Youth Sabbath At Laiser Hill: Five Things I Saw

1. My old flame

Laiser Hill was the first big English speaking church I attended when I first came to Nairobi. It sounds like a stretch of the imagination to say a church that’s closer to Ngong Hills than it is to Uhuru Park is in Nairobi but that’s neither here nor there. Laiser is the scene where I’ve listened to the best sermons, seen the prettiest babes and a former class mate of mine found love there too and got married in June. They used to have a Pastor, Joel Okindo, who used to make heaven come down with his sermons. He had a fetching daughter who was a chorister with a foreign accent. If the father made heaven come down, the daughter took me to seventh heaven. I’m not sure if there’s a correlation but ever since Pastor Okindo moved with his family (read daughter), my visits to Laiser went in the general direction Nakumatt is headed.

In September 2016, Oliver Obiayo, then the youth leader at Laiser invited me to their youth Sabbath but the invitation clashed with one from a babe at Kiserian South. Faced with two invitations from a dude and dudette, there was only going to be one winner. Oliver got married in July 2017 and has since disappeared from youth events.

There was a district Sabbath at my new church and never being a fan of such meetings I chose to honour an invite from friends at Laiser for their youth Sabbath. It was like a date with a blast from the past.

 

Lucy, Kevin, Ruth, Nelson and Mercy at Laiser Hill on Saturday.

2. Date gone awry

If going back to Laiser felt like a date with a former flame, the way it unraveled was not in the script. On an admittedly cold day with gloomy, cloudy skies and uninspiring weather, most people in the congregation wore the expression of untipped waiters and could not bring themselves to sing hymns with oomph. AMO and AWM had gone on various missions and left the church in the hands of the youth but the place still lacked vibrancy and you’d have been forgiven if you mistook it for a meeting of those who’d seen better days.

In the event, no youth choir was invited or if they were they gave the meeting a wide berth. One youth leader used the trending word boycott in relation to the shambles and he wasn’t far off the mark. The atmosphere was as grey as the unpainted walls of the unfinished church and the hosts didn’t help it when they looked unprepared and not in uniform. In mitigation, they redeemed their F score in organization by scoring plain As in the speaker they invited and the abundance of food at lunch time.

3. Away with stereotypes

Perhaps I’m growing older faster than I can accept it but of late I’m sick and tired of speakers who raid a youth Sabbath and only speak against premarital sex and immodest dress among our ladies. There’s a systematic pigeon-holing of youth where ladies are known to dress provocatively and men are only after parting young women from their skimpy dresses and tight trousers. I’m not saying the said vices don’t happen but of all available topics that are apt for youth, we’re barely scratching the surface.

So it was with the relief of a weary worn sojourner in the desert coming to an oasis that the day’s speaker chose to slice the bread of life from a different angle. Pastor Wilson Angima preached about the spiritual rebellion that leads men into sin and how Satan is only too happy to deceive us into a state of comfort when the end times and the close of probation is upon us. As it turned out, those of us pining for a change of menu were left wishing we’d not jumped from the frying pan into the fire. I came out feeling like I’m headed to hell in a hand basket and wishing he’d just dwelt on stock topics like the aforementioned premarital sex.

4. We’re living at the end of time

Pastor Angima deplored the current state of slumber affecting most church members. “The world and its comforts have so seduced us into a state we do not like to be told the world is coming to an end. Most of us would rather have the Second Coming postponed so we finish our degrees, get married and build houses,” he said. “But God is clear in his word that we have a work to do and those shirking responsibility will be separated from his remnant church never to come back again.”

He then dwelt on the close of probation and its consequences. “The investigative judgment, which starts in the house of God is almost coming to an end. You don’t know when your file will be opened and closed.” He then read out what he called the most terrible text in scripture, Jeremiah 8:20: “The harvest is over, the summer is ended and we are not saved.”

5. Having a form godliness but denying the power thereof

Pastor Angima also lamented how young people have become lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. “We’ve let the world suck us up into its practices. When we who have the knowledge of truth are busy becoming more like the world, souls out there are looking out for a standard to look up to and can’t find it because there is a shortage of labourers in the work of God.” He went on to warn that there’s a price to pay, “In the judgment, you’ll be asked to account for souls who came under your jurisdiction but you failed to quench their thirst for the truth.”

Talking of believers who have a form of godliness but denying the power thereof, the pastor warned that nowadays it’s easier to go to church and meet with Satan than God. “There’s a battle fought at every congregation of worship. Just as there is the presence of God at every such meeting, the presence of Satan and his fallen angels cannot be downplayed. We all want to be called Christians yet we oppose any message that asks us to change our character. You see people in church physically but they are busy chatting on WhatsApp with those outside you wonder why they bothered to come. We’ve dropped hard copy bibles for their soft versions but how many read the bible on their apps?”

The avenues to distract Christians from concentrating on what matters grow by the day, “We’ve become a nation of commentators. Everyone has something to say about everything. Some of us are too self-absorbed we live our lives on social media. Yet this is the time to talk less and pray more.”

Later during lunch time, Pastor Angima told us he read in Early Writings of a vision Ellen White was shown of the state of the world in the end times, “she was shown of a train riding very fast to hell. The devil was its driver and the conductors were his fallen angels collecting all who had lost focus and bundling them into the train. A huge majority of humanity ended up on that train.”

But in the same book, he said, “she was shown a vision of a small group going up the narrow way to heaven and she was told that as long as they kept their eyes on Jesus they would not fail. Are you with the majority on the train or have you fixed your eyes on Jesus?”

6. I like you girl in particular

After that see your life moment of trains and narrow paths, there was a short period in which everyone was to identify themselves with the aim of welcoming visitors. I first visited Laiser two years ago but when I realized visitors were to get hugs from locals of the opposite sex, I quickly switched to that innocent-I’m-new-to-this-place look. That the youth leader chose to start the session anti-clockwise played into my strategy of seeing how others behaved and adjusting accordingly. A visitor would stand up, identify themselves and then the leader would pick out a member of the opposite sex from the crowd of locals to bless them with a welcoming hug. All nice and dandy except that I didn’t like the fact you couldn’t choose who to get a hug from.

I was last in line so when the opportunity came to me I milked it for all its worth. I said my name but before the leader could choose a girl for me, I interjected and asked whether I could choose her myself.

There were two girls who stood out for me but they both sat in the same direction away from me. The first one, I’d call her Form 34A was brown, nicely rounded and filled her seat completely. She was topped off with nice dimples on both cheeks when she smiled which was all the time. The second one, call her Form 34B was the colour of a thousand shilling note, lean, lanky and blessed with movie star looks with her eyes twinkling like stars.

The moment I pointed in their direction, everyone thought I’d gone for the girl with movie star looks. They probably recognize her as the prettiest of their bunch. Yet choosing a girl to hug is like shopping for water melon. You go for the biggest and hope for the best. The babe with movie star looks was absolutely fine too but this time I had chosen Form 34A in particular. Sonia, as she told me her name was, didn’t disappoint.

They welcome people warmly at Laiser Hill. Seen here with Sonia.