We have had a variety of ministries this month while in Kenya. It was a refreshing month. We had team changes and my team was a small one comprised of only five women. So, I thought I’d do a run down on some of the ministries we were a part of this month. Without further ado…
“EATING SNAKES”
Aug. 3; School visit. This morning was our first full day of ministry in Kenya. We were invited into the schools to speak in the classrooms about Jesus. There were about 50 beautiful kids packed into my classroom of mostly 12 year olds. We sang a few songs and then I shared with them where I was from and why I was visiting. Afterwards, I gave the kids the opportunity to ask me questions. Any question I told them. My two favorites were: Do you eat snakes? (No). Do Americans eat a lot of food? (In general, it would appear so).
My team split up between two schools to speak in the classrooms. My classroom had about 50 students. They wore uniforms that reminded me of my Girl Scouts brownie uniform. It was a refreshingly cool morning (note jackets).
ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER
Aug. 3-5: Machakos Girls Challenge Weekend. Our first weekend in Kenya was spent ministering to more than 800 high school girls at a “challenge” weekend. Check out my synopsis of the weekend in my previous blog (PAST BLOG). I had said worshipping with that many girls who were on fire for Jesus in a small gymnasium was like heaven on earth. It was crazy fun, convicting and inspiring. We met with the girls in small group sessions. We poured into the girls and encouraged them as we prayed for some of them individually. It was one of my favorite ministries of the Race. It was also the first time I witnessed firsthand someone being freed from a demon spirit. There were a handful of us in a room and we were praying over one of the girls for deliverance and freedom. God is good. All the time.
A fun-filled, exhausting weekend. The bottom right photo is the leadership team that poured into the 800 plus girls that weekend.
DAY OFF
Aug. 6: Nairobi Safari Walk. Who needs to take an all day jeep safari out into the bush when you can walk up the street to the Kenya Wildlife Service’s conservation and education facility? I didn’t know albino zebras existed. I also was a little jumpy when it came to the wild monkeys creeping up near me, in light of the ebola outbreak we had run away from in Uganda last month. There were about two dozen monkeys running around to keep me entertained.
KIBERA: ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST SLUMS
Aug. 10: Kibera slum visit. The church we lived at this month – Deliverance Church Langata – happens to be about a ten minute walk from the largest slum in Kenya (and apparently the second largest in Africa). Our Kenyan friend, Kevin, owns a beaded sandal shop in the heart of the slum. He employs mostly HIV positive women who live in the slums to make the sandals.
What they told us before we went: We will not stay too long because it’s dangerous. If we were going further into the slum, we would need an armed escort. Don’t take out your camera; it’s too much temptation for others.
We weaved through the maze-like dirt passageways to get to the shop. I looked down at the ground as I walked along to make sure I didn’t step on a pile of feces (human or animal) or rubbish like broken needles. Most of the ground is garbage. I saw one of the shop owners pouring a bag of soil onto the land in front of his shop as it looked like the rubbish embankment was eroding. Most of the passageways were eroding. Apparently most of the slum is built on the old city dump. Check out my teammate's blog for more photos from the slum but I warn you the photos are graphic (Katie's Kibera Blog). Recently, a man was burned alive and a baby boy was found dead in a pile of rubbish.
I found some interesting facts about the Kibera slum online. Population numbers vary greatly, between 250,000 residents to 1.1 million people. This slum is one of the most studied slums in the world, in part due to its proximity to the UN’s headquarters located nearby that deals with human settlements.
My Kenyan friend, Calvin, who lives in the slum, told me there are about 300,000 people who don’t have a shelter in the slum, meaning they sleep on a dirt alleyway somewhere. He also told me that a fair amount of funding has been put towards constructing new buildings to rehouse the people who live in the slums. You can see some of these in one of the photos. Unfortunately, he said, the officials who oversaw the construction of these new buildings ended up having their friends and families to move in, instead of the families from the slums.
