A Little Taste of “Home”

Christina and I have been in Dallas since Friday.  Between some good friends of hers that live down here and my seven years that I spent braving the crazy, sweltering summers (college and first job), our time in the States wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to “Big D.”

My old church, Highland Park Presbyterian, also invited me to preach at two of the Sunday services yesterday.  One is called The Den, and is attended mostly by college students and young adults.  Since that was my main crowd when I worked here, I was really looking forward to the opportunity.  The other service, however, was the service that is attended by the Kenyan community here in Dallas (How the Kenyans found Dallas in the first place, much less HPPC, is an entirely different post altogether).  I must admit, I was a little nervous at this one.  Even I had preached a few times at Ithemba, which is the black township church in J-Bay that we had a really good relationship with, this was different.  At Ithemba, the people knew me before I got up to preach.  I always felt like I had a little leeway there.  Here in Dallas, no one in the church had ever met me before, and I could have easily been some random white guy walking in off the street. 

I shouldn’t have been worried at all.  When Christina and I walked in, we were greeted just as warmly as we were anytime we walked into a church in J-Bay.  After an hour of some great music in Swahili (an hour!!), they invited me up to deliver the Word.  Man, I’ll tell ya, I felt like I was back at Ithemba.  The Spirit was alive and well in that body of believers and it totally energized my preaching.  It was such a blessing to feel like I was right at home again. 

After the service, one of the women, dressed in really cool traditional African dress, made it a point to come up to me and share with me that the Lord had totally changed how she was looking at a tough issue in her life and now she had begun to claim victory over it.  Praise God!!  (As a side note, for those of you who are attending churches, please make sure to tell your pastor that you appreciated his or her sermon as you see them on your way out.  And especially if you were taught something or if the Lord showed you something, DEFINITELY share that with them.  It will mean SOOO much.)

The other huge compliment that I received as a result of that time came later that night as we were speaking with a Kenyan by the name of Fred.  He couldn’t be at the service that morning, but had spoken with some people who had.  Fred told me that one of the people that was there in the morning said that I sounded like an African preacher!!  White boy from the suburbs sounding like an African preacher!  It’s one thing to try to be all things to all people, but it’s something entirely different to actually have someone accept you as one of their own.  I praise God for His grace and His relentless desire to teach me how to connect and share His love with all of His children.  Amen!