 And once again, I'm here representing two non-profits, Africans United, and Project Bizia. Today we have a new face to interview. His name is Lawrence O'Cayle, and he's originally from Kenya. And why don't I start by asking Lawrence to tell us a little bit about his life growing up as a young man in Kenya? Well, and I just want to say thank you very much for inviting me to this Project Bizia presentation today. I know that this, I wouldn't take this for granted. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. So, growing up in Kenya, you know, as a boy, I grew up between my parents. I am the first born. And my father and my mother, my father's name is Sabian O'Cayle and my mom's name is Jen Arusa, Jen Akongo. We would actually come to have eight children. And being a first born became a caring job for the rest of the other kids. So, you grew up helping your mom and doing little farm work. My father, I could say, that is a decent farmer. And my mom simply took care of us in so many different ways. Sometimes going to the local market, buying fish from Victoria and getting them ready and taking them to another local market, pretty much walking on foot. So, I grew up seeing my parents truly work hard to be able to take care of us and the rest of other kids. Can you interrupt a second? Did you live in a village, what you would call a village, or did you live in the city? I grew up typically in a village. I typically grew up in a village, part of western Kenya, down on the shores of Lake Victoria, very close at the borders of Kenya and Tanzania. And so, you went to school there. Tell us a little bit about the educational system in Kenya, because I know Malawi has, quote, free public schools for everybody, but there are practically no materials to work with. So, a free school without books, paper, pencils, just buildings, that's something. But in Kenya, is public school, what public school is here, that everything is given to you? In Kenya, we have had a number of developments, I would say compared to many African countries. But during the time I went to school in 1980s, pretty much there was no free school. The parents had to take care of the school fees from the primary levels to high school, to a two-year college in Kenya, we call it for a diploma. And then they would continue like that. If your son or daughter were to go to university, you had to pay school fees. But later on, we have seen development and changes in Kenya system of education, where we politicians and religious leaders, they begin to demand that primary education become free. So, with the Kenya new constitution, which is now almost 12 years, so 10 or 12 years, primary education is free in Kenya. And not many countries I think around the world are blessed to have that. So, I would say that Kenya has really made a big, I would say a milestone. So, what we call secondary school, high school, there are fees. Absolutely. So, Kenya until today, when your children are going to high school, they have to put, I would say a total of 50,000 US dollar a year for an average, no, 50,000, not really US dollar, I'm sorry, but 50,000 Kenya shilling, which is like, that would be pretty much like 500, 500 to 600, 500 to 600 dollars a year. That is pretty much American dollars. And that is pretty much very expensive for a peace and farmer like my family to be able to put that every year. Especially with eight children. So, your family made enormous sacrifices every time a child came to the age of high school. It was enormous sacrifice. Just for any family in Kenya, that is an enormous sacrifice. I mean, just thinking of the monthly wages or salary where 250 dollars becomes a salary of someone like, I don't think teachers actually make more than 250 to 300 dollars a month. So you can imagine how enormous that sacrifice would be for a father who is not even a teacher, who is not, you know, on the professional jobs, accountant, who would have to stretch in order to actually take care of these fees. I like to talk about this particular issue in Africa. Because I hope every now and then that will be someone in our audience who is attending public school right now, perhaps a high school student. And if they don't know that they are one of the blessed, because you are blessed to get a free 12-year education in this country. I mean, I used to teach and I used to say to them, this is the only free education you're ever going to get unless you're really fortunate and get a massive scholarship of some kind. So you better make use of it. And of course, you know, they are children. They are children. So it's very hard for them to recognize what a blessing this is. And while we're on the subject, this is also why my friend Bazia, whom you've met on previous shows, and I write books which we donate to these schools, because in most countries, and I assume in Kenya, English is one of the things that is taught in public school. The materials for teaching English are... they have to come from outside of Africa. People there are not writing books for schools in English, in Africa. So you have someone who already is not a native speaker of English living in teaching in Africa, and they have no materials that are written in good English except what perhaps they bought from either the UK or the United States. And those books are about things that African children don't know anything about. I'm plugging our book, Necessary Gifts, which is about the first week of a young man named Gift at a private school. Very good. Well, I actually stole the name from our taxi driver and he was Gift. And the gift. Anyway, I want to say that this kind of book is how we get to know someone like Lawrence, because we talk to him, we say, what's going on in the country you came from? Are they writing good books for kids to use in school? So you finished, you graduated from high school and you wanted to do more. Can you give a kind of general picture of your goals at that point and what you would have had to do in Kenya to get them? A lot of changes are going on. At some point it looks like Kenya will be able to afford, will be able to mandate and declare high school free. Again, that would be such a huge political development many Kenyans are actually looking forward to. And it was a challenge for me to eventually go through the system of education and the idols of life and to be able to travel, to come to the United States and continue with education. I mean, I