Team formation

Exciting day! We now have a team of local Kibera pastors, who all seem to be enthusiastic to work together for God's glory. They are Pastors Shadrack, Patrick, Alex, Jane and Justus.

Because of schools finishing this week, and the holiday clubs running for the next two weeks, we won't get together again until Jan 4th, but they are all very keen, and we finished today with a great time of prayer for each other. They will all spend time during the next few weeks praying and preparing themselves for this new ministry.

Some of them will struggle with the Healing on the Streets (HotS) model I'm sure. Some will naturally want to preach, or to pray in ways that don't fit the model. But we'll do some training with them, and some practicing, and then it'll be time for the real thing.

HotS is a very gentle form of healing ministry, and certainly focuses everything on God. So rather than praying long forceful and loud prayers for people, it's more about simply inviting the Holy Spirit to come, and gently but firmly commanding any sickness to go, in Jesus' name. In other words, it's not a naturally Kenyan way of praying!

All the pastors agreed that it would be better to start without any wazungus (white people) so that God and not us will be what attracts people to come. So that means our training on 4th Jan will need to be thorough. Maybe after some time we'll be able to join in too, but not to start with. We'll also try to get hold of a 'Why Jesus' pamphlet equivalent in Kiswahili that we can give to people who've received prayer, and although that's a part of the HotS model, it was suggested by one of the pastors today before I'd had a chance to say it.

Many of them will be fasting for the whole week of Jan 4th. As for me, I don't know - I definitely want to continue the daily fast once per week that I'm doing now, and I'll probably try and extend it that week. It won't be a bad idea after the excesses of Christmas anyway!

Although my fast will continue, these blogs may be erratic over the next few weeks. But stay with me for what I'm sure is going to be an exciting 2010!