I met Dale Garris in the Philippines in 2005. We were both speaking at a conference in Western Mindanao. I must admit that when I first learned that he was sharing the platform, and with an American, too! – I was a little cautious. The message God had given me to bring was total commitment, and I wasn’t too interested in having some “faith” preacher water it down. I shouldn’t have worried. Dale’s message was a lot like mine, and we just flowed together like we’d been collaborating for years, rather than just meeting for the first time.
This was Dale’s first missionary experience. I laughed several times as he wrestled with the more interesting aspects of life in a developing country. When he finished the trip, he thought he would be perfectly happy to return to his home in Texas and never set foot outside the Good Ole US of A again. So I laughed even more when he emailed me to say that the Lord was calling him to go to Kenya. Since then, he has returned there twice and has also ministered in Nigeria.
This book is the story of his first trip to Kenya, initially written as a journal that was emailed home every day so family and friends could keep up with what he was up to. It’s raw and honest, and doesn’t try to embellish things. Dale is a prophet of the old school; I don’t think he’s capable of embellishing things! What he found in Kenya was raw culture shock. The Philippines had just been a pretty mild introduction to the way of life outside of the developed world. He sums it up at the beginning of Day 2: “This is a completely new experience for me. I look ahead to a long road that will stretch over 30 days, and I have no idea what lies ahead. Anticipation is mixed with excitement and a little touch of unease. I have a feeling I’m about to play a role I’ve never played before. The question that keeps spinning in my mind, “What the hell am I doing here? How did I get here? “
From the joys of a third-world hotel that “looked more like a worn and faded painting of some old hotel in the tropics with Humphrey Bogart,” to a river baptism where he sank thigh-deep in mud, to meetings where God’s Spirit is poured out with awesome power, we are there with Dale through the pages of this book. We feel the exhilaration of him and the exhaustion of him. We feel his confusion when things don’t go as planned, his frustration with “African weather” (something every Western missionary has to deal with), and his compassion for the incredible conditions in which the people.
More than that, we’re on a spiritual journey: the journey of a man who begins by wondering why the hell he’s leaving, and ends by saying (on the penultimate page) “Now I’m burdened to return.” Dalen Garris did a great ministry in Kenya. He brought a new dimension of the Spirit to hungry hearts and opened them to the concept that there is much more to the Christian life than they ever dreamed of, if they are prepared to pay the price. Kenya also did a great ministry in Dale: he moved him in a new direction, launched him into a new dimension of ministry, and changed his heart for missions forever. For that alone, this book is worth reading.
The Kenya Diaries by Dalen Garris is published by Revival Fire Ministries
