pastor – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

October 7, 2015August 28, 2017

Warmth

I stood at the entry and surveyed the sanctuary as worshippers trickled in, moved past and made their way to their seats. A gray-haired couple sat ten feet away, near the center aisle to my right. A pianist on the platform up front busied herself with sheet music before taking up a red hymnal.

Hmm, I wonder what songbook the folks do use here? The nearby gray-haired lady held a book of the same reddish tint. My mouth moved as I silently read the title. Cast in gold lettering beneath three delicate crosses it read, Melodies of Praise. I thought. I like that. A song book title with feeling.

Spotting a new visitor the pastor left the platform and came my way. His handshake and generous smile reinforced what I already sensed – the church’s warmth. This may be a place I could get to know the Lord better – and some Rocky Mountain dwellers – all at the same time.

So Jerry, where do you come from? Where would you call home? The pastor’s interest seemed genuine and I warmed to it.

Well, I come from a small place called Okmulgee. It’s in Oklahoma. About thirty miles south of Tulsa.

The mention of Okmulgee struck a chord with the gray-haired lady holding the hymnal. Light refracted on the silver-gray hair as Mom Starbuck swiveled her head abruptly. Her eyes shimmered and her mouth betrayed delight – through the wrinkled face a little-girl smile. In an accent common to my Oklahoma ears, Mom Starbuck offered her declaration. She was enthralled.

Okmulgee?! A brief pause. . . and the clincher. I went to high school in Preston!

Astonishment overtook me – even as I smiled at an accent that rendered high school, haah-skule.

How likely was this? A couple of Okies, she and I. Travelers of a twelve-hundred-mile distance to a common place of worship in the Wyoming Rockies. . .Mom Starbuck and me – united by a common culture – divided by forty-five years.

Preston.

Where Typing Instructor, Mrs. Smith acquainted me with circular typing keys. With numbers, letters and symbols mounted on metal stems. I learned in her class to vigorously slide (a thousand times) the feed roller – along the machine at each lines end. Here I entered the world of black carbon paper.

And now, Wyoming. Mrs. Smith’s Typing I and Typing II inaugurated my passage to Wyoming. To Cody. And her warm-hearted people. My vision moved generally toward the church ceiling. God, could you be doing something?

Two weeks later found me and my burgundy suitcase at Starbucks front door.

Oklahoma cooking. That will be nice.

May 4, 2017August 28, 2017

Death Valley

There in the African Savannah where acacia trees with their flat-topped enchanting forms dot the landscape, an adolescent boy, a humble cattle-tender, was cornered by thieving attackers. He made a futile attempt to seek refuge among his father’s herd of semi-nourished cows – the bounty his attackers pursued. Horrifying moments raced like short distance sprinters toward the finish tape until the boy was seized and beaten to death by these neighboring tribal warriors.

Once I heard the news, words like heartless and senseless quickly sprang to my young missionary mind.

In the worldview of the tribesmen who had slain the boy for his father’s cows, there was nothing senseless about their deed. For generations nomadic lore had dictated that all cattle were created by God as a gift for their people. Any means to retrieve what was rightfully theirs was deemed acceptable. The “retrieving of cattle” was, to them in fact, a kind of calling.

Pastor Nashon had first been alerted of his young brother’s death by the high-pitched wailing of nearby village women. Afterwards, through grapevine media common to rural Africa, word of the tragedy reached our mission station several miles to the west.

Mounting my orange and aging Suzuki dirt-bike, I ran my helmet strap through the cinch ring, securing it snugly beneath my chin. Pastor Nashon needed a friend nearby – even a recent friend whose culture and land were radically different from his own. I hoped to somehow be such a friend.

Mindful of an involuntary tensing of my eyebrows I tried to push back my growing sense of inadequacy. Comforting loved ones who’ve experience the quiet and expected demise of, say, an aged and dear family member can be daunting enough. But this defied categories.

What shall I say an hour from now once my piki-piki is brought to a dusty halt and I enter the humble, thatch-roofed hut? How do I myself process such news, much less console the grieving young pastor whose brother’s life had so recently been brutally taken?

***

“Bwana asifiwe.” Nashon, only barely my junior gave a warm smile as he offered the Swahili greeting, “the Lord be praised”. Though a common greeting among believers, the words seemed specially poignant (maybe less than fitting? I thought).

I quietly entered the dirt-floor hut which was poised on a high ridge along the Great Rift Valley. I took the seat my young host offered. My senses caught the flavor of steaming, charcoal-heated chai, its vapors loitering above the fresh-washed mug now extended my way.

What followed altered my world forever.

October 13, 2017October 13, 2017

In The Name Of A Friend

The young pastor strained under the weight of the bleeding man he supported. “He is my brother.”

He labored to keep the wounded man upright. The machete blade had gone deep.

“How did it happen?”, I asked, as my nurse-wife entered from a side room and approached to lend aid.

“My brother has a friend. The friend sent my brother to collect money owed him by another man.”

I took in the unfolding story as we all helped the wounded brother out of his coat, it’s back soaked through in red.

