A STEADY FLIGHT over. Breath taking views below of the Alps with the curve of the Italian coast, the strikingly clear Mediterranean Sea and the endless stretch of the Sahara Desert.

Night time at Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi. Unexpected drizzle. Breakdown of our 'Matatu' (Nissan 12-seater minibuses used universally as means of transport in Kenya). Lofty palm trees and familiar Shell and BP garages! First sights of drab, shanty style market stalls. The elegant panelled wood and tiled floors of our hotel a strong contrast to the surrounding poverty and a reminder of the colonial history of this country.

Next morning: a long share with Gregory, our apostolic man in the region, helped establish way forward for Multiply East Africa. Regional representatives, regular gatherings. A sense of a network being fashioned as we made preparations for Saturday's Conference.

Nairobi Safari Park with big game in enclosures and a guided tour around the Animal Orphanage. A taste of the larger National Parks which provide so much revenue from the tourist trade. Cheetahs yawned, warthogs scurried to their troughs and the vicious pataw monkeys chattered in their cages.

Bright blossoms - tangerine, vermillion and lilac - colourful birds. Amazing fauna. Tropical trees and shrubs - a pervasive sense of the exotic and unfamiliar.

Battered and ageing vehicles. Dodgem cars on the highway: demonised driving - furious acceleration and braking on crumbling roads. An equally fragile infrastructure in this city of 2 million where a sense of decay, neglect and dilapidation prevails.

The noisy cicadas at night, shrill echoes pierced the balmy dusk.

Next day, three hours on the road to Nakuru. A break as we fellowshipped with church leaders in a familiar golden striped marquee - their regular church venue! A long journey on worn out, pot holed roads and the bone-rattling 'Matatus' juddering through panoramic landscapes in the Great African Rift Valley. A jarring and grueling way of travel. Unbelievable poverty of rural villages. Dusty dirt tracks and parched landscape, dotted with picturesque trees. Regular 'mobbing' by sellers and hawkers at each stop along the way.

Extinct volcanoes framed the grinding destitution of this AIDS ravaged country, with an unemployment rate of 60%, a life expectancy in the mid-40s and more than half the population existing on less than £1 a day. Whole generations have been wiped out in some areas by the disease which has become sub-Saharan Africa's 'pandemic'. Half the population under 15 years old - few have any prospects for the future.

A land of stark contrasts where government corruption and mismanagement were in evidence and the heavily guarded and luxurious presidential palace brooded over the shabby suburbs of Nairobi. Front page headlines showed the English High Commissioner lambasting the government's fraud and dishonesty.

On to Kisumu, where we stopped and met other pastors and Bible students, a 'bishop' and the humid heat of the lowlands. We tasted 'mandazi' (a bit like doughnuts) and Kenyan tea (milky and sweet) made in thermos fl asks. Sensed the fire in the Spirit, the simple beauty of Swahili songs and the desperate faith in God's provision for the most basic of needs. The presence of the Holy Spirit was evident in lives knitted together, united in abject poverty and a fervent vision to see the gospel of Jesus spread.

Journey back to Nairobi. Fishermen launched their boats on Lake Victoria with a dhow picturesquely squatting in the distant horizon. Round thatched huts, corrugated iron ramshackle buildings. Drifting and lost men and women sitting on dusty roadsides, selling mangoes, roasted sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tea and pineapples - or trinkets, stone carvings and cloth. Goats, merino sheep and donkeys grazed on the dirt tracks. Labourers toiled in the unrelenting sun, wielding mattocks as the sun mercilessly bored through the blue sky.

Armed police stopped us regularly, the metal spiked road blocks looking as if they had come out of a medieval torture chamber. Everywhere the marks of poverty and deprivation. The fear of car jacking and muggings in the city; the shootings and the growing violence of a people betrayed and frustrated, still in the infancy of a democratic process.

Street children (an estimated 60,000 in Nairobi alone) offered us groundnuts for sale and the scavenging maribou storks settled ominously in the baobab trees. Maasai tribesmen herded cattle through the streets, undisturbed by the blaring horns of passing cars.

The Conference day - amazing team work from Gregory and friends. Releasing worship - music group singing Swahili two-liners gripping the folk in passionate praise. Two hundred came - the furthest had made the journey from the Congo! Pastors from Uganda also arrived and others had travelled the 350 miles from Mombasa overnight on Friday on the bus and returned the Saturday night by the same route. Very convicting. Simple pure, spontaneous expressions of love for God. The humbling generosity and hospitality of the poor touched a deep chord.

Brotherhood church focus with acetates from Pete Taylor, teaching them a couple of the Jesus Fellowship songs and talking about servant hearted leadership. Continuous translation into Swahili. Praying in groups and making faith agreements… kneeling in consecration.

Met some of the AIDS widows from the church who survive by selling soap in bottles and look after 600 orphaned children. Troubled and worn faces, burdened eyes, carrying the pain of a suffering generation.

Yet in all of this, a warm and generous people, facing enormous challenges to survive, economically, socially and politically in the 21st century.

A truly humbling experience.