EJoka! Nia Jokan. (Hi! How are you? - Turkana dialect)

John Moru ,Pastor-in-charge of Turkana Friends Mission in northern Kenya

 John Muhanji, African Ministries Director

 Last evening Westfield Friends was visited by John Moru and John Muhanji. They gave first hand reports on the Friends Ministry in Africa.

John Moru spoke first. He set the stage by describing the village of Turkana located in Northern Kenya, for us. He used a slide show with photographs from his home to illustrate his stories. He said that Turkana is going through a drought and subsequent famine. Just last March water was reached in the well-drilling efforts financed by donors in response to the 2010 FUM Summer Mission Project: see link below~


http://fum.org/about/news/BreakingNewsinTurkana.htm
The landscape of Tukana is dry, sandy and arid and Lake Turkana is a salt water lake so they cannot drink the water but they do fish there. Turkana is full of thorn trees, camels, donkeys, goats and termite hills.

John is a soft spoken man who can speak twelve languages. He is married and has two adopted children.
John says that he believes that in this life you can choose between two paths. The wide or the narrow. He says he has chosen the narrow because it leads somewhere.

John has a vision and has asked for prayer. He wants to expand the outreach of the Friends Mission in Turkana to Sudan, as he knows the need there is great. He is excited to help teach children to read and write, and to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

He showed beautiful pictures of the women during worship and they were singing and clapping their hands. He says that when they clap their hands it helps them to feel the spirit of God.

John Muhanji spoke next, John is the much more exuberant and outspoken of the two John's.After graduating from business school John went to work as a banker. After several years he became disenchanted with this line of work and heeded the call to Ministry.

Johns message is one of challenging Christians to wake up and rise up. With a mission to bring hope to the hopeless. He believes that a church that sends members into the mission field is a church that grows. He invites any Christians who feel led to come to Africa and serve on the mission field and your life will be forever changed. He believes it is not enough to just send your money, but that we must build relationships together in order to understand one another. John also placed an emphasis on reaching out to other tribes in Africa and that in order to do that Leadership Training is essential.  

John told a story about how he had visited a village deep in the Jungle and began preachng the Gospel to them and they had never heard but were thirsty for God. He stood on the roof of his truck and spoke of Gods love for them for twenty minutes and had drawn quite a crowd and even did an alter call. He said that it broke his heart because when he left he had no one to leave behind to carry on the work there.

John senses that people in the church in America can become easily bored or discouraged and he emplores us to open our eyes to the possibilities of coming together with all of our resources, meaning all of the other Christians, all of the other Meetings, and make a difference in this world by sharing with the world the love that is in our hearts through Christ. He believes that throwing money at a problem will not be enough but that their needs to be fellowship and teamwork in order for Gods love to prevail.

John says that we need to free our hearts and become bold in our faith and proclaim our beliefs to the world in order to share the joy that walking with Christ brings. He sees that in  America Christians have become fearful of speaking about Jesus. He called America a sleeping Giant and asked us to please see beyond where we see.