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Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another edition of Faith Stories. I'm so glad to see you here this morning. 

For those of you who are new to the class, welcome. We're glad you're here. And for some of you, I know you've been to many Faith Stories, so I'm glad you're here too. 

Just a reminder, in just a moment I will bring up our speakers for the morning, and at the conclusion of their talk, you'll have a chance to ask some questions. So be thinking along the way of if there's anything else you're wondering about or want to hear a little more, feel free to raise your hand when they're done and ask away. So I'm gonna introduce our speakers and then I'll say a prayer and we'll get started. 

So Eric and Joyce Chepkwan have attended Faith Church for three years and they've served together in ministry much longer than that, for almost 30 years. In Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas, they've been married for 29 years. They have a daughter and a son, and in their free time you might see them out walking along the Monon Trail. 

So let me pray for them and we'll get started. Father, I thank you for this morning, for this opportunity to gather here together as a church, and to hear from Eric and Joyce. Lord, I just thank you for them and the journey you've brought them on that's brought them here. 

Lord, I just pray you would give them just peace as they share with us this morning. I pray that your word will come through their story, Lord. We just thank you for how you've been at work and I pray that we would just have an open heart, open mind to hear what you have to say to us this morning. 

I pray these things in your name. Amen. Eric and Joyce, come on up. 

Good morning. It's wonderful to be here to share our story today. We thought of using the presentation so that we can all be on the same page. 

Our story is about building a preacher of grace and finding God in a chasm of complexity. Wait. Meet my family. 

I have a twin sister on the left, and three sisters, and four brothers. I was born in Tenweko Hospital. I was baptized by immersion in December 1996. 

My journey into ministry began in high school when I first felt called to Christianity service. I enrolled at Kenya Island Bible College with no idea that this path could ultimately bring me across the globe to Indianapolis. And I stand from the book of John, 1 John chapter 4, 9 to 10. 

It says, this is how God showed his love among us. He sent his one and only son into the world that he might live through him. This is love, not that we loved God, but he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice to our sins. 

And this is my family. I have a question. How many of us here were dedicated to God as a child? Raise your hand. 

Okay. I was dedicated to God as a child too. And this is my mother here. 

So my mother is 84 years old. Yes. Thank you.

And in this picture, that's my father there. My mother is holding the baby who follows, my sister who follows me. I'm the one standing right there. 

This was early 1970s. I was with five of my siblings. My older brother was not there. 

He had gone on some errands. And then my other six younger siblings were not yet born. So we are a family of 13 siblings. 

And among all of them, me and the sister that I follow are dedicated to God. And we've served in Christian ministry. And so we thank God I was brought to faith and confession of Christ through the faithful witness of my parents. 

My father came to know the Lord through a missionary that came from Indiana. Yes. Many years ago. 

Marion area there. And my grandfather, my father, the father to my mother, came to know Christ through a missionary from Tennessee, Reverend Clark. And so then they led us to Christ. 

And I was baptized by immersion December 1985. And while I was still in high school, the Lord severingly guided my heart into Christian ministry. And through the journey of ministry, this Jeremiah one five, as always, really been that passage that comes over and over to me that says, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. 

Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. This is us. 

AI. Okay. We met as strangers in when you are in our early 20s. 

I had never seen her. I had come to United States 95. So now we are not met. 

And so came to study and went back. That's when we met at Kenya Islands Bible College. Now in our college in culture, the concept of casual dating did not exist. 

Maybe it exists now with the current generations. We've been gone for so long that we don't really know how it works now. But back then, public gestures, romantic gestures were taboo. 

And courtship was strictly a communal endeavor woven into the fabric of family and faith, requiring the blessing and oversight of parents. So basically, the way it works, I could not marry her. My mother did not approve. 

My elders and number of people. So when you meet your bride or you meet a bridegroom, you have to share that story to your family. And then the family do their discussion. 

And if they approve, you go ahead. If they say no, you keep on finding another chance. So that's how it worked. 

So in our youth of our early 20s, I was telling our son yesterday that I came here when I was 22, 95. And I'm like, I was really young. But I did not think that time I was young. 

And not knowing, we did not know it was a start of a 30-year missionary journey. So we come from Kenya. We were born and raised in Kenya, which is in the eastern side of Africa. 

