Voice of God Recordings - Nairobi
Office Manager:
Barnabas Kariuki
Countries or Provinces Served:
The Nairobi office serves the countries of Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia.
Office Staff - 3 Employees:
Barnabas Kariuki - Office Manager and Swahili Translator Obadiah Kamwati - Finance Manager (Not a paid employee of Voice Of God Recordings) Benson Maina - Assistant Office Manager Duncan Musanga Ingutia - Assistant Office Manager and Swahili Translator Special Information:
The Nairobi Office is at this time relocating to downtown Nairobi.
History of Office Manager:
It wasn't hard for me to know the Lord, as my father was a pastor in the Bible-believing African Inland Church. No literature was allowed in the house except the Bible, and selected books with Bible stories and such classics as The Pilgrim's Progress and an abridged version of Foxe's Book of Martyrs in our local tongue.
My father decided to take me to school when 23 of his goats were run over by a train, while my age mates and I played hide and seek instead of tending them. At that time, the school was the preserve for the lazy or troublesome kids that were of no practical use to the village. At fourth grade, I finally made a stand for the Lord.
I began testifying to my fellow pupils and many came to know the Lord. In secondary school, at the Catholic St. Patrick's Iten, I was the leader of the persecuted Protestant Christian Union for three years. Every holiday I would team up with an Australian missionary to preach in the remote jungles on a salary. I was able to subsidize my school fees with this salary. We were a poor family, because my father declined to take salary. We had to toil very, very hard farming and burning charcoal for sale.
One day in 1973 I came across two pages of a Message book in our pit latrine. I was enthralled by its content. I read them over and over again. I can't tell how long I stayed there. I couldn't trace where these precious pages came from, and I greatly hungered for more. I moved from one church to another, looking for this Truth, but in vain. Finally two years later while in college, two first year students came with some Message books! I went wild with joy when I recognized that these were from the same author of those two pages I had come across. They introduced me to a pastor Gichuru in Nairobi that had 400 tapes in his library. Within no time, I had listened to them all and was craving for more! How I passed my final exams very well, I will never know, for I spent practically all evenings listening to the tapes. Little did I know that the Lord would give me the rare privilege of distributing this precious Message to His predestinated souls in East and Central Africa.
I became the pastor of a small nucleus group of students at Kenyatta University, one of whom became my wife. She has been a great blessing to me and the Ministry. The Lord blessed us with a family of three wonderful daughters.
I was posted to Kapsabet High School, while my wife taught at Kapsabet Girls School. We were able to pool our resources, along with the small church at Kapsabet, to start the translation work in the Kiswahili language, a language spoken by over 100 million people in East and Central Africa.
The first printing was primitive. My wife, Sister Irene, and Brother Wasike used to cut the stencils on an old manual typewriter and Brother Nelson Kemboi simply cyclostyled them at his school. The Kapsabet church then stapled them and distributed them. We began by printing 100 copies, and then went to 900, and finally 2,000 copies per title. Soon the Kiswahili work spread by itself throughout the country, then into neighboring countries of Uganda and Tanzania, then into Rwanda and Burundi and Eastern Congo. By the time the VGR took over in 1985, we had around 150 active addresses, each of them receiving an average of a mere 13 books. This led to believers copying the Message by hand into exercise books and distributing them to the hungry souls. This was the trend, especially in the Central African countries.
When Brother Joseph first came to Kenya in January 1984, he asked me to help put together a mailing list for the libraries he was going to set up. I communicated with him regularly and did a few errands for him while still working as a teacher, such as accompanying them to Tanzania and Congo to set up libraries. By March of that year, Nairobi was set up as the first VGR Library in the world, with Pastor Obadiah Kamwatti as the Librarian. By the end of that year, there were 7 Lending Libraries in Tanzania, 11 in Uganda, and 13 in Kenya.
When the Voice was put on the tapes in 1985, the country went wild with joy. It was so well done that it became the standard format for subsequent VGR translations in other languages. Listening to them has always been a great source of inspiration and blessings to the believers in this region.
