian also, and ran off and came back with two other Christian vendors. One had studied in the US and so knew English well and served as our translator when we bartered for a painting.  Sharon pulled out our song sheet to write down the artist’s name, and having those songs in hand led the vendors and us to sing several of the Spanish praise songs right there in the market. 

Truman and Cubans at Camp Canaan

One of our tasks while at camp Canaan was to move several
hundred cement blocks closer to the point of need. This involve loading the
block onto a trailer pulled by a tractor (the tractor needed to be pushed off
to start each time) and then off-loaded at the closet point to the need. We
were using the block to build the walls for the new dormitory and I think Kevin
Shubird was the only team member to actually lay some block for the wall. We
formed a chain gang to move the block onto and off the trailer. While handing
the block from one member to the next our construction leader, Kevin called for us to take a short break. I had just move one block to the end of the trailer
bed and had another in my hand to move when the break was called. I decide to
go ahead and move the block I had picked up before stopping and Dr. Woernle was picking them up from me I thought he had stopped so I slid my last block all the way to the end next to the one already there just as Dr Woernle reached for
the first one. Needless less to say his finger came between the two blocks
“ouch”. As Dr Woernle was “hopping” around holding his hand and using his best
Church language to say it was O K and me apologizing for not stopping when
told, the local minister for camp Canaan was explaining what a blessing it was.

We all just kind of took a step back at that and realized how blessed we are for so many things we take for granted each day.

Many of the Cuban people are in such difficult straits yet they are happy and show Jesus in their everyday lives. At camp Canaan the bunk beds are three high with no air conditioning and limited bathroom facilities yet they call this a resort. I don’t think that is how we would have described the area when we first arrived but by the time we left he was right it was indeed a special place that has been blessed by God and used mightily for His Kingdom in Cuba.

We all thought we were bringing a blessing to the Cubans, but we learned that that is a two way street they are also a blessing to us. It
also reminds us of the daily blessing we all take for granted.