Marsabit Region | May 2026
We write this from the Northern Desert of Kenya, as the sun stretches long and golden across the bush. Three days of rigorous discipleship training now behind us, and the weight of what God has done is settling in. This update is less a report and more a testimony.
Over the past three days, we have had the privilege of walking pastors from M’Pargas, Lependera, and L’Moti through what we believe to be the most foundational truth of all ministry: discipleship of others must first flow out of our own nearness to Jesus.
You cannot give what you do not have. You cannot lead others to the feet of Christ if you have not yourself lingered there. That has been the heartbeat of every session.
The most impactful moment of the entire seminar came when the pastors of these three distinct village areas — communities that do not always share much common ground — looked at one another and recognized the need for fellowship. Not programming. Not strategy. Fellowship.
They made a commitment. The congregations of all three churches will gather together — to pray, to worship, to share a common meal, and to lift one another up in the Lord.
The writer of Hebrews had this in mind when he exhorted:
“Let us not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” — Hebrews 10:25 (ESV)
We did not engineer that moment. God authored it. We were simply present to witness it.
Before the training began, there was an arrival worth naming.
We arrived in Nairibi late in the afternoon — barely enough time to set camp before the sun went down. The moment the tent stakes went in, we were already walking the dusty road toward a friend’s manyatta. A meal of roast sheep had been prepared for us. There is something about the hospitality of this people that disarms every weary bone.
Along the way, the village chief spotted us from a distance and rushed to greet us — not with formality, but with the warmth of an old friendship. A few steps farther down the road, we came to the home of the school superintendent, a dear friend with whom we have spent many hours sharing the Gospel over the past several years. She was genuinely moved to see us. We were equally moved to see her still in the village — still present, still open, still in conversation with the Living God.
That walk down a dirt road in the late Nairibi afternoon felt like a homecoming. And in many ways, it was.
And yet.
Even as the warmth of that evening lingered, another truth pressed in — one that has followed us since we first opened the pages of Genesis. Since Abram rose from his household in Ur of the Chaldeans and set out for a land He had not yet seen, God’s people have been a sojourning people.
We do not plant permanent roots here. We set tent stakes.
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:1 (ESV):
“For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
This earth is not our home. The tents we now inhabit — whether a canvas camp in the Northern Desert or a comfortable house in the West — are temporary dwellings. We are pilgrims in transit toward a reunion with the Father that will render every earthly homecoming pale by comparison.
That tension — the warmth of belonging here, held against the certainty that we belong there — is not a burden. It is a gift. It keeps our hearts appropriately unattached to the perishing and appropriately anchored in the eternal.
This evening, as the Northern Desert sky shifts from amber to deep blue, we are grateful.
Grateful for the calling — that God would use ordinary people in places most maps do not detail, to carry the extraordinary news that Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death.
Grateful for the fellowship — that Abram’s God did not call us to sojourn alone. Three pastors from three villages made a covenant this week. That is the Body of Christ at work in the African bush.
And grateful for the homecoming that awaits — the one that will finally, permanently, put to rest every ache of the sojourner’s road.
Until then, we press on.
— Mathew Luce, writing from Marsabit, Northern Kenya
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27