Awakening my Kingdom Dream

This past week of Awakening has challenged and encouraged me
in many ways. I’ve also heard God’s voice with clarity on a daily basis. During
the week at least 11 people spoke prophetically into my life and God, himself,
has been saying some things as well.

 

Prior to joining the World Race, I was a missionary teacher
in Kijabe, Kenya. While living there, God broke my heart for many things.
Nearly 6 years ago, I made my first missionary visit to Kenya. I had an
opportunity to enter Kibera slums (the largest slum in East Africa & 2^nd
largest in all of Africa). My heart went out to the people there. Another group
of people that I continue to care for deeply are the children at Little Lambs
(a school for children who’s parents died of AIDs). This ministry has been one
I’ve repeatedly returned to. As my long term supporters and prayer warriors
know, the ministry that captures my heart and will always have it, is teaching
missionary kids at Rift Valley Academy. Even mentioning it makes my heart go
tender. I miss my students like they are my relatives. I miss the unexplainable
joy I get from pouring into their lives from God’s love inside of me and seeing
the fruit of it all. Visiting them 3 months ago was such a gift, because I got
to see them growing and flourishing. I was happy to see that the impact I’d
made was lasting. Seeing them was a “well done my good and faithful servant”
moment.

 

During my 1^st year of teaching, Kenya held
elections. The aftermath of the elections made national headlines. The fighting
and killing that took place was horrifying. Babies being thrown out burning
church windows shown on the news. A kindergarten-aged boy at our school did not
show-up one morning and we were later told of how his father woke him in the night
and their family fled to the woods as their home was attacked and possessions
destroyed. When I spoke with a victim with a similar story they told me, “The worst part of
it all is that the people who did this were not some rebel soldiers, but the
people you sit next to at church.”LET THAT SINK IN! What if you
were no longer safe from even the person in the pew next to you? What would you
do then? Maybe you would do what many Kenyan families did: flee; find safety
even if it meant leaving behind your home of many generations, your
processions, your job and, in some cases, a family member. The government and
Unicef provided these people with a tent and a place to stay, but without jobs
or a water source they struggle to survive. I met a widow, whose husband was
killed in the fighting. She had 6 children; the oldest was 12 and pregnant. She
had no job and no training; she attempted to provide from the small garden that
was barren from drought. Teenage pregnancy and AIDs was becoming more prevalent
due to lack of education, according to the IDP Camp Pastor. Hunger was a
problem no one needed to mention to me, it was obvious when I saw people
gathering like a mob when we offered them food and saw the people preparing it
for the evening meal. They didn’t have anything in a cupboard, this was it. As
the pastor watched me interact with the teenage girls, he pleaded with me to
come back to teach them; to help prevent teenage pregnancy and AIDs from
spreading and to give them an education which would provide hope for a better
future. “COME,” he pleaded
with a desperate hope.What could I say
to that? My heart, even then, ached to do more, but it’s not that easy; not
that simple, I can’t just “come”.

 

For over a year, my heart has ached to be God’s hands and
feet to these people. I’ve wept and sobbed over their stories and the injustice
of their misfortune. I’ve followed God’s call elsewhere, while interceding in
prayer for these people and begging for God to send someone, even if it can’t
be me. During worship at the Awakening, after one such intercessory prayer, I
felt like God was saying there is not much time. That if I’m going to minister to
these people, I need to go soon, because He was going to be answering my
prayers. In the next few years these people would have jobs and homes. If I
wanted them to also have the hope of Christ and to be an aid to the Kingdom
Dream, I would need to go soon.