When a family needs a dog to keep lions away from their trash, you can guess they’re probably not living in Saxapahaw. Or anywhere local for that matter.
Maybe even worse is that the lions in question aren’t fierce animals such as we usually think about. Instead, those lions are mangy creatures that roam neighborhoods scavenging for whatever scraps they can find. And while the animals are annoying, they’re not particularly dangerous and a barking dog is usually enough to keep them away.
That’s exactly what Pastor Shauen Trump and his family have to deal with every day in their home in the Nairobi, Kenya area. And it’s part of the differences Trump and his family live with in their lives sharing the gospel in the capital of Kenya.Trump, his wife Krista, and their five children were at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Burlington on Friday night, June 16, to provide an overview of Shauen’s work as a regional coordinator for missions work for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (the LCMS) in a broad swath of sub-Saharan Africa. A group of about 40 people gathered at Redeemer to listen and ask questions.Shauen’s job is to assist local church pastors and leaders in sharing the gospel and being of assistance to those local churches in training new pastors and teachers for the work of the gospel.He gave an example of a local congregation in the country of Tanzania, where a local church was growing out of their worship space. Not wanting to have to split into two congregations, they were building another church on their own, making the 80,000 bricks by hand. Unfortunately, the Christians there ran out of money before they could put the roof on the new building. Shauen and his co-workers were able to secure funds to assist the church in putting a tin roof on the new building. The 35 national partner churches across the African continent are growing. Some of the growth is natural – families having 10 children is not unusual – but much of the growth is due to outreach, especially in Kenya’s refugee camps that house individuals and families who have had to flee conflict in nearby countries. One service witnessed the Baptisms of some 130 people. “Everyone got pretty wet,” he quipped.
Shauen related that while the work is rewarding, there are difficulties, many of them cultural. “Efficiency is a Western value,” he related, and he went on to quote a Kenyan proverb, “hurry and haste bring no value.” Church council meetings sometimes last eight hours, time spent listening to others, and seeking to understand their perspective. Trump and his family will go on to make presentations at other churches in North Carolina and across the upper Midwest. They will return to Nairobi in September in time for their children to return to school.