My friend can sing quite unaffected by what’s going on around him. Eight of us once stuffed into his car after a Sunday morning service in the capital, Nairobi. We travelled North where he spends a chunk of his time sharing good news. For the long car ride, he paired his phone to the speakers and played some music: a carefully curated playlist of the best worship songs of the 90s.

“Nostalgic,” is the word I'd use.

All around him, in the packed car, people carried on their conversations, yammering away. But even with all that noise, he sang out loud, undeterred.

I sat in the very back of the car with his wife and eldest son.

“He’s stuck in the 90s!”
“YES!” They replied in unison. I had to laugh.

He grew up here in East Africa. He was on his way to becoming a priest in the orthodox church. As a young boy, he remembers crowding around the priest with the other boys. The priest read, crouched over the open flame of a little lamp, and the boys were meant to be listening.

My friend doesn’t quite know what happened next, but he was bumped. Before he knew it, the lamp was knocked into the priest, the flame caught the priest’s beard and it went up in flames.

Gone!

“Dad, isn’t that how you got kicked out of the priesthood?” his teenage boys tease. And, amid the aroma of singed hairs, yes, it did.

But, the priesthood wasn’t for him. By his own admission, he was a challenging kid and I can’t imagine him cloistered in a church office. No, he found his stride out on the open road, in the periphery where the good news was still unknown. He was at home in his car going to places few chose to venture. That’s where he encountered God: on the road, in the deserts, in the arid and desolate places where Jesus himself would hide away sometimes until his disciples finally found him. That’s where he found God.

It’s not a life for everyone. He’s faced more life-threatening dangers than most. The bullet holes in the car would attest to that. But, he’s a man on a mission. And, as I came to discover up North, he’s not the only one.

I came across an old man worshipping away on his traditional instrument. The grey in his beard tells me he’s had a full life and could start thinking of the comforts of retirement. But, instrument slung over his shoulder, he travels door to door, on foot, sharing good news.

Another old man testified how he was completely out of his mind when Jesus found him. In an instant, God healed him, and the only thing he could think of doing with his remaining years was to tell others what God had done. You can tell, no amount of reasoning with him would ever change his mind.

There was that time Jesus healed someone. Despite being told to keep quiet about it, the man told everyone he knew. I’m convinced, nothing you could have told him would have changed his mind.

A bump on the elbow, a beautiful beard going up in flames, and ending up on the wide open road… Wouldn’t you know, that’s where Jesus was waiting for him all along, saying, “Let’s go!”

So, he’s not going to let a little conversation get between him and that sweet chorus that’s coming up. And nothing you could possibly tell him would ever convince him otherwise!

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