Clockwise from top left: This girl hung out with us as we journeyed through the maze-like slum. Kids love bubbles! I visited this woman's beauty shop in the slum. I spoke with them on a variety of things and prayed for her and her business. A river full of human excrement and runoff.
SPECIAL NEEDS
Aug. 17: Special Needs House Visit. We visited the Missionaries of Charity Mother Teresa’s Home one day. We spent time with this community of special needs people, loving them and feeding them.
THE POWER OF PRAYER
Aug. 17: She should have died. If you read the text earlier about our slum visit, then it may come as no surprise that we are probably living in an area that isn’t too well off. The church is gated and we have two separate locked doors for security. Overall, we live in a nice facility though and for the most part, I’ve felt safe.
With that said, my teammates heard a loud scream this night coming from just in front of the church. A few of the girls ran out to see what had happened. In summary, a woman had been robbed and stabbed by three men. You can read more about the event on my teammates blogs’ (Tasha's blog; Tatum's blog). The stabbing had punctured the woman’s heart and she was having difficulty breathing. A couple of my teammates accompanied her to the hospital. They were praying for her in the taxi on the way and those of us who stayed back prayed as well. Later, the doctors confirmed that the knife had went straight through to her heart. But as they were going to do surgery on her, they saw the tear on the heart but saw that there was no bleeding. The doctors had apparently said she should have been bleeding internally and that she should have died some time after being stabbed. Believe what you will, but God is healer and that night, He answered our prayers for this woman. God is good. All the time.
Home sweet home this month in Nairobi.
CLOWNING AROUND
Aug. 18: Children’s Fun Day. As a way to reach out to the neighboring youth, we held a fun day at the church. What carnival-like fun day wouldn’t be complete if you didn’t have face painting, a clown, puppets, dancing and singing, and a bouncy castle? The last time I had donned a clown costume was in January while in El Salvador, so I was excited for this opportunity. About 80 kids or so turned out to have fun and just be loved.
House visits and door to door. A lot of our other days were spent walking around the neighborhood near the church. We spoke with people, prayed with them, shared with them why we were there and about the hope found in Jesus Christ, invited them to church, etc. Ultimately, we were loving people and sharing God’s love with them. We handed out the extra food from the fun day. Also, a call out to my friends with kiddos back home. Please share with them the photos of these kids’ toys. Kids here were lucky if they had toy cars (i.e., a shoebox with bottle caps as wheels). It was humbling and a reminder to be thankful for what you have! I saw these homemade toy cars in Rwanda last month too.
Health and well being this month. A number of my squad-mates have gotten either malaria or typhoid. Thank you friends and family back home who continue to pray for me. I have been fairly healthy. Praise God! Also, thank you to my two teammates – Katie and Paige – for waking up early every morning before ministry and working out with me this month. Also, thanks to RoseMary, the church cook, for making healthy and delicious vegetarian meals for us. After the Indian food I ate every day in Malaysia while living in Little India, this was my second favorite food month on the Race.
Clockwise from top left: The church cook asked us what we wanted: healthy and vegetarian! That's what we got. And two days a week we got the most delicious chapati (in my opinion, the African version of Indian plain naan). Home sweet home in the infamous bug bivy (no mosquitoes for me!). A couple families live on the church property and these are their kids that we see every day. My team dressed up one night and headed out for a nice dinner.
Wrapping up. Well, that was life this month in Nairobi, give or take. The rest of my squad will be coming into Nairobi from South Sudan and Rift Valley, where those teams were located this past month. We will debrief with each other and head to Tanzania on September 1st. I’m looking forward to seeing Mt. Kilimanjaro from a distance. It’s been on my list to climb and someday I’d like to come back and climb it. It’s about a 1,000 feet shorter than Denali in Alaska, the largest mountain in North America. After Africa, it’s only Nepal and India left.
Love from Nairobi, Kenya…
