time I would look down into the Rift Valley and see the white tents I heard the
Lord whisper, “Now that you have seen, you are responsible…”
After
graduating from college in December of 2009, I knew the Lord wanted something
more for me. I had always dreamt of traveling to another country on a mission
trip, but by making excuses and other plans, I hadn’t made the plunge. Yet…
I went on a Real Life Trip with AIM to Kenya, Africa from January to April of
2010. It was during these three months that the Lord opened my eyes to extreme
poverty and need in this world. It was as if every statistic and everything I
had only heard and read about had come to life, that there are faces and people
behind the poverty and injustice in our world and they have a name, a story. They
had now become my friends. I could no longer claim ignorance as an excuse for
inaction.
Our team drove down into the Rift Valley every Saturday to
spend time with a group of Internally Displaced People (IDP) who have been
refugees in their own country since the 2007 presidential election. These
people lost everything they owned in the violence of the elections, and now
live in man-made tents and are lucky to eat one meal a day.
We visited our friends in these tents and stared into the
eyes of hungry children and mothers who cannot feed them. After seeing their
situation, we were changed forever and compelled to action
Four of us came together and realized that we had the same
dream to help them. We began to dream about what the camps could look like, how
God sees them rising out of their situation, and how we would partner with God
to bring hope and change.
We knew that God was giving each of us a dream, and He
seemed to be aligning them. We prayed and prayed about how God would lead us
into realizing our dream. When we left Kenya, we left our hearts there. But God
had planted a dream in our hearts, and we knew we would return…
