Dockery Chapel connects with Kenya ministry
If you’re contacted by someone you don’t know, seemingly out of the blue, who claims to be from Africa, it’s pretty easy to know what to do. People with active e-mail accounts may receive several such e-mails a day.
You ignore him.
But when the phone rang at Doug Franklin’s house at 6 a.m., something different happened. Franklin’s wife, Nicole, told him that it was a pastor from Kenya calling. Franklin took the call. The person explained that
God had placed on his heart that he should call him, and they should be in communication. He asked Franklin to send him an e-mail that he could reply to.
Franklin wasn’t without suspicion. He prayed about it for a few days. Finally, he sent an e-mail, saying that he trusted the e-mail to God, and if the person was trying to run a scam, to please stop.
On the other end of the conversation, there had also been a lot of praying going on.
Pastor Paul Migowe of Kenya knew he would sound suspicious. He also receives many e-mails from people running scams. He once received a message from someone who said she was dying, and wanted to make a donation to his ministry. He asked her to send pictures, and he received pictures of a woman in a hospital bed on life support. He was asked for account numbers so someone could transfer him funds. He provided the number of an account with no money in it. He was contacted by someone claiming to be the executor of the woman’s estate after she died, who said he would pay for half of his plane ticket to the funeral, if Migowe would send him the other half. Migowe didn’t. The calls finally stopped.
Migowe knows there are many people in the world who lie to trick people out of money. He knew he would appear to be one of them. Yet, he carried a burden.
In his home of Kenya, it can be difficult for people with disabilities to come to Christ. Many spend long days looking for people with enough compassion to give them some money for food. Migowe says only about one in 20 do. At the end of the day, they barely have enough money so they don’t starve. Migowe is in ministry with such people daily. He wants to do more to help them. He doesn’t have resources. He turned to God.
“I decided to pray like I’ve never prayed before,” Migowe said. He felt his prayer was answered with the name “Doug Franklin” laid on his heart. But he didn’t know a Doug Franklin. So he Googled it. His Internet search led him to the Dockery Chapel UMC website, a rural church in the Pony Express District where Franklin is senior pastor. Franklin lists his office phone, home phone and cell phone numbers on the website. Paying for Internet by the minute, he quickly jotted down the numbers.
But Migowe just couldn’t make the call.
He thought he’d sound like a fraud. He didn’t know what to say. He would dial the first several numbers, and then hang up before he finished.
“I asked the Lord to give me courage and boldness,” he said.
Finally the call was made around the first of this year, and Franklin and Migowe eased cautiously into a relationship, which soon became a friendship.
Migowe doesn’t have use of his legs. He was ordained as a pastor in a different denomination, but later felt pushed aside because of his disability. During their first several communications, Franklin wasn’t aware of Migowe’s disability. Franklin did begin to ask Migowe if he, or his ministry, needed anything that Dockery Chapel could send them. Migowe refrained from making any such request, saying the Lord would provide a way for them to meet in person someday, and could discuss it then.
A component of Migowe’s power chair stopped working, disabling the chair, so he asked Franklin if he could contact the company to see about getting a new part. The part was expensive, but a member of Dockery Chapel offered to donate a power chair that was no longer needed. But shipping the chair to Kenya was going to cost thousands of dollars.
“We found we could have him fly here, and then send him back home in the chair (which the plane has to check through) for about half as much money as it would cost to ship the chair,” Franklin said.
So a visit was planned. Migowe had some difficulty with his visa, but persisted and, after a delay, was able to make the trip.
After a recent visioning process, Dockery Chapel established their vision as “Living the Love of Jesus, connecting the unconnected, growing in relationship with Christ.” Franklin needed some kind of graphic for the brochure, so after struggling with it for a while, he finally just sketched out a heart with a cross on top.
“I’m not a ‘heart” kind of guy, but that’s what I came up with,” he said.
When Migowe showed Dockery Chapel some of his old brochures from his ministry, his logo was also a heart with a cross on top.
“It was another sign showing me that we were meant to bring these ministries together,” Franklin said. “I’m amazed at what God can do. Even when we live in different cultures, the blood of Christ is fresh, and is pulling people together.” Migowe’s ministry,
Overcoming Broken Hearts International, is working with 25 people who are blind, 16 who are deaf, and six with mobility difficulties. They gather for worship on Sunday, and he tries to provide them with enough food to make it through the week.
“I let people know they are loved by God, and can be used by God,” Migowe said. “A lot of people now use the gifts and skills they have to serve God. They are begging from God, not from man.”
Although Migowe’s disability is permanent, he knows that in the scheme of things, it’s really temporary.
“This that you see before you is not Paul. It is a broken tent,” he said. “One day I will fly out of this body. I know that from the depth of my heart.’
Migowe said most people in Kenya with disabilities feel they are nothing.
“God called me to build an Army of nothings,” he said.
The connection with Migowe was an answered prayer for Dockery Chapel.
“We felt God has called our church to social justice ministry, and serve as his hands and to connect to those in need,” Franklin said. “But we’re located in a very rural area, and knew that the people in our community didn’t have the extreme needs that people did in other places. We thought we would probably need to look outside of our own community. We just didn’t know we would be going this far out.”
Migowe arrived in the U.S. on June 19, and flew home on July 11. While at Dockery Chapel, Migowe preached for a four-day revival, and spoke to 200 youth who were part of a Youth Worldchangers group that was working in the area. During his time there, he touched many people. Aidan Stevenson, a member of Dockery Chapel, has decided to move to Kenya to help Migowe with his ministry. The church is currently looking into shipping his car over there, and packing it full of mission supplies for the trip. Migowe and Franklin visited the PET Center in Columbia while Migowe was here, to explore the possibility of taking some of the handcranked wheelchairs to Kenya. Dockery Chapel is planning on sending a team of volunteers to Kenya later this year.
“Our vision of this is to have our two churches become one,” Franklin said.
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