“The man owing money was drinking beer and got angry when my brother told him why he came. My brother decided to leave and come back another time. But the man had taken up a panga (machete). When my brother turned to go out, it was then he was slashed, before he could reach to the outside.”

Ann had brought out a sizable roll of gauze. By now his shirt had been removed and, with strips of old sheets and tape, she bound his bare torso. The panga had opened a V-trench some eight inches long – vertically, between spine and shoulder blade. She wrapped the material about his torso several times, in hopes it might slow the blood, buying us time to get him to the clinic where they could sew him up.

The government-sponsored clinic, a thinly-equipped medical outpost established to serve the Wakuria clans, sat at the edge of the village nearest us, five miles to the north.

Life was hard for the tribal people, often heartbreaking. It was a rare home that had not lost at least one child to malaria.

And there were the skirmishes.

With cultures of the region given to decades-old feuds – mostly to do with livestock – violence could erupt in a heartbeat. Kuria country lay bordering other cattle-tending families – the Maasai, the Luo, the Kipsigis. Bands of spear-wielding parties of either tribe, trekking by foot in their stated quest to take back rustled livestock, had become a common image.

I grew to slow the bug down on our dusty road and roll gently past the occasional vigilante parties. We couldn’t guess when a band might come into view on the twenty mile drive to our mail box (we checked for letters once, sometimes twice, weekly). Though as a missionary family we did not feel directly threatened, our verbal charge to the back seat passengers came with regularity, “Roll your windows up, kids.”

The task at hand just now was to get a terribly wounded young Kuria to a place for treatment.

I hope the doctor is in.

October 25, 2017

Removing Stones

“See this stone in the path? Now this one too, here in the picture on the same trail. . .”

I sat with half a dozen men, some a decade or more older than me. The hut we gathered in each week was roofed with long grass. The floor consisted of smooth, hardened dirt. A semicircle of dark benches carried our weight and were worn smooth, long sense having yielded up their last dangling splinter. It was Thursday and one of this week’s T.E.E. lessons focused on a visit Jesus had with a woman at a water well.

Mature, practical, sincere, the upcountry pastors and elders took in the illustration on the workbook’s open page. The image struck a chord. Two stumbling-stones, one representing male pride, the other, tribalism. The students had read the lesson’s introduction:

Here a woman of a different tribe met Jesus. Sometimes we let the division of tribes hinder God’s work. Male pride also hinders. These things are like big rocks in the pathway that make people stumble. In order to give the good news to the woman, Jesus overcame these two problems.

I reviewed the scene with the men.

“See the person Jesus found at the well. She not only was a woman. She also spoke with an accent. We know this because she was of a different tribe, another people.”

I look in the face of each man in our semi-circle.

“Can one of you describe this picture for us. Can you help the rest of us see what good thing Jesus wanted bring to the woman and what Jesus did to overcome two big problems so she could be helped.”

A pastor nodded. He launched in, reviewing the narrative, raising the matter of how women are often looked down upon, mistreated. The room was quiet. The pastor then spoke of hard issues related to tribalism, the challenges to go beyond it, as Jesus did.

“Can we trust the Lord is among us today? To help us to change?”

Heads nod. Confession is voiced by two or three. We pray.

Then go our ways, trusting him, friend of sinners, to lead.

April 4, 2018April 4, 2018

Culture Leap

It wasn’t long and an opportunity to dismiss a house guest came my way.

Another visit to our home by Pastor Tom. Again, discussing church matters.

Twenty minutes or so into our chat – the second round of our respective tea cups nearing empty – we each knew our time to wrap up the visit had arrived.

Though I had it on good counsel my next move was called for, this would be my first time to tell a visitor to leave my house. Taking in a slow breath I rose from the chair, and smiling broadly, took a couple steps toward him, extending my hand.

“Pastor Tom. . . it’s been good seeing you.”

Before the phrase had left my lips, I caught a look in his eyes that signaled all would be well – that sending my visitor to the door was not an act of rudeness, rejection or idiocy.

Tom’s smile flashed warmly, his gleaming eyes conveying pleasure – and likely, I gathered – relief. I felt I could almost read his thoughts: Ah, the missionary from America finally gets it!

Taking up residence in another culture, whether across town or across the globe, brings with it mystery. Hurdles. Discomfort. Yet. . . Once sincere attempts are made to adapt, occasional doors to astonishing surprises fling open.

***

“Pastor Jerry, please may we welcome you and Sister Ann. Our new child has come! Meet us at our home for tea.”

Ten months earlier the South Nyanza woman had stepped forward for prayer in our little Migori church. She and her husband wanted to grow a family but were unable to conceive. Her eyes were pleading.

“Please pray.”

We bowed. Petition went heavenward in Jesus’s name. Time moved on. Months passed, and I had all but forgotten the moment.

We got to the home mid-afternoon. The new parents, overtaken with joy, brought out folding chairs to the modest courtyard, receiving us in celebration of their newborn.

We and our hosts sipped sweet chai, helping ourselves to servings of toasty, deep-fried mandazis.

Then came the introduction – their “miracle baby” – a boy. Special expressions of honor are sometimes assigned a person deemed helpful on the occasion of a child being born. A namesake.

