Ron Peterson

Page 3

The Spiritual Director for the weekend was Reverend Britt Olson of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Sparks, Nevada. I was immediately impressed by her deep, thought-provoking, tell-it-like-it-is approach combined with a great sense of humor. By this time, I had begun to attend another church, but I knew that it just wasn't where I needed to be ... Shortly after the retreat, I had the opportunity to attend a service at St. Paul's. Little did I suspect at the time that this would be another point at which God stepped in and took control of my life, big time.

Let me regress a bit and clarify that. Most of the first 50 years of my life were generally a spiritual wasteland. A couple of weeks after the retreat, Rev. Williams Yindi, a pastor that I had met in Tanzania at the Unreached Peoples Mission, called and said that he would be in Reno to begin fund raising. He wanted me to help him find churches where he might plead his case. It was early December. Every church in the city was up to their ears in pageants, decorating, Sunday school programs, drives, and what have you. "Sorry, but we just can't do one more thing" was the typical response. I panicked, and then I remembered Rev. Britt. I called to explain the situation and, as I would learn to love about her much later, she jumped right on the opportunity and said, "of course, bring him on over." The following Sunday, we attended the contemporary service. Rev. Britt created a venue for Rev. Yindi to speak, and even asked him to participate in the adult education program after service. It was a resounding success. During the service, although I was a member at another parish, I kept feeling the warmth and involvement of the people. "You know, I like it here!", I said to myself and then, "but I am attending the other church", and then, "But I really like it here!". The seed was planted. Shortly thereafter, I began to regularly attend St. Paul's. One Sunday, Terri Martin approached me and reintroduced herself. She had been the woman sitting at the dinner table next to me at the Tres Dias retreat. She asked about my next trip to Africa. Although I definitely wanted to go, nothing was concrete. Terri said that she had wanted to go to Africa since she was a child and would love to help me with my Mission but didn't know what she could contribute.

Mission? I didn't know I had a mission! Terri kept bugging me; I must admit I did not think she was serious about helping me. But when I learned that she was a human resources professional, I began to realize that she could do a lot of the things that I could not do ... like giving an inspirational presentation! And so we began talking with others until we had a core of two others; now we were four. We knew we wanted to do something, but what? Lifewater did wells so why not look further into their program. Water is needed everywhere.

We invited the Lifewater International group to make a presentation to interested people from the St. Paul's community. At that meeting, Terri was talking with one of the engineers and learned of a clinic being built in Kenya at the Masai Mara reserve. Terri remembered her friend Muthoka Mutua and his dream of building a clinic in his home village in the Mua Hills near Machakos. Through a series of events Muthoka was invited to one of our meetings.