Pokot Building Project

Our Pokot “house story” is a bit detailed. Let me try!
First off after much travel into the sub-Sahara to minister to the indigenous tribes we roughed it in small pup tents. We camped in very dry places so we carried water jugs with us running out of drinking water on several occasions. Although there is no place to find clean water in that area camping in dry season is a must. During rainy season it can be treacherous and dangerous because of the flash floods. Many places where we minister we must drive thru three to four river beds where only dry season allows us. We tried once during rainy season to crusade and got caught by the monsoon rains and lightning storms. That trip we ran out of food and water and was dug out of the mud 5 times trying to get out of the desert. I’m not trying to paint an awful picture but a true life experience… but we love it all! And we love the people. They are receptive to hearing about Jesus and the lifestyle God desires for us that is so opposite their culture. It just has to be God opening the way.
Someone told us of a guest house in the bush foothills so we ventured to stay there one night. That experience I won’t go into but there was no way we could return. In fact after sleeping there we called a friend to see if we could spend one night on his compound to grab a shower and a good night’s sleep. That’s when he offered to let us build a small hut on his property there in Pokot where he also invited us to teach our Bevere curriculum. We jumped right on that but it didn’t work out well. We know God doesn’t make mistakes but we’ve learned He will certainly use our mistakes to get us where He wants us.
The Pokot chief sensed also we needed to be a separate entity from our landlord and has given us two acres. Al things work out for the good of those that love God and are called for His purpose. We have cleared much bush off that acreage with much more to do as well as make a makeshift road to our property. We are hooking up with an organization to drill a well. It is a Christian organization that covers half the expense if we will also share the well with the community. Our half is $10,000.00. We will drill on our property and pipe water and set a pump outside our fence where the natives can come to fill their jugs of clean water.
We’ve learned much about building in the desert. We sit on a hill and will build 2 stories high where we can look out over the village people. They no doubt will start building their mud houses around us and we look forward to the one on one opportunity to teach. We recently did a medical mission there and it is about 250 to 300 people. We will have the opportunity to teach hygiene and many other life style changes along with the Word. There isn’t a lot of shade so we will build a bamboo, grass roof church/classroom/ fellowship hall on the property. There is no electricity although they are speaking of bringing it in but we know by experience if it does come it will be sporadic… off more than on. We are believing God for solar power. We are making the house of blocks that we make ourselves from sand and cement. The floor will be flat slate rock taken from the river bed. We were going to have a grass roof but decided on a tin roof so we can build bonfires to roast goat for our neighbors and marshmallows for us after church fellowship on a desert cool evening.
We have fence to build… wire and metal poles because termites eat the wood. We’ve learned the hard way on that!
We have a roof top tent now and camping is much more comfortable and safe. But we need the Pokot house as a base where we can rest and recuperate with a shower and stock up with drinking water and real food. There are still miles of desert villages to explore and tribes we have met only in the vision God has given us.
I know you most probably want to know the cost of this amazing vision and I think if we estimated we would miss it. But here’s where I send this story to my husband to give you some idea of figures. I am happily the visionary of this team, my husband strategizes and our God that owns all the cows on all the hills provides. A three string cord that cannot be broken.