Back in 90s, you could not fly directly to the United States. You can do that now. You can get on a flight and fly from New York straight to Nairobi. 

You can do that. But back in 90s, you could not do that. You had to fly to Europe, mostly Western Europe or Northern Europe. 

And then from Northern Europe. So mostly when we were coming, we went to Northern Europe, from Northern Europe, then fly to United States. That was 30 years ago. 

But recently, we've been able to fly directly from New York to Nairobi. I ended up here. So as I shared with you, my father passed in 1993. 

So my mother has really been the one that has taken care of a lot of my younger siblings alone. And now, it has really fallen on us to take care of my mother at this stage in life. So a privilege, we thank God. 

So when I joined Bible College in 95, I'm 93, I really did not know if I would finish. Because practically, our finances in the family were very tight when my father passed on. But I went to Bible College trusting the Lord. 

My mother actually prayed more than I did. And the Lord opened a door for me. I got a scholarship. 

So she didn't have to pay much. And she was like, I knew God was going to make a way with this child. I knew God was going to make a way. 

So God made a way. I got a scholarship to study at Asbury in Kentucky, 95, and then went back to graduate in Kenya. Then I met my wife, 96. 

She had joined Kenya Islands. And then 97, we got married. And together, we came because I had been just admitted to do a master's program at Asbury. 

And so 1998, we were living in Wilmore, Kentucky. And my wife started completing her studies at Lexington Baptist Bible College. This is where, really, the story got interesting because one chapel service, we went to school, and they had invited the president of Southern Baptist Seminary to preach. 

So they're preaching, and they had told the students to bring their spouses to the classroom. So we were there, and then we attended the chapel service. During the chapel services, they make this announcement that Lexington Baptist Bible College is closing, and all the students are being relocated to Louisville, Kentucky. 

And they are all going to transfer. Anyone who wants to transfer, in fact, they say you don't have to do any paperwork. You just, if you want to go, just let us know. 

We'll move you all to Southern Baptist Seminary housing. So that is how we ended up in Louisville. So we had, our daughter was born at that time, and then both of us, we graduated in 2001, May. 

And we thank God that he guided us that far. Okay. With our time in Kentucky winding down, the next season announced itself through a phone call from a district superintendent in Cincinnati. 

It guided an immigration R1 status petition as a fresh assignment as of Peter chapter 1, verse 5, to be shepherds of God's flocks, and that is under your care, watching over them because you are willing as God wants you to be. So one of the unique things when you are so joining in this land, you have to change status after a certain period. So when we got called to Cincinnati, Ohio, we had to change our status because we were going for what was called practical ministry there. 

It was a student pastory. So part of the last requirement of a master of divinity class. And the district superintendent had to petition for us a visa, which is called religious worker visa. 

And that visa could be petitioned, then you get it for two years and renewed for two more years only. The maximum, it's capped at four years. So when we got that phone call, the Lord opened our door, we followed the Lord. 

We were aware that we only had four years. And by the start of 2004, we were sure that we had come to the end of our journey as religious workers. So at that time, we embraced a pull to Kenya. 

And we had a lot of theological reflection and started applying to go and serve at Kenya Islands Bible College, which is the school that we met and where we went. But March 2004, that year, we applied in January. March, we received a phone call from the principal. 

The head of the school was called principal. Now it's vice-chancellor. So they told us there's a hiring freeze, that they were not hiring anyone with a master of theology or a master of divinity because the school was transitioning into a university. 

Now, those of you familiar with NECES, you probably know the story that there was a period that it transitioned to being Africa International University. So there was a wave all over Kenya where most Bible schools, in fact, it was going back to the time when in the United States, the Bible schools like Harvard, which was a Bible school, transitioned into a secular university. So that period was happening in Kenya in 2004, where the maturity of the Bible school was literally some abandoning completely training ministers and transitioning to be a university. 

And so the school went through this real struggle. And it was a theological struggle in a way because it was, do we remain a Bible college or do we become a secular university? It ended up becoming a chartered university and then right now that the school is trying to create a school of the Bible called a seminary for there. So that was why the hiring freeze was there at that time. 

So at that time, when we were told they were only accepting people with BAD, so I told my wife, I had a professor who taught us master of divinity classes on social work and I really had passion about it. And I said I would love to study at Emory University. So let's go to Georgia and see if we would have an opportunity to get a BAD. 

