We had dinner one night as a team in Maralal (actually, more like every night). Pastor James, his wife Veronica and their two boys joined us. Simon, the youngest, is a true Samburu. The boy can eat some goat. As I took this picture, his mouth was full of goat, and his face smeared with grease and grape Fanta.
Archive for June, 2008
Simon
June 30, 2008Just call me “Lakyle”.
June 29, 2008
I like the Samburu. They like to wear red, herd cattle and can eat their weight in meat. As I’ve said before, it reminds me of Nebraska.
When we launched our listening groups in Samburu, we went first to the village of Nkeju Muny (or The Rhino’s Leg). We were invited to stay for goat that had been roasted in our honor. The spit consisted of tree branches constructed over the charcoal. The finished product was more like Goat Jerky. Tasty but a bit on the tough side.
As we were introducing the device to the men and women of Nkeju Muny, Pastor Wilifred (aka: Big Willie) began to introduce me as Kyle. He was corrected by one of the elders; I was being made an honorary Samburu, so my name should be Lakyle (Samburu names begin with La/Li). For the rest of the afternoon, I was addressed as Lakyle.
One Happy Dude
June 27, 2008
To get the MT4 kits ready, every chip, battery, device has to be tested. Once we’re good to go, the real work begins. 500 devices have to be delivered to villages and entrusted to folks who are known by our target audience.
In Kenya, we are using churches as our main distribution network. To help with logistics, North Point Church graciously provided our ten pastors with new bicycles. We gave each pastor their alloted number of players and turned them loose, but not before taking a few pictures.
This particular pastor has already “pimped his ride” – complete with tassels for the seat and a mud flap that says Believe Jesus. And yes, our friend is posing.
A Beautiful Sight
June 26, 2008
What we do sounds really cool to most folks – in fact, a high school classmate of mine called it “noble”. Some of what we do is just getting the job done, not so much cool or noble, but necessary. Pastors Henry, Simon, James, our inn keeper Mrungi, and I unloaded 500 solar cells and put them out to charge. To up the cool factor, i Tunes provided Johnny Cash, Dwight Yoakam and Lyle Lovett. At the end of day, a morning spent with friends in the Kenyan sunshine doing necessary work is pretty cool after all.
Downtown Ouga
June 24, 2008
The view from my hotel room of Ouagadougou (WAH-gah-DOO-goo) the capital of Burkina Faso. Reminded me of Accra, except flatter and the food is better. A word to the wise: stay away from the Bleu Cheese.
The good folks at Purdue University are working on a four-stage protocol to protect cow peas (we’d call them black-eyed peas) from Maruca vitrata, a moth that destroys this crucial crop. 85% of the world’s cow peas are produced in West Africa.
Punjabi Distribution
June 19, 2008On June 2nd, 80 pastors met in Ferojpur, Punjab, India as part of the Good Shephard Community Church network ( a ministry of OM India) to receive the T4 Global MT4 kits to use as a ministry tool to reach those people in their communities who can’t, don’t or won’t read. We received pictures of these just yesterday – so I’ll add several other pictures with comments. 
Partners in Yei Sudan
June 13, 2008
Meet Lomoro and Reagan with Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) in Yei, Sudan. Lomoro and Reagan will be taking the lead for EPC with our expanded project in Southern Sudan. I am currently in Yei with Bruce Lowe from Stonegate Fellowship Church (Midland, TX) and the EPC leadership planning the next phase of the MT4 project to place about 10,000 MT4 devices with three different content chips in Southern Sudan.
Planning meeting Yei Sudan
June 12, 2008Planning with Bishop Elias Taban and some members of the EPC leadership team.
Nurturing World Christians
June 9, 2008
As a boy I had a love/hate relationship with the High School football season. My dad was the head football coach at our local high school, and I was a practice rat. I would crank through my paper route as fast as my Schwinn Sting Ray would take me and then I was off to the practice field to watch, listen and just hang out with my dad. That part I loved. What I hated though, was that my dad was never home during the season. We ate dinner without him just about every night, drove to the ball games without him and had breakfast on Saturdays feeling his absence (game film to break down and game planning for the next week).
