Great Time in Kisumu, About to go Into the Bush!

sorry i haven't updated in a few days, the internet has been shifty and i've been kinda tired and low on time. anyway, we had a very good week in the schools. i presented the gospel to 15 schools, including 6 secondary with over 1500 students and 9 middle schools with about 3000 students, about 900 high schoolers and 1900 middle schoolers committed to give their lives to Christ! i could take at least 15 minutes talking about each school, but that would just take too long. the highlight of the week was a high school in the mountains called Agai secondary school, they have over 800 students and have never really been reached by the gospel before, after the presentation at least 80% of them committed to give their lives to Christ for the first time. words can't describe how awesome it was to be there for this... plus, i finally got the opportunity to upload some of the pics from here in Kisumu, those can be found on my profile.

i am about to go off the grid for a week because i will be waking up at 5:45AM tomorrow and traveling about 4 hours to a village called migori which is located about 10 miles past the middle of nowhere lol. a pastor has over 20 schools set up so i will hopefully be very busy and be able to speak to several thousand students about what Jesus Christ did for them on the cross. so please keep pastor alfred, myself, and all the students and teachers that we will be speaking to in your prayers. hopefully i will be back in town by next saturday with excellent reports :-) love you guys and i will hope to hear from everyone in a week.

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Good Weekend

saturday was interesting, i preached the gospel in the Rojo church and they seemed to really respond well and take everything to heart. i don't know how the church usually acts, but they certainly didn't seem like a cult to me. just very charasmatic. then a few friends came into town and we went to see prince of persia because it was the only english movie playing. it was alright, worth 200 schillings :-) this morning went very well, i preached in three different churches and they all seemed to respond very well. i had a very Kenyan experience on the way to the third church. it rained last night and the car we were in got badly stuck in the mud about a half mile away from the church. the entire path was under water, so i just took off my shoes and walked through the mud to the church. I even preached without shoes on! pictures coming, actually, i have taken many pics but this computer doesn't have a sd port so i will have to wait to upload any of them :-( anyway, all the members of the church were very surprised and excited to see that i was willing to wade through the mud to speak to them :-)

i am going to be speaking in schools again this week, so please continue to pray for open doors and even more for open hearts and that i can get my flesh completely out of the way and let God speak through me directly to the students. thanks!

in Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Third Day in Schools

today was another great day of ministry in schools. i spoke to three middle schools and one high school including about 900 students. they all seemed to respond well. i am pretty close to worn out and i still have many days of ministry in a row to go. but i know God will give me strength if i lean on Him. tomorrow will undoubtedly be an interesting day as i am going to be preaching and giving the gospel in a church that most people in Africa consider to be a cult. i need a lot of prayer for strength and power and clarity as i prepare to speak in this Church. thanks!

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Epic Second Day in Schools!

today was great, i spoke in SIX schools to about 1700 students, both personal bests lol. this includes two high schools. about 800 committed to give their lives to Christ. the highlight was definitely the first school. they had about 500 students from grade 4-8 and about 350 gave their lives to Christ. after i spoke the principal invited the students to say something if they wanted. this led very unexpectedly to several students coming in front of the group to confess their sins and say that they are publicly giving their lives to Christ today, this isn't supposed happen anywhere, much less in Africa where it is a huge shame to confess your sins, i was astonished. then one of the students who was born again before today came up and really encouraged her classmates to stay true to the committment that they made today. this was an awesome school!

anyway, i am scheduled to speak in three schools tomorrow, so please continue to pray for me and all the students and teachers who will be listening!

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Great first Day of Schools in Kisumu

today was awesome! this was the first day that i have worked in schools with this group of pastors and they really seem to get it about evangelism and seem very excited to see what God is going to do here in Kisumu. i spoke to 4 schools with about 1250 middle school students and over 900 committed to give their lives to Christ! 900 is a much rounded down number because i am a realist. i shared the gospel of repentance and salvation by grace through faith in the blood of Jesus as clearly as i possibly could and led them in the sinners prayer. then asked them to raise their hands if they have never given their lives to Christ before but want to today for the first time, around 95% of the students raised their hands. i told them to put their hands down and to not raise them again if they had given their lives to Christ before, i told them to put their hands down if they didn't want to make a life long commitment to give their lives to Christ no matter how many struggles they might face... maybe 5% put their hands down lol. so once again, it is not up to us to determine who is saved or not, we must share the gospel clearly and strongly to as many people as possible, pray for them, and let them and God sort the rest out. after the day, pastor Robert, the interpreter i was with, said, "you must teach me how to share this message with people so that i can continue this after you leave." EPIC, this is exactly what we want to hear and the exact kind of people we are looking for to be members of the DSEA team. i actually already wrote a document teaching people how to effectively share the gospel because so many of the pastors i have worked with asked me to, that will be my next note along with a video of me presenting the gospel to a high school...

anyway, i have another four schools scheduled tomorrow. so please continue to pray for me and for the Students that will be hearing the gospel.

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Busy Schedule Ahead

as most of y'all know sunday ended up being a crazy day, i experienced my first earthquake, and a big bomb went off at a place in Nairobi where i drove by at least 10 times while we were there. but God is good, and the mission must go on. i've been trying to write often, but i haven't been tagging people in most of my notes due to lack of time. if you want to get cought up, all my notes are on my profile... anyway, i met with a group of pastors today and we set up a schedule for the next week and a half. tomorrow i am going out to give the gospel to 3 schools, and 4 on thursday. friday is looking like a day off but saturday is going to be very interesting. i am scheduled to preach at a large Rojo denomination church. most people in Africa consider them to be a cult, but i don't know enough to say anything for sure. it seems like they are somewhere between charismatic and jehovah's witness. i'm not sure what exactly this means, but i know i will need a lot of prayers as i share the gospel with this group so that whatever misunderstandings of scripture they might have will be made clear and that they can believe the true message of repentance and salvation by grace alone that is so clear in the Bible. then on sunday i will be preaching at two churches in this area.

please pray for me and the people i will be speaking to these next few days. pray that i will get my flesh out of the way and allow God to speak exactly what he wants directly to their hearts. thanks so much for all the prayers and support!

