September 7, 2025

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ,

I think I am “out of touch.” I’m like a fish out of water.

I had the privilege of spending a month in the United States, mostly visiting my adult children who live scattered around America, my parents, and my home church in Ohio. I had a mostly good and busy time and bit of an eye opening one as well. I have known very well for the last eighteen years in Kenya that I am a foreigner in a foreign place. I know that when I sit down in a public place there will be conversations going on all around me that I cannot follow or understand. All the faces, hair, and skin are different than mine. I’m the only one wearing Levi’s. I’m the only one who doesn’t feel at home.

When I go to church, I don’t know the songs that everyone else can sing by heart. I don’t like the volume of the music. I can’t dance. We worship the same Lord, the same Savior, the same Jesus but they are noticeably on the inside, I am noticeably on the outside. They have a strong sense of community; I have no community. At the college I have the privilege of teaching and mentoring young (and some old) followers of Jesus, teaching them about the Word of God and training them to be better ministers to their people, their churches, and even the world. This has been my goal from the beginning of my ministry in Kenya (began in 2008), to work together with the Kenyan people to further expand the Kingdom of Christ here and around the world and together with the Kenyan people to bring glory to our God and Savior Jesus Christ. What a joy to know that we are able to do that and to accomplish that goal and to know that we are doing what we can to serve Jesus, to expand the Kingdom, and to help the Kenyan people do the same. But I am still an outsider – I know it and they know it and I feel it every day.

Strangely enough, I felt the same way this time around in the United States as well. Take, for instance, all the new words that I didn’t even know about. I learned how to be “shook,” I discovered what a “tradwife” was and what a “tradwife” wasn’t and whether I had one or not. And, of course, everything was “boujee.” It took me a long time to figure out the meaning of that word and even longer to learn how to pronounce it correctly. People kept asking me what it was like to be back in the U.S. and I found it difficult to answer. I love my home country, but my answer was “everything is weird, a little off.” Explaining that answer means that everything was very familiar, and felt familiar, and yet nothing was quite the same. Different restaurants abound. There are roundabouts instead of traffic lights. Different products. My parents are older. I have a daughter living in Utah, of all places. Cell phones and AI have the answers to everything. And, of course, everything is boujee. I went to my home church and, yes, it was different. PLEASE CONTINUE TO READ AFTER I WRITE THE END OF THIS SENTENCE, but I felt like a foreigner. Now, the beloved people of my beloved home church DID NOT make me feel like an outsider. They treated me with love (agape and philo), grace, compassion, acceptance, warmth, and appreciation. I felt from the beloved people of my home church a Biblical, Christian love put into practice. So the fault is not theirs and completely mine – but I felt like a foreigner (again, read me well – this was all my own fault and a making of my own mentality). Most of the songs sung were new and thus unfamiliar to me. Many of the members were new and unfamiliar to me. I had never met the song leader or the piano player before (I am glad to have made their acquaintance now). The young people I used to know are now grown up and married. And the church now has a different pastor since the last time I visited the States and from the pastor I have known all my life. He is a good, godly man doing a good, godly work. I am glad to have finally met him and I know God will bless the good work he is doing and the church. But it all adds to the differentness of it all, to the weirdness of my home country. I guess it comes with the territory of being eighteen years on the mission field and should not be unexpected.

So, yes, I am out of touch. I am a fish out of water. I am a foreigner in both my host country and my home country even though I can operate in both and flip back and forth with relative ease. Maybe you feel like a foreigner in your place too. I encourage you with this thought: If you are a follower of Jesus then your country, your home, your place is with him. Ephesians 2:19 says that through Jesus we are no longer “strangers and foreigners.” Thank you, Jesus, for that. But the second half of the verse is important as well. It states that we are “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.” Jesus knew that some of us have a propensity to feel like strangers and foreigners and that we need the community of His people and His followers in one of His churches. I encourage you to find your country, your home, and your place in the community of your home church as well. I, for one, miss it and didn’t recognize the importance of it until I didn’t have it.

I pray that God will continue to use this out of touch, fish out of water here in Kenya to train His future ministers, to strengthen His churches, to further expand His kingdom, and to bring glory to His Name.

Blessings to all,
Roger, Julie, & Chloe

Contact Info:

Roger & Julie Tate
Moffat Bible College
P.O. Box 70
Kijabe, Kenya 00220
rojuta@gmail.com

For ministry donations:
Pastor George Sledd, Treasurer of BFM
P.O. Box 471280 | Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280
or click here to donate to BFM online.