Matt Harrison at a soap stone factory
I had forgotten this incident. In 2003 Matt Harrison, John Fale, Tim Yeadon and I went to Kenya. The folks from the the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Kenya like to say that we were the first to come and visit and attempt to partner. ELCK has not become a partner church at that time. We had a visit to a soap stone carving factory that was really interesting. They would take the overbear dirt off by hand shovel and go dig the and cut the soapstone by hand and haul it out of these pits by main force. They would carve it and the women would clean it and then it might be painted or left rough. What I enjoyed is how they would go about their business and seemed to enjoy us watching them go about their business.
a deep hole to dig by handfinished results are lovely
Rather than feeling like I was an intruder they genuinely seemed to enjoy us watching and they took great pride in their work as they should when you see what they can do with a piece of soapstone.
In the next few weeks David Chuchu will be visiting us in the Minnesota North and North Dakota Districts. David is the project manager fro the ELCK and is in charge of the Project 24 rescue centers and where and how they are built. I believe that David will be at Pastors Conferences and will be preaching at some churches. He will have a chance to watch us do our work. I hope we can show him the same hospitality that they consistently show us when we visit.