would say some of the things happen because of divine connection. You begin to meet people when there is a purpose in life. It looks like there is a divine connection that can easily happen, or I would say, yeah, I think it is just miraculous connections, something you did not plan. So you meet people where the teachers and the connection begins and the interest develops and people begin to recognize your possibility, your potential, and they begin to see you. Why would you consider traveling to overseas for further education? And that is exactly what happened with me. It is something that I never could actually plan and be able to see materialize. But I got to work with a youth with a mission, is a ministry, an international Christian ministry, a transmisionaries and send them around the world. So I happened to work with the national office in Nairobi and later on that office was moved to Eldoret. And mostly my work was to receive majority of young Americans and some young Europeans and some could come even as far as call China. They would come for holidays and travels to do travels in Kenya, and vacations, missions. And I was trained by the ministry to organize them and be able to travel with them more or less like a tour guide, but we were so much into ministry. So it is through that connection that I met a lady called Rebecca Nu. Rebecca Nu, and she was engaged with a man called what is, what's the husband's name? But we met during that time. I just seen their son's birthday at Doran and was just under 16 years old. I mean, it's wonderful. But they came to Kenya and they did the connection for me to come over and continue with my education in Y1 Youth with the Mission on their campus base in Tyler, Texas. So from there the interest would further depends and the desire to achieve started from there. So I went to a theological seminary in Jacksonville, Texas and did Bachelor of Religion there. During that time also did the junior college for two years at Jackson, IJBC, Jackson Baptist College. And then from there, Bachelor degree was not enough, moved on to get, to be admitted at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas main compass. And I did my master's in Divinity there, on philosophical studies and theology. I want to kind of hitch back a tiny bit because I didn't ask you this question when we met a couple days ago. So what would you say is your big goal? A Catholic minister or priest. What was the initial desire that I would say really shaped me and informed me to want to be, to become, to grow up to become a priest or a minister? And I think it is because the first people that I saw in my life are professional, people I could model after on the bushes bush bush of Kenya, the shores of Lake Victoria, were the Catholic missionaries who were coming down there, some of them from Italy, running the parishes down there. But from the parish they sent young African missionaries, seminarians. They would come down to reach their own people. And I was observing as a little kid, a little boy, and looking at the young African seminarians really had something that really enticed me and I admired, and I began to look after them. I began to want to be like them and I realized that it was all to do with God. They were your role models? They became my role model. So let's go back to you, to Tyler, Texas, and you are now a doctor of divinity. You have all the degrees you could possibly need. And so what do you want to do at this point? Well, I would like to correct you a little bit. I do have a Masters of Divinity. A Masters of Divinity. I do have a Masters of Divinity. I know a majority of people have this misunderstanding about the concentration in theological studies. But Masters of Divinity is one of the major theological concentration. But you study many things. So you study many things. You do study many things when you are doing something like Masters of Divinity. On top of Masters of Divinity is a Doctor of Ministry. So a Doctor of Ministry is just like after Masters of Divinity leaves you with something like 25 to 27 credit hours to be able to become a Doctor of Ministry. Doctor of Ministry is not academic. It's not an academic degree. It is an experiential degree. It is an experience that brings you with a number of few hours again in school. So it is pretty much, Doctor of Ministry is pretty much a Masters of Divinity. But on top of all of that there is educational degree on religious studies. We call it Doctor of Philosophy. So that is way, way another four years after you are four years of Masters of Divinity. So mostly for those who are called to go and work, be professors, be teachers in the universities, they would be required to have Doctor of Philosophy. So I did not want to go further. I wanted to be more of a community leader of which most of that training was done during my Masters of Divinity studies. So you wanted to actually get out into the world, so to speak. I believe the academic world and go into the world and help people find their spiritual depths. I think that's a simple way of putting it. I think a lot of people think of missionaries or pastors as being, I'm just going to say an American bias. A lot of us are suspicious when we meet someone like this. We think, oh, he's going to try to make me believe what he believes. That was never your purpose. Your purpose was to draw out what was already there, I think. Absolutely. So my goal, just like I told you, my initial desire was to, I look after these Catholic seminarians and of which they led me into seminary but I would never become a Catholic priest as you know that I am married with four kids. My wife is Lillian. Don't stop that. So Lillian and my eldest daughter of whom I adopted by virtue of marriage is Lisa. And Deborah is my own biological kid. Deborah and Uriel is the last one but we are also expecting one on the way who will be a boy, Afghans. So I just wanted to say that I never had to become a Catholic priest. They don't have kids. That's true. But so the desire was to become a community leader. So it is, you know, ministry is intertwined with working, serving in the community. So while you are thinking of becoming a priest, it may come in a different way. You still go on to get the same kind of trainings but the work actually is done in the community. So I think the greatest call that I had in my life was to serve in the community, both political and religious. So