I am mindful of the impact my absence has on my own children, not just because I’m their father, but because I have literally sat where they now sit. It’s a frequent topic of conversation and prayer for my wife and I. To that end, our family prays regularly for the work T4 is engaged in all over the world, but especially Africa. Our kids know our partners in Ghana, Sudan and Kenya by name. They can find Mozambique on the map. We are working hard to make them a part of this ministry, because, well, they are. They did not choose to be, but they are. As Stanley Hauerwas wrote, “Family is one of the last involuntary things left in our society. You just wake up one day and you’re related to these people and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”
Noel Piper has authored a very helpful booklet entitled Raising World Christians. Amy and I understand that ministry with T4 is giving us a great opportunity to do just that. By God’s grace, we are including our two kids in what God is doing in building His kingdom.
Our indigenous partners understand this as well. On their last trip to the US, one of our Kenyan partners, Simon Mwaura and his wife Lucy visited Gabrielle’s class at the Lexington Latin School. Simon shared a bit about life in Kenya, and told the kids about the Good Shepherd Orphanage. There were certainly more important folks that Simon could have met with: donors, other missions agencies, etc. But he didn’t. He met with a group of second graders. He met with the next generation of laborers in the Great Commission.
Good Shepherd is home to 56 HIV/Aids orphans in the Kenyan highlands. It gets cold at night when you live at 8,500 feet, and the kids at Good Shepherd needed sweaters. The kids and parents at LLS saw an opportunity to demonstrate their love for a group of children they will probably never meet. Just squeaking under the baggage weight limit, I took their gifts to the kids of Good Shepherd.
A funny thing happened in this whole process – my kids aren’t the only ones excited about what God is doing in Kenya and the role they are playing in that story. Parents I don’t know (not unusual for a dad, my wife knows everybody at the school) were telling me how exciting it was to be able to help address a simple need in a direct way. In short, God is allowing us to help nurture world Christians – not just the future generation, but this one as well.
My guess is that if you asked a second grader at the Lexington Latin School about Kenya they would tell you about the day Pastor Simon and Lucy 
came to visit them. They would tell you about 56 orphans in Nyahururu at Good Shepherd. They could find Kenya on a map. It’s a good start.
Our Technology
June 6, 2008The Gadget. The Gizmo. The Poor Man’s iPod. The SOS audio player. Our basic technology platform is known by many names, and that’s just fine with us. We could not do what we do without the MT4 players, yet it is not ultimately what we do. Perhaps a word of explanation is order.
Technology is always changing. Ask anyone who paid $5000 for a 486 computer, or the once proud owner of a Sega Genesis. This morning’s hot item will be in this afternoon’s garage sale. Technology is the last piece of the puzzle in our work. We have embraced the technology we use for strictly utilitarian reasons: it does what we want it to do in a way that is consistent with certain principles we hold dear. The principles are the hill we will die on, not the technology.
This attitude toward technology is very liberating. We can pick and choose from off the shelf components. We can have the latest technology without sinking ministry dollars in research and development. We can custom fit the technology we use for each situation. We do not have to sell you our stuff because, well, we have no stuff. Therefore, as long as the technology is affordable, solar-powered, rechargeable and durable, we are good to go. As we said, it’s the principles that matter, not the technology.
With that being said, please understand that we are not techno-idiots. We do understand how to fit various pieces together in a way that gets the best results. We have been asked for a “price quote” only to be told, “We’re thinking about buying this ourselves directly from the manufacturer.” Go for it. As an organization, we spent years touring plants and manufacturing facilities in Asia looking for, not just the best technology, but reputable people with whom we can do business. If you want to buy your stuff off the Internet and wire money to Asia on your own, more power to you. Good luck and God bless you. We think you will call us later asking, “Why won’t our technology work?” Just because it is easily gotten doesn’t mean it is easily employed.
What are the principles? To begin with, we work among the poorest of the poor. The majority are not computer-literate, and they are not Internet savvy. Therefore, the technology must be user friendly. A complicated, literate-based display panel on an MP3 player is not very practical for the work we do. One of the tried and true principles of orality is that oral learners do so in communal settings . Keep your ear buds; give us water-resistant speaker cases that are loud enough for 10-12 people to listen together. The message must remain consistent and be indigenously produced. We use SD cards with digital recorders and laptop computers as recording studios. This allows us to produce a consistent message that can be heard repeatedly. The message is produced in country by leaders who know and live among the folks we are trying to reach. Microcasting at its’ blessed easiest. Cost effective, easy to use, plays well with others (group oriented), and produced in-country. These are the principles that influence the technology we use in an ever-changing technology market.
At the present moment, our basic technology package consists of five components: a waterproof speaker case, a solar powered battery charger, rechargeable batteries, multiple SD cards and an MP3 player.
