January 20, 2003

CASEY WADE works with young children in one of the churches established in the district of Tharaka in Kenya East Africa where he and his wife, Terrie, serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators.	TERRIE WADE washes dishes outside the block house in which she and her husband live while working as missionaries in Tharaka, a village in Kenya.

Texans' trek to Kenya proves no easy road to glory
___By Jo Gray
___Special to the Standard
___MONTAGUE--Twelve months ago, Casey and Terrie Wade packed their allotted 140 pounds each and left for a trip that would take them far beyond the distance from their home in North Central Texas to a small community in Kenya, East Africa.
___There, in a village located on the equator in an area that holds no modern conveniences, the 28-year-old and 25-year-old stepped back in time.
___In the small villages where they would work, the average monthly income is less than 10 U.S. dollars, and the people live much as they have for centuries. Men cultivate their small farms wher

A baptism in a river near Tharaka.

e they grow millet, beans and peas. Women tend to the children and gather firewood with which to prepare meals.
___On a recent trip back to Montague, the couple told members of First Baptist Church about their work in southeastern Kenya's Tharaka district, one of the nation's poorest regions. The missionaries are the son and daughter-in-law of First Baptist members Tim and Brenda Wade.
___The younger Wades, members of First Baptist Church of Bowie, are one of three teams serving the district through Wycliffe Bible Translators. The teams share one car--a four-door Toyota pickup. Otherwise, they use bicycles or motorcycles to get around. Tharaka has no paved roads, no refrigeration, no mail service, no hospitals and no social services.
___Most homes are constructed of mud with thatched roofs. The Wades reported they feel blessed to live in a home constructed by one of the district's wealthiest landowners. It not only has a tin roof but also a limited supply of running water.
___Among a population of 100,000 to 150,000 people, there are about 20 houses constructed of blocks such as the one the Wades live in, Mrs. Wade said.
___Most of Tharaka's residents raise goats, cattle and chickens. A few own a donkey. The men use bulls to pull their plows.
___They never learned to train the donkeys, however, because those who attempted to use donkeys as beasts of burden in the past were kicked by the animals. Women hauling large containers of water found it impossible to guide the donkeys, since they walked behind the animals, hitting them with a stick and hoping they would stay on the path. In frustration, the women gave up the donkey as a means of help and chose to carry the water on their heads or shoulders.
___A horse-trainer by trade, Wade taught the men how to ride donkeys and how to fashion a halter from plant material at hand. Even after demonstrating how he could ride and control donkeys, the native people thought it was because he possessed some type of magical powers, he said. "They would say, 'You can ride because you are white.'"
___Finally, Wade taught a local black man how to ride a donkey. Abel Njeru now is teac

CASEY WADE and a resident of the Kenya village where he and his wife serve push Wade's motorcycle across a narrow foot bridge near the village. There are no paved roads in Tharaka.

hing others.
___The Wades' main objective is to help the Christians of Tharaka continue to grow in their faith and use the New Testaments that have been translated into their native language.
___But challenges abound.
___Tribal beliefs still play a large role in daily lives, and the older people find it especially difficult to accept the change that is sweeping through the country, Wade said. Because women are considered property of their husbands, they often are mistreated.
___The culture and the primitive living conditions make even simple ministry more difficult. For example, Wade and a friend responded to the screams of a young boy one evening, discovering the child being beaten by his drunken father. While the boy was being cared for, his mother stumbled into camp carrying a baby. She, too, had been beaten and needed medical help.
___"The police have no cars," Wade explained. "They are too poor to buy cars. They use bicycles. We had to take the woman, her husband and the police to the hospital. There was nothing to use to sew up the woman's head."
___Another member of the missionary team is a registered nurse and was able to tape the wound.
___By teaching the natives of Tharaka about God's love, the Texans hope to make a difference in the way people treat one another, Mrs. Wade sad. They also want the people of Tharaka to be able to read about God in their "heart language."
___"When they hear their own language on a cassette tape, it blows them away," she said.
___But the people of Tharaka are slow to receive the message, slow to embrace new ideas.
___"There was this community development project in Tharaka where they dug hand-pumped wells to help out because water was not available during the dry season," Mrs. Wade recalled. "There are a lot of people there, especially the older people, who refuse to use those wells because 'the spirit of God put that water in the ground and if he had intended for it to be used, then he would have made it come up out of the ground.'"
___"Sometimes aid without education is useless," her husband added.
___The ancestral belief in evil spirits remains strong in Tharaka, he said. The people believe in a primary evil spirit known as Kerimo, a monster that lives in the river and on occasion enters the forest.
___When boys reach the age of 13, they go through a three-week circumcision ritual during which they are subjected to beatings, trances and ritualistic teachings. The secret rituals have been exposed by converts to Christianity, but that has not stopped the practice, Wade said.
___After a brief holiday visit back to Texas, the Wades headed back to Kenya for the second year of their two-year commitment. Since there is no television and each day features 12 hours of darkness, the Wades took plenty of new paperbacks with them to read by lamplight.
___

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