Missionaries Fernandez: Striving to Preach Where Christ has not been Named &The Perfect Day

We have spent the last four days in the Kerio Valley in an effort to reach the Pokot Tribe.

This tribe lives towards the northwest corner of Kenya near the Ugandan border. They are pastoralist who live in a semi-arid region and have somewhat of a bad reputation for illegal guns and cattle raiding, however, after spending four days with them it is clear to me that they are just people who need Christ. My heart’s desire is to bring the gospel to areas that are void.

Rom 15:20 "Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation:
Rom 15:21 But as it is written, To whom he was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard shall understand."

This outreach has been the culmination of three months of prayer for these particular people. We took our Mt. Elgon evangelism team of four as these men are the most committed and effective at preaching the gospel I have ever met. It is amazing how like minded and like hearted we all are when it comes to doing God’s work. I count it a great privilege and honor that God has placed us together in one accord for His honor and glory. Before I record what is our first Missionary journey among the Pokot, I think it is important to preface this by saying that our prayer for this Pokot outreach was very specific and was so specific that it include the following five criteria. We were not placing demands on God but rather simply believed,
"That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven."
#1. We prayed that God would allow us to reach an area of Pokot where Christ had not been named.
#2. We prayed that God would lead us to a people which were accessible in the same amount of travel time that it takes us to reach Mt. Elgon.
#3. Don’t laugh, but we prayed God would lead us to a village that had good roads, or as good as there could be while working deep in the interior.
#4. We prayed that He would lead us to a village with a large population that would welcome the Word of God.
#5. We prayed that God would give us a man of peace who would be able to translate from Swahili to the Pokot language.

Day One:
After assembling our team we arrived in Pokot around mid-day and headed for the Kerio Valley. Upon leaving the main road we came to a peak where you could overlook the valley from the surrounding mountain range. As I look down into this beautiful semi-arid valley I knew in my heart we were in the right area. We descended from the cool air of the hills to a somewhat desert region that was hot.
We spent our first day with a Pokot named Thomas who knew the area well and led us throughout many regions of Northern Pokot.
Since there are no maps of the area we had to draw our own and actually ended up in Uganda for a brief time. We were a little disappointed at the end of the first day as we had covered a large area of Northern Pokot without having any success, however, we did grow in knowledge of the region and we were able to eliminate some areas.

Day Two:
Started at 4:30 am with an hour of prayer and worship through songs. It was an awesome way to start the day even though I was weary from the previous day driving. Breakfast was MRE’s which our Kenyan brethren had never tasted but seemed to like. We were on the road by 6:30 am heading deep into what would be West Pokot this time led by a young Pokot man named Vincent.

It seems as though I am always complaining about the off road conditions here and just when I think I have experienced the roughest area of Kenya another trip into the interior takes the cake. This day would prove to be such a day. The area Vincent was leading us to without any churches or Christian influence turned out to be a four hour trip in which we would cross six flowing rivers, what seemed to be thirty gorges and countless ditches that was an extreme off road excursion.
Now there are times when I actually enjoy four wheel drive trips but about half way into this one I was so concerned that I almost decided to turn around.

Had I not been compelled by the preaching of the gospel to unreached people I definitely would not have gone any further.
During the course of the trip I was thinking of #2 and #3 on our prayer request knowing that to start a mission point in an area this rough would not be possible.
In any case we had made a long and hard trip to an area that so remote that nobody has ever worked there before.

Finally we arrived at what was a small border town in the middle of nowhere which was the border of the Pokot and the Marakwet tribe. Selling Goat Milk

Upon arrival I told Pastor Pete that he was going to have to preach as my head was pounding and spinning from the trip.

We spent several hours sharing God’s Word and lead fifty-four individuals to Christ along with countless others in large groups. Only eternity will reveal the final number. So again after a fourteen hour day in which the Land Rover and the occupants were beaten to a pulp we knew that God was going to have to call someone else to reach that border region as it would break us to try to work there on a regular basis.

On the way home we purchased a nice Pokot Goat to roast for dinner
and also had to make an emergency stop at a dentist for Pastor Shadrach to have a tooth pulled that had been hurting him all day.
So I guess the only casualties of the day were Satan, the goat and the Pastor’s tooth.

Day 3:

Up at 4:30 am, prayers and songs of praise before another day in the desert which has a particular beauty about it in the early morning and late evening. Today we would not use any guides other than the Holy Spirit. We headed back to Northern Pokot praying God would lead us to where he wanted us to work.

From our day one experience we knew that we were close but we were not quit in the right area.To make a long story short, after being blocked by two impassable rivers we found a very well maintained desert road and followed it about 40 Km’s. We stopped one time for the Pastors to buy charcoal as it is cheap and of good quality compared to what they buy in Western. As we stopped we shared the Gospel with a dozen folks.

Five made professions of Faith and while we were witnessing a truck of Kenyan Army soldiers pulled up to buy Charcoal.

We concluded that the reason the road was so smooth is that the Kenyan Army uses it to transport troops to the Ugandan border to keep peace and for training exercises. Now we knew that we were close and God had answered two of our prayers. We were definitely on the right road and heading in the right direction. We traveled deeper into the interior on what has to be one of the smoothest dirt roads in Kenya until there was nothing but bushes and camels. For some reason we stopped to look at camels crossing the road when we notice a young girl (13 years old) running from out the bush towards the truck. We asked her where she was coming from and she said a village about 1km from here. She said her name was Teresa and there was no Church anywhere near the village. We turned into the bush to find a village of 300-400 people and we were met by a 15 year old boy named James.

Prayer # 4 answered. James was a resident of the village called “Chepsebei” and was able to speak Swahili and Pokot. Not only did James gladly receive Christ but he became our guide and interpreter the entire day.
That is an answer to prayer #5. After meeting with the village Elders, not only did they give us permission to work in their village but eight of them received Christ.
None of them had ever heard of Jesus and that was our #1 prayer request from God.

They were also particularly happy to hear the spoken Word of God for the first time in their life through a solar powered Audio Bible in the Pokot dialect which we left with them.

After meeting with several more groups we saw a total of twenty-four people receive Christ and they were eager to be taught the Word of God.

Our promise to this God given village was to return on a monthly basis as simply a mission point to preach God’s Word.
Pokot Grandma
Depending on your level of faith or skepticism, I will let you draw your own conclusions on what turned out to be the perfect day for those of us trying to follow God’s will through His Spirit.
Feel free to question our methods but you must know that or motive is simply to fulfill the great commission so that our Father in heaven will be glorified through faith in His Son Jesus. We left Pokot knowing God’s goodness and faithfulness in answering our prayers.
Please continue to pray for this new area of outreach.