Kingdom Work

“Come, you who are blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you invited me in……”
Matthew 25: 34-35

What is Kingdom work? When I’ve read this passage about giving to the hungry, I normally think of buying a meal for a homeless person or maybe sharing with some neighbors in a time of need. It has been a great blessing to be given the opportunity to live out this command to service on a different scale.

From July 15-17 MFSP underwent its monthly food pickup for the 6-month Food for Work (FFW) project, funded by Canadian Food Grains Bank (of which MCC is a member). In total MFSP, one of two partners implementing this project, would distribute over 2,000 bales (24kgs each) of flour, 250 cartons (12kgs each) of cooking fat, and about 100 sacks (90 kgs each) of beans. This food would be sent from a warehouse in Nairobi to 2 central distribution points (Najile and Ewuaso) and then be taken to 14 substations throughout the division. Through these 3 days, work was non-stop, but in the end I could see that this truly was kingdom work, and to serve God is my life’s ambition.

The first step was traveling to Nairobi to pick up the food. 7 10MT trucks were hired to transport the food to the distribution sites and each was guided by a person from POMC. The 15th started slowly, as I decided to stay in Najile and work on this side of things, saving my energy for the unloading process and letting others travel to Nairobi (6 hours of driving in total).

While the MFSP crew was traveling to Nairobi, Simion and I organized the church (/distribution center) by setting off areas for each substation, noting the flour, oil, and beans each location was to receive on signs around the church. We also cleared the church floor and discussed how we would unload the trucks, using both doors of the church to unload two trucks at once. We expected the first truck to arrive around 3pm and even by 1pm workers from each substation (save one) were arriving at the church.

The afternoon became evening and still no trucks were to be seen. The workers, now numbering around 40 were getting tired and hungry, as many had left their homes the day before to walk to Najile. I went home for dinner with Steph, with one eye always out the window for the telltale dust plumes of the heavy trucks.

At 630, we heard the rumbling of truck number 1. We were filled with excitement as we rushed to the church. Steph received the delivery; the first truck was the leftovers of the 2 trucks which unloaded at Ewuaso. This made for an easy practice run as we had only 44 bales of flour to unload. Only five more trucks to go, but these would be full trucks with around 300 flour bales, 80 fat cartons and 15 bean sacks each.

The second and third trucks rumbled in by 730, and it was now dark. The church has no lights so we operated by the light of 2 flashlights, one a windup given to us by the Kleinerts. The lights were not enough to illuminate the entire church, but at least helped people count bales as they entered the church and were piled into towers of food.

Two more trucks replaced the first two, now giving us work upon work. Numbers didn’t add up, people stacked food in the wrong places, some workers hadn’t eaten all day and didn’t want to work anymore. Steph and I were limited by our Maasai language, trying to both count every food item that entered, direct people where to unload, and organize the piles of food at the same time. It was tiring work, often interrupted by people asking us mundane questions (like, where are you from?) after learning we speak some Maasai. Both of our basic math skills were put to the test.

It was 10pm when the 5th truck was unloaded. One truck remained to come to Najile the next morning as it had broken down on the way. One thing that remained was to deal with the tired and frustrated un-loaders. A major point of contention was that one substation had not sent anybody, and the people wanted to punish the lack of cooperation. They confiscated one of the missing stations’ bales of flour for food that night, and then each worker received one 2kg packet of flour for their work, at the expense of the recalcitrant substation.

At 630am, we heard the rumblings again. The local transport trucks had arrived to load up and take food to the substations. After waking the field extentionist (running the show now), we realized there were not many people around to help, so on Thursday we got our workout. We carried bale after bale, bale after bale, and then our numbers began to fail. Each pile seemed to have too few items, and soon we were wondering if all our counting had been in vain.

After we loaded two trucks, the last truck to be unloaded arrived. Before anything was unloaded we recounted every pile and calculated what we should have. It turned out we were short 10 cartons of fat, but otherwise ok. We worked the rest of the morning loading and unloading, and it wasn’t until 4pm when the last truck (save one) rolled off.

The last day consisted of again waking up early, loading the last truck and then driving to visit some of the distributions. We got to see people receive their food, and it was a great joy to be part of the final step of the distribution.

All in all, it was a lot of work. We were tired, a little sick, and annoyed that our plans of organizing didn’t work as well as we’d hoped. But it struck me that while we were carrying those bales of flour, or counting cartons of fat, we were feeding the poor. We were where we needed to be, in the midst of the reality of living out God’s command for us. Whenever you can see that you are doing just what God wants you to do, it is a great blessing and I pray that you too can know that joy.