religious and political kind of, you know, join together serving the people on the ground here. But that meant you wanted to become a minister here and get your Doctor of Divinity, which you didn't do. Yes, so most of my adult education were done in the United States. So majority of people, especially my present client, they do not understand my background. I came here a little bit earlier than most of the new arrivals. I came here, I would say, in 2004. That is my first time in the United States. And mostly my time was spent in educational institutions. So three years of a bachelor degree, four years of Masters of Divinity in the biggest city in Dallas, Texas. And then after that, you know, so about the goal, since most of those theological, I mean, religious studies were done here and experience and practice, my goal therefore would be automatic, would be to pursue ordination. So I began the idea of wanting to pursue ordination to become a minister here in the United States with the United Methodist Church in Texas. Oh, God. But you were not able to do that. Yes, so I like the way you put it. But I couldn't be able to do it. So when you are preparing for, when you become a candidate, so we use the word candidate, when you become a candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church, let me just talk particularly about that, the polity in the United Methodist Church, you go through candidacy, which may last begin from one year to three years. During that time, you are expected to write a lot of doctrinal statements and to be able to articulate your call and why you believe that you got the grace and the gift to serve particularly in the United Methodist Church. Now, it is a rigor of preparation after your theological studies. It is like the doctrinal studies you did in your school in the theology. You have to come and write them for the United Methodist Church elders and from there they will decide if they will move you forward. So there is candidacy in the first year, second year, third year, you are supposed to do a presentation before the Board of Odin Ministries of the district panel, the DS, the district superintendent is the cabinet, is the bishop's eye there, is the one who make it in the bishop's cabinet. So from there they will decide to take you further for ordination so you become a member of annual conference. If they don't move you, you don't become. I attempted, I was told to prepare in my third year I did the first one, I went, I wasn't, they wouldn't let me continue to the candidacy, to become a member of annual conference. I did again for the second time and it also, it was of the same objection and the objection was simply the DS told me and the panel told me what the DS said, the district superintendent and the conference there, I think they were mostly inspired by the district superintendent, they thought that Texas and particularly some areas of Texas were not ready to have an African minister and they therefore gave me an option that I would be ordained, I would be moved forward to be ordained under condition that immediately after the nation I would go back to Kenya. That was such a challenge and eventually, just to summarize the idea, eventually I couldn't actually become a member of annual conference in Texas. Wow, how disturbing. I don't want to dwell on this because the reason I'm very excited to have you here today is how you handled what must have been an incredible disappointment. It is, I mean you deal with things the way they come and while I did not make it to become ordained minister in Texas annual conference it did not stop my spiritual growth and it did not stop me seeing myself as a minister. I continue to minister to people even now I'm doing accounting services and doing taxes and things that I've told you bookkeeping, writing financial statements. Stop a minute because I think I want our audience to catch what happened. I mean you had planned to go the route that one would expect someone to follow given these goals and you followed it for how many years after high school? After high school, candidacy went for like almost six years. Okay so for six years and that doesn't include your college and all the other things you did building up to that, right? It doesn't include, it may go alongside when you are going through your... So for at least let's say ten years after high school you were determined you were working towards it and then you found the door was closed for reasons that I'm not even going to go into discussing because it will make my blood pressure go up. Now it infuriates me but then I come from a different denomination that I don't think would have said the same thing. I don't know though. And you saw something. This is what excited me so much about our meeting. You saw that you could do what you wanted to do no matter what you were doing to support your family. Absolutely. So now you have an accounting business, right? Yes, a small accounting firm. Okay, why don't you quickly tell our audience a little bit about that because we're almost out of time. Absolutely. So I just want to summarize, I know we are out of time but it did not change. Just to finish what I started it did not change. It was just a different platform. Instead of ministering and reaching out the people through the pulpit, now I'm meeting them in a plainclothes in my office as they come to minister. As they come to do their taxes, as they come with the different financial needs depending on their businesses, and I see myself as ministering, helping mostly immigrant communities that are here in Maine. Since 2018 when we moved with my family from Texas to Maine. And I see this as something that almost makes me weep because it is a fulfillment of the way our spiritual life should be. Absolutely. I mean so many times you think of people who go into the church and I mean go into the church Sunday morning, they drink the sacred wine, they eat the bread. I mean and I've done this myself over the years. You go in and you are praying and you are so full of the sense of what everything is all about and your purpose in the world and then everybody gets up, has coffee with each other, walks out the door and it's gone. That almost ecstasy that belief in how the world should be goes away and you go back to your normal little life. So you got around that. You got around that by saying, what the heck? I'm going to go ahead and do what I want to do anyway.