We had a wonderful meeting with Muhia Kianjahi, who works for Tanari Trust, about rites of passage. Tanari Trust was created by a group of churches in Nairobi who recognized that the urban youth had become disenfranchised. They were left on their own to figure out what it meant to be an adult. Muhia led his church in beginning a rites of passage retreat for them. This quickly caught the interest of other churches and it grew. Tanari now runs a camp for Christian youth to lead them through a Christian rite of passage into adulthood and does teaching in local churches on this issue.
We were very blessed to glean from Muhia's experience and wisdom. Our context is very different, of course. We want to create a Christian alternative to the traditional rite of passage. Muhia was excited about our situation and seems eager to join our efforts. We are praying that he and some of his colleagues will be able to come to Tarime in February to teach the committee that we are gathering together.
The next step in our process is to finalize who will be invited to join the committee and begin meeting. Please pray for this. The pastors understand the process that I have in mind, and agree with it, but we will have to teach the committee members. Most of them will not have been part of something like this. They are more used to attending a meeting and then leaving, perhaps utilizing what they have been taught and perhaps not. Our goal is to deconstruct the rites of passage ceremonies so that we can reconstruct a new one, and then to actually put it into practice. I think that they will be quite excited to be part of this when they understand how we want to go about things.
I would also like to ask for "blind" prayer about an issue that we cannot share publicly. I absolutely hate doing that, but I may be doing it often from now on. We are now finding ourselves quite often in situations that need a great deal of prayer support but are complicated by not being able to share details.
I cannot express the impact that your prayer has here - on us and on our ministry. Please do not ever feel that even the smallest lifting of our names to God is futile. We feel the strength that comes through your prayers and know that God listens to you in order to work out His will here. I won't understand that cause-and-effect relationship or why God chose to do things that way until I get to heaven. All I know it that this is how it works and that we are truly thankful for you.
Blessings.