The turning point in our lives came on the evening of November 18th 1985, when Brother Joseph Branham (together with Brother Billy Paul Branham and his two sons, Brothers Paul and Brother David) paid us a surprise visit in our humble home. He took me aside and asked me if I could resign from the teaching job to work for him in an office he wanted to establish to oversee the translation work, the libraries, and the distribution of material to East and Central Africa. I loved my teaching job, and my students adored me. In the athletic field we were producing the best runners in the world. I do not know how I said that fateful "Yes," but I have never regretted it. By the grace of God, this is the best job there is in the world today, and after we are done, there will be no job worth doing. It is a great privilege to have a very small part in it, which I don't deserve. Working with VGR has been the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life. The experience I have acquired, and the thorough training by Brother Joseph Branham, is priceless.
Testimony of Office Manager:
Working with the Voice of God for close to a quarter of a century to me has seemed to be but a day. It has been full of blessings and so fulfilling. One could never wish for anything better in this life. Key to the successes of the work has been my dear family, and the librarians, whom Brother Joseph defined as "Men of God who believe that the work before them is more important than their part in it." (Vision for Africa video) Their selfless service has ensured that the Message has been readily available to all and sundry in this very blessed region.
Ministers and pastors have been very supportive, and by the grace of God, we have worked with them in perfect harmony, something that could only have come from the Lord Himself. Just about every doctrine that has been formulated in the Message world has filtered its way into Kenya over the years. But we thank God there is one avenue that has remained open for fellowship: the restored Word, our interpretations not withstanding. In Voice of God we have found one common goal on which we all can agree and come together for fellowship. I treasure each of these ministers who have put their differences aside to ensure that this Message has reached just about every village in this great East African region. Our guiding principle has been the words of Brother Joseph spoken to the East African ministers gathered at Eldoret on the 18th of November, 1985: "I have the answer to all your questions!" Then, pulling a tape out from his briefcase and lifting it up before his enthralled audience, he declared; "All the answers to all your questions are found herein."
It has been a long walk, and I have been honored to seen the phenomenon growth of VGR from less than 7 employees to over 70 of them. We've grown together, by the grace of God. I've worked under the great tutorship of Brother Joseph himself and his incomparable leadership quality. As the work continues to grow at an astronomical speed, we are put now under the able leadership of other dedicated brothers who run the work so meticulously that sometimes we are forced to communicate with them up to five times per day.
I've had a rare opportunity to experience a lot of miracles and wonders in this Ministry. I've went through very hard and dangerous times and toiled under very difficulty situations. All in all, it has been a life full of drama, and often filled with humor. Here is just a tip of an iceberg from my memory bag:
1] In Jeffersonville, the VGR staff escorted us to the airport at Louisville with 60 very closely packed footlockers, each of which was far beyond the allowed weight of 70Ibs. But when the protesting customs officers weighed one, the scale hit the top reading thrice in quick succession, then retracted back to 70lbs! This was repeated twice before the awed, mesmerized officers waved us through. They were left speechless and looking blankly ahead of them.
2] At one of the borders with 10 tons of material without any official papers, the angry customs officer ruled that we offload the truck outside and go back to Nairobi to process the right papers, which at that time would have taken four weeks. Halfway through the process, the clouds suddenly gathered, threatening to flood the region with very heavy rains. Here comes the officer running towards us shouting, "Get those boxes back into the truck...! I'm not going to watch God's Bibles to be soaked wet in my area of administration!" Ten minutes later, after re-loading and after we were safely on the other side of the border, the sky cleared into a beautiful, cloudless sky. There was to be no rain after all.
3a] In Dar at a time when it was unheard of for a Westerner to walk in the streets or be seen with the locals, we got ourselves a dingy dilapidated single room. The few available hotels would be full by 11am. It would have taken a miracle to tell the original color of the sheets or the one miserable towel hanging on a slimy, greenish-brown basin next to a toilet that ceased functioning centuries ago. We decided that Brothers Joseph, Billy, and David, would squeeze into the one tiny bed. Two of them would face the headboard, and the other the bottom side. As for me, I would sleep across the door, just in case some evil forces outside decided to act funny.
3b] The following day at the airport, it was announced that all visitors would be required to pay a special tax in foreign currency to leave. We had already paid a lot of money on entry, but this was the socialist Tanzania then.