They named a BAD there. Well, we got to Georgia and we applied to another local church because we were believing God to be working and going to school. And that local church in Atlanta, Georgia, told us we were a bit overqualified to serve in the local church, that we really needed to apply to the General Conference of the Southern Methodist, a very small denomination. 

So our name was revert to the General Conference. So April 2004, we received a call from an older man called Reverend Bedford Landers. He's now passed on to be with the Lord. 

And he was the president of the Southern Methodist Church. So he says to us, come on over and help us as home missionaries to southwest region of USA. At that time, we really didn't know what he was saying and what home missionaries is, what southwest region is. 

And then so we learned during that journey that there was home missionary deployment to regions of America. And the regions at that time, I don't know if it has been changed, was there's a southwest region, southeast region, west region, midwest, and the northwest. Designated as a home missionaries and a second green card petition submitted to change our status. 

So when we were approved to be home missionaries, as I shared with you, our status as religious workers at was expiring. So the Southern Methodist General Conference submitted an application to the government for us to get a green card, which is an employment based tenure green card. That is to change the status. 

So this is the way it worked. Home mission, home missionary meant missionaries that served in America. Foreign mission are those that were sent overseas. 

That's where the word home missionaries came. And so we were commissioned by the Board of Home Mission of the General Conference of the Southern Methodist. If you google and do a search, you will discover it's one of the smallest denomination. 

It's, you know, they have closed a lot of churches, you know, over the last couple of years and they are barely, really, there's a very small remnant. So our assignment was Acts chapter 1, verse 8, which says you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and to Samaria. And for that it meant our backyard. 

Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, that's our backyard. And this is how the process really worked back then. So you would have to be approved by the General Conference Executive Board so that you can be a missionary in the U.S., home missionary. 

So we went and met with the board in South Carolina in June 2004 and were approved. Then we were deployed November of 2004 to Southwest region as home missionaries. And then we were ordained elders, ordained elders in 2005 and appointed to lead transition at first as first SMC of Dallas.

Looking back, our ministry in Dallas, Texas was a living expression of Isaiah 58-12. Some among you will stand in the messiest, most broken down parts of our cities and start rebuilding. Because you chose to show up right where the pain is, you will be known as the people who repaired the broken walls and made our streets and neighborhoods safe to dwell in.

That is a picture of us when we had just arrived in Dallas. My mother was with us. She's been coming and going. 

And so at that time she was also with us in 2005. And when we arrived in Dallas, you know it's easy when you're looking backwards. When we arrived in Dallas, we didn't see this picture. 

We didn't see that, oh, these are, and nobody told us this is how it was going to be. They just say, there were no, the Southern Methodist had closed all local churches in Texas except one. And that one was the one that had just closed. 

That was the one we were going to. And so there were no plans that were given. We were told, OK, go there, you are missionaries, you know what to do.

So when we arrived there, we found out the first three years we passed at SMC because there was a small remnant of people caught up in all this. They knew the church had closed. They don't know whether to stay, whether to go.

And, you know, we had to serve and minister with those people as they went through grief. Some were transitioning to home nursing. The community dynamics had changed.

And the neighborhood that used to be predominantly white community had changed into a mix of Hispanic, predominantly Mexican Hispanic, and African-American. So the local church building sat in a neighborhood that had changed. And a fort was never taken to relocate the church to follow wherever everyone went.

So the fort had ended up being a fort to close the church. And when we arrived there, our assignment was to lead the conference and the local through this transition. So we did that for three years. 

And then 2008, we were, anyone who was here 2008 will know of the recession. So the recession-driven budget cuts forced us to relocate to Mesquite. So the entire building, by the grace of God, was transitioning to an Hispanic worshipping congregation. 

If you go there today, there's a five-branch church that has grown there, serving the Lord in the language of mostly Spanish community. And so with that, we were able to move to Mesquite and served out of the personage there. And the general conference board, executive board, came up with this name, that the church we were starting out of our home was going to be called Victory Fellowship. 

So down the line, 2010, a number of issues emerged in 2010. The petition that was submitted in 2004, it had not been approved. So there was an immigration backlog. 