Common surnames among the Luo people begin with the letter ‘O’.

“Thank you, Pastor Jerry, for praying that day.” The mother paused. She and her husband smiled,

“Meet Jerry Lout Okech.”

On any marathon journey of a missionary, special moments emerge unlike any other. Humbling. Sacred. Joyous. The mid-1970’s tea visit in Luo-land marked such a time.

August 11, 2018

Uncommon Hero

“When the simba came at me I brought up my shield but then he knocked me back.” The young African opened his palm, extending it my way. I surveyed the seasoned lion-claw scar running near his thumb and forefinger. “My brothers then speared him.”

My chat was with a tall lean Maasai named Gaddiel, recounting his lion-hunting venture – an initiation rite demanded to get labeled a warrior. His voice was calm, undramatic, as if he were recounting details of a routine walk to the local market.

Gaddiel Nkarrabali had become a warmly-regarded Christian pastor among his nomadic, cattle-tending kin. His gospel work came about largely because of Eva.

Eva, a single missionary mother – her two kids schooling at Rift Valley Academy – had come to Kenya in the 60s, settling down eventually in a dusty remote outpost called Mashuru. Her first house, put up in less than two days, was a home-made tin structure covering just 209 square feet. Once erected, she and a local co-worker lady settled down for the night. In her memoir, In The Shadow of Kilimanjaro, Eva describes her next-morning surprise.

“All around the (parked) car were large pad tracks where a lion had inspected it. Well, what you don’t see doesn’t hurt you. It excited us but we weren’t really troubled. We knew what country we were in so went on fixing our little house.”

Along the way the gutsy pioneer missionary came across a young tribal warrior. Gaddiel.

“I had asked some young Morani (warriors) if any would like to go for more schooling.” The school in Eva’s thinking was Kaimosi Bible School off to the north and west. None of the youth were Christ followers.

“Up went a hand and one said, “Nanu” (I wish to). His name was Gaddiel, the chief of his manyatta.”

Years later the cattle-herder turned Christian shepherd, recounted his first days at the Bible school.

“I saw many miracles that God showed me. One night I prayed so much asking Jesus that I wanted to see his face. That very night there came a man in my dream in a great light. I woke up shaking. A song came into my heart. I am sure Jesus was doing something to (in) me. . .”

Eva Butler’s “Welcome kiddos!” greeting on our first airport arrival to Africa gave my wife and I no hint we were encountering face to face an authentic hero in frontier missions.

September 15, 2018September 14, 2018

A Word In Season

“I keep returning to it, hon. This verse.” Ann leafed through her Bible to its grand, beloved “hymnal”, the Book of Psalms.

“ ‘I will lead you in the path that you should go, I will guide you with my eye’, Psalm 32:8”. For a while now the words keep coming back to mind.”

Days later, passing through Namanga Village with minimal drama as Africa border crossings go, I slid again into the Peugeot driver’s seat. Passing our fresh-stamped U.S. passports across to Ann, I engaged the clutch and nudged the gear lever forward. Turning to my bride of nearly twenty years, I grinned, “Well, here’s a first for me, sweetheart. I’ve never driven Tanzania’s roads.”

Tonight we would lodge at the home of friends whose surname brought a smile, given their missionary vocation. The Angels.

Granger and Beverly’s Arusha home sat a short distance from Tengeru Village and the church they pioneered and now co-led with Tanzanian Pastor Charles Nkya.

As we breezed along the scenic, well-paved highway, taking in the ever-enlarging image of fourteen-thousand-foot Mount Meru ahead, I silently reviewed bits of a sermon that had been forming. I was to preach tomorrow’s Sunday service.

Sharing scripture and illustrations, encouragements and challenges next morning I wrapped up the sermon inviting Tengeru believers to further yield their lives to God’s guidance and care. As sermons go I was pleased, thankful for his presence and aware nothing noteworthy seemed afoot. At least to my knowledge. The service dismissed. A number of folks lingered.

And up walked Zubida, a lady Elder in the church.

Zubida, small but poised – an instructor in the local college of agriculture – carried herself with quiet grace. Back when she had first opened her life to Christ, converting from Islam, her Muslim husband angrily threw her and her infant from the home. He kept the older children with him and forbade Mama Zubida to visit them. Through the deep pain, she pressed ahead in love and zeal for her Savior, keenly devoted through the years in the companionship of fellow believers and the strength found in Scripture.

Zubida’s Bible now lay open in one hand as she approached Pastor Angel. Pointing to a passage, she began.

“Pastor, this verse. . . I feel God has this scripture for our guests from Kenya. Can you share it with them?”

Granger responded with a smile, “No, Zubida. He seems to have given this to you. You share it with the Louts.”

Moving our direction humbly – her finger still planted on a Bible page – Mama Zubida rallied her voice.

“Brother and Sister, I feel that God has something in this verse for you. It came to me during the preaching today.”

I noted the reference and read the Swahili words.

I turned to Ann with a chuckle and asked pointedly, “Does this resonate in any way?”

Her face lit up as she took in the English translation,

“I will lead you in the path that you should go. I will guide you with my eye”