"This is now too much, it is getting a little out of hand," Brother Joseph told us. "Attention! Every one of you look directly forward, and follow me." Wonder of wonders, the armed militia made way for us as we moved forward in a single file, as if in a trance, through a thick crowd of frustrated passengers. The plane was delayed for one-and-a-half hours as the officers lined their pockets.
5] At Heathrow Airport, Brother Silla and I were summoned to the PAN AM office. "You must be in a multi-million dollar business." (Bro. Joseph had almost filled half the plane with footlockers) "Yes, we are.""And why are you traveling Third Class?""Just to be humble."We were promoted to the Business Class in the jumbo jet packed with the Boars destined for Johannesburg, through Nairobi. It was at the height of the Apartheid Policy. When they saw two black faces enter, they couldn't stand it. A whole line of them moved back. Each of us occupied four great seats, and the all-white cabin crew served us like kings.
6] Over 52,000 tapes and one of the very first computers in Nairobi at that time were held at the customs for eight months. But just one call from the VGR President in Jeffersonville to the Minister of Finance gets an immediate release order. A month later, the minister, Professor George Saitoti, is promoted to the office of Vice President, which he serves for a record 14 years!
7) In Gisenyi, on the Rwanda-Congo border, I am expected to pay $40 dollars for a visa. Two officers scan through the church age book and come across the words, "The Great Harlot." They looked at their fellow officer: a fat, highly-painted woman sitting next to them, and burst out in loud laughter. "Can we keep this? Welcome!" I walk in free!
n animated discussion about guns.
9) At the time of political turmoil when books and tracts were minutely scrutinized, we are at the border with tons of Kiswahili books and tracts. A security officer picks one book at random and his eyes dilate: "Leadership!What? So you are the people spreading very subversive literature and hiding under the guise of religion? Wait, you are going to see fire!" A top officer highly trained in reading very fast is summoned. As he scans and skims through, he begins smiling and finally, "This man right! Practice these tenants outlined here and soon we shall all be out of job. Can I keep a copy?" "Take two, please."
History of the Office:
When I agreed to resign my job at the school, Brother Joseph suggested we move to Nairobi to establish the new office.
We got a house 20km from the city center, but it was incomplete, having no telephone, no electricity, or running water. We lived and worked there for three months before moving to another house that Brother Kamwatti had booked for himself but gave it up at the last minute. It had four bedrooms, with a little outer house in just over half an acre of land, 17 miles from the city center. The family occupied two rooms, and the next two we used as an office and a storeroom for books and tapes. Soon we found we were ill-prepared for the phenomenal growth of the Work, as the VGR Shipping Department, with amazing efficiency, moved from sending us a few cartons, to numerous footlockers, to crates, and finally to containers.
We could hardly cope with the technological growth. We moved very fast from hand-written manuscripts to the latest IBM type-writers, and when our new computer arrived, it was the largest in the city for a few months before Kenya exploded with the IT. Believers advanced from the reel to reel tape recorders, to recorders operated by hand, then graduated to general electric portable recorders, the solar panel, and finally just last year, the MP3 wonders.
The house was packed full with material. Within no time the outer house was full. We built a huge 14ft garage to help ease the pressure of storage. Then an inspiration struck. We got hold of the numerous crates and pallets that we were constantly receiving and built a large, very beautiful three-roomed house for a store. We used one room as a packing office, the next as a store/computer/conference room, and the last one as a fully-equipped, modern recording studio.
After 15 years of intense use, this block went up in an infernal as the watchmen tried to drive away bees with fire! We lost around 70,000 books, most of them on transit to Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. We lost precious files containing valuable letters and documents gathered over a period of almost 20 years, furniture etc. We never saved a single item. By the grace of God, VGR had already sent us an empty 20ft container right from Jeffersonville, and that has solved the storage problems to date.
Since the office was in the house, my wife and three daughters quickly learned the art of running it, and they became indispensable to the work. Soon the VGR set up the Kampala office under Brother Bolahs Onyango to ease the pressure out of this central office. The Uganda work is coming up very well, with five full-time translators in both Luganda and Arabic.
It was recently decided that the office be moved from its present location to the city center, where a new premises was acquired. The ultimate goal is to purchase a plot where where we can construct a center that would befit this God given Ministry.