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Saturday in Kenya... EARTHQUAKE!!!

saturday was a very good day. i spent the morning at AGAPE again and led the saturday morning weekly bible study. i spoke on my usual luke 7 message about the sinful woman and the parable of the two debtors and gave a call to evangelism. the kids seemed to really like it. what really touched me came after the bible study. one of the kids who i spoke to wednesday who gave his life to Christ was there saturday as well. he came up to me and said, "thank you so much for sharing with me, i gave my life to Christ wednesday and i can already feel myself changing!" WOW!!! that is exactly what we want to hear! usually with the ministry we do we speak to hundreds or thousands of kids per day and never see them again, so it is hard to gauge how effective it is, we just have to pray for the kids and hold strong in the faith that it is working. but this was an awesome confirmation that the LORD is really moving and working through our speech.

then saturday night, a few people that work in an orphanage outside town came in and we went to see the new robin hood opening night in Kenya lol. today, i preached a message on a call to evangelism in a church with about 40 people. they seemed to respond well...HAHAHAHAHA THAT WAS AWESOME!!! i just felt the first earthquake of my life as i was writing this note! It felt like a huge tractor or earthmover or something like that drove right by the house but there was absolutely no sound. haha, now i've experienced everything... anyway, i'm supposed to speak to a few schools this wednesday, so that should be good. please continue to pray for me and for open doors and devine appointments to share the gospel!

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

AGAPE and Dunga

today was a really good day of ministry despite not being able to sleep til 3:00AM and waking up at 7:30! in the morning i went back to AGAPE to speak to the older street boys. it was a very surreal experience because one of the boys who goes to AGAPE often was just killed tuesday by a mob of citizens for attempting to sell a fake phone to someone. there were about 35 that i shared the gospel with and probably 15 decided to give their lives to Christ. this afternoon i went back to Dunga beach where the fishermen dock to sell and the women come to buy. i shared the gospel with 4 groups of people with 10-20 people in each group. some responded very well and some said they were already saved and others walked off while i was talking. there were even a few schools having field trips there and some of the students joined in and listened with the other groups. if i had to guess i'd say i spoke to 70 people and 20 committed to give their lives to Christ for the first time. i'm supposed to go back to AGAPE tomorrow to speak to their weekly bible study, and i'm going to be giving the sermon in 2-3 churches on sunday. so please continue to pray for me as i share God's word.

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

AGAPE

today was a really good day. i went out with an organization called Agape that ministers to homeless street boys. i hung out and played with them for about an hour then it was time to minister. they sung a few songs and a few people said a few things then i gave the gospel to them. about 40 of the 60 prayed the sinners prayer and raised their hands after the presentation. but many of them were young and didn't really understand everything that was going on. one of the people that works with them frequently went around during lunch after this and really talked to the kids and it sounds like 20 of them really committed to Christ today. after this we went to the Kisumu Juvenile Remand Center for young kids who have committed violent crimes... crazy, right? they were so kind and nice and innocent looking it is hard to believe some of the things these kids have done and seen. we sung a few songs with them and then i gave a very clear presentation of the gospel to them. i was expecting a few hands to be raised, but every single kid in the room raised their hands to receive Christ! i'm not stupid and i know that not even close to every kid in that room really gave their life to Christ today, but all i can do is give a clear presentation and pray and hope that as many follow through as possible. but could you imagine doing that in america? most criminal kids wouldn't listen to single word you said. anyway, i don't have a clue what i'm doing next, but the people at Agape were begging me to come back as often as possible :-)

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell

Restful Start in Kisumu

i've been here in Kisumu, Kenya for a week now and it looks like ministry is about to really get started. the project in Nairobi took months of preparation and went very well. this is on the fly and has been slow starting. ive basically had 6 days of networking and getting the feel of the place and only one day of real ministry so far. last friday i went with another guy to the lake where the fishermen sell their catch. the fishermen are the lowest rung of society here, they drink and do drugs while fishing and then even worse when they get to shore! but they need to hear about Jesus just like everbody else. we went and shared the gospel with them through personal evangelism for a couple hours. this was the first time in my life that i had the feeling of doing exactly what Jesus did! i was fishing for fishermen lol. then that night the couple i'm with drove me to a church out in the country. they gave some brief teaching, i shared a quick presentation of the gospel and about 35 of the 50 people there committed to give their lives to Christ! then we showed the Jesus film in their tribal language of luo. it was a pretty good day...the pastors that went with us to Nairobi seem worn out and have really been dragging their feet so far. but today i met with an awesome group of pastors that seem very excited to get me into their schools and churches to speak. this group is a very diverse organization of pastors from different denominations who all have churches in the same part of town (don't you wish americans were open enough to do this!) but they say they want me to start doing churches this sunday and schools on monday! i'm supposed to go out with a group called agape that ministers to boys who roam the streets and are in gangs, they are a really rough group, but once again, they are the ones who need to hear about Jesus the most. i think i have a few schools lined up this thursday as well, so it looks like vacation time is over and its time to get back to work :-)

please pray that i will have devine appointments everywhere that i go, and please pray that these local pastors will be dilligent and efficient in getting me where i need to be to share the message of Christ with as many people as possible. thanks for the continued prayer and support!

In Christ,
Steve Stockwell