And we are waiting, waiting, waiting. We were serving and just waiting. And so the general conference board said, I don't think we can wait anymore. 

This is more than we can handle. We've been waiting for all these years. We don't know what God is up to.

And then the local church that had started out of our home could not really take care of a pastor. So practically, it was not sustainable for the local church. And those local churches, I mean, the one that started out of our home moved on, became three different congregations because of different makeups at that time.

And so with those challenges, the executive board decided to liquidate the personage and sever ties with the congregation. And that really plunged us into a chasm of complexity at that time because practically, we told the congregation, we really can't serve you because we have to find a way to make a living. We couldn't serve at that point. 

And also, our purpose was still pending. So there were so many things unknown. There were so many unknown.

We didn't know what the Lord had in store at that time, but we trusted that he had good plans for us. In February 2013, a family friend, Reverend Bill Duncan, taking leadership at First Baptist Church Harrogate, Tennessee, called us with a unique open door. He asked if he could recommend one of us, someone in our congregation to Tennessee to accept the three-fold home mission assignments.

So this was very interesting. A friend calls me. We had not talked since we graduated together.

And all of a sudden, when we are in the middle of a huge complexity, he calls us and said, brother, do you have anyone there in Dallas that can come over and help? I'm like, brother, you think there's someone else? It's me. We shared with our family. It was God's hand, so we relocated to Tennessee.

And he told us that our assignment in Tennessee was three-fold. So one was missional stewardship, that is connecting congregational hearts to local outreach in Cumberland Cup area. It's right by the border of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

And the second thing was balancing global and local impact, that is cultivating across the street and everywhere to everyone, shifting missionary sending. And the third one was hospitality, living among the people and practicing hospitality modeling mission. That's our peak year when we had just arrived in Cumberland.

That is Lincoln Memorial University right there. That's where our daughter would end up going. That's our daughter. 

That's our son. They were in high school at that time. Our mission work while living in Tennessee caught attention to North American Mission Board, resulting in our official appointment in March 2017 as Saint Network Missionaries.

So as you can see, if you have read the book of Acts, how does Paul find God's will most of the time? How does he find God's will and say, this is God's will for me? So this passage has always been in our heart, Acts 17, verse 7 to 9. It says that after they, that's Paul and his companions, had come to the border of Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the spirit did not permit them. So when North American Mission Board called us, they asked us where we wanted to go. And we told them we want to go to Atlanta, Georgia, because they said we're going to send you as missionaries after we had done our work in Tennessee and it was time for our transition.

So we were ready to go to Atlanta, but they told us, they called us and said, you know, Atlanta has so many missionaries from Africa. It's saturated with a lot of people from Nigeria, from Ghana, from all these other nations. So he said, we don't need any more in Atlanta.

We were like, okay, so what are you suggesting? They said, we actually need missionaries in Midwest region. And Indianapolis is the top city right now in our region that needs missionaries. So we were sent by North American Mission Board on March. 

We were sent here in November, we were deployed November, but the journey, you know, the process took a bit longer. Paul says, so passing by Amicia, they came to Troas and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him saying, come over to Macedonia and help us.

Now when St. Augustine wrote the City of God, it's one of a very good read, the City of God by, it was at that time that Rome had fallen and Christians were trying to really figure out how to be a Christian in a nation that has fallen. And so Augustine is writing and telling them, hey, you need to know there's a city of God and there's a city of man. And if you are trying to, if you don't get these two things right, then it becomes really difficult.

So he described a tale of two cities shaped by what they love, the city of man and the city of God. And captivated by this vision, we landed in Indiana in August 2017. We came to listen, to observe, and to survey the city around us, laying the groundwork to return and plant in the city church. 

And our prayer back then was for God's grace and mercy to enable us to build from scratch a missionary community that's a local church that serves as a beautiful microcosm of the heavenly city of God right here in Indiana. When the Lord called us to Indiana, it meant leaving our daughter at Lincoln Memorial University to complete our studies. A release that made by many tears, separated by fast, distant lockdown, by local pandemic, and constrained by finances. 

We were kept from the intimate milestones every parent holds dear. We missed the shared joy of shopping for a bridal crown, excitement of planning a bridal shower, and profound honor of wedding ceremony. Instead we could only step into a story at the reception, joining the celebration already in the process.

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