Kibera Missions Trip: July 2007

Imagine going to bed each night to the sound of a low rumble of music, talking, and howling dogs. Imagine having to watch where you step everywhere you go, and not seeing a hint of grass anywhere. Imagine not having enough money to even send your children to school.

That is just a tiny idea of what it is like to live in this situation. As you know, I was sent to the Kibera Slum in Nairobi, Kenya for a month, and I still feel like I do not have the slightest clue of what these people experience every day, but from my conversations with others and living 50 yards from the slum, I was able to see poverty firsthand. You can look at all the pictures you want of the 700 that I took, but no one can really ever know what the Kibera Slum, located in Nairobi, Kenya, is like until they see, hear, smell, and are physically present in the slum.

This letter is going to be pretty lengthy, but a month of experiences and seeing God work is something worthy to be shared.

God presented himself to me in huge ways on this trip. For me, I think personal growth is the biggest thing that happened on this trip. The first way God revealed himself to me is through helping me to discover some of my spiritual gifts. Through different outreaches that we took part in and through encouraging some girls in the slum each night, I was able to walk away with a renewed spirit and love for things. I can’t believe I am admitting this to everyone but my future plans may involve using singing to glorify God such as in our church’s worship band. In addition, I feel more comfortable with finding ways to be an encouragement to others, such as young girls in a youth setting. The second way God revealed himself to me is through the relationships with others. I think the people I met in the Youngsters for Christ ministry (www.youngsters4christ.com or YCT) ministered to me more than I ministered to them. These brothers and sisters forever left imprints on my heart and it was really hard to leave them. While having the best experience of my life, they were able to minister to me during one of the hardest times in my life.

God revealed Himself to me is through his love, comfort, and peace. As some of you know, I had a situation come up which felt like a forever high mountain that I couldn’t even begin to climb. The last week, I found myself wanting to be home for the first time the whole trip, but at the same time not wanting to leave because it didn’t feel right to. I struggle with being vulnerable about this because I do not want pity… but this is just a way God worked in my life during this trip. My grandma passed away 6 days before we were scheduled to arrive home, and not having friends or family from home there with me was extremely hard and painful for me. I had the option earlier that week to transfer my ticket to get home to say goodbye. I again had the option to come home early for the funeral. However, through a lot of crying out to God in prayer and a couple of verses that actually came to me at the beginning of the trip and resurfaced during this last week of the trip, I realized that God knew this would happen when He sent me there for a month, so why would He send me home not being able to complete the work I was sent to do? (Luke 9:57-62, Psalm 118:8, Psalm 27:7-8, Psalm 18 were some of these verses. Please look all these verses up. You will see how powerful God worked and how much He used scripture to teach me while on this trip.) This was a time when I grew the most in His unfailing love, and although I may not know the reason and timing of this trial, I can rest in that unfailing love. I was fortunate to see God’s greatness through his creation at a safari and gorge the very next day after I heard the news, and it was there that I realized how BIG God is and not to question Him. As far as coming home to all of this, closure has been hard for me and still is, so continued prayer is appreciated.

Being God’s hands and feet on the trip and seeing the results of that was amazing. As the trip progressed, I saw how God used each member of our team differently as we individually sought His will. As a team, we partnered with YCT and did school ministries. We normally visited high schools but also ministered at one elementary school, which all brought their own joys. At the high schools, a block of time is set aside, for students to gather in a room where they can learn more about who God is. We sometimes shared our testimonies, sang, and performed skits to them, but also had discussions about the pressures they face and were able to find verses in the Bible to help them out with them. At one school ministry, 5 young people gave their lives to Christ! I had individuals come up to me to ask me questions. I was able to minister to them individually by showing them verses and praying with them. When leaving the conversation, I found myself giving total credit to God who totally gave me the words to speak and the verses to show these young people.

Evangelism. It’s a scary word to many people. We were able to go out in the slum and spread the gospel message to anyone we would come upon. We went as a group only one time, but the rest of the trip some members of our team actively took individual responsibility to do this as we felt called. The natives were so open and willing to hear what we had to say. I was able to pray with many people about things they wanted prayer for, and lead some to a relationship with Christ. Sometimes all it took was a couple of minutes of talking to them before they made that commitment, and when they did, their faces would light up. They received some hope... eternal hope.

Construction. Manual labor. This was a fun part of the trip for me. We spent many hours helping to build and maintain the YCT building which is located in the slum. It’s a beautiful silver building where you can hear praises and prayers lifted up over the slum almost every evening. Some members of our team carried heavy cement rocks from a landing down through the slum to the building where a wall was built to prevent further soil erosion. The soil was eroding pretty quickly and a wall needed to be built, and within 4 days of us being there God provided some funds for that to be done. We also spent a lot of energy leveling and moving soil. Bags of dirt were filled, lifted, and moved outside the building where we could create a walkway that is safer for the people in the slum. In addition, the building received siding and electricity while we were there and another small room was added to the property. God worked amazingly on this project, and now YCT has a beautiful place to worship. As we were doing construction and people saw us “strong white women carrying big stones” through the slum, they started to realize that we were there to help them and to work. We were able to feel more comfortable walking around by ourselves (during the day), and often did. There was a time, however, when a native stopped me and said “You do all this work, yet my son is still at home hungry. What are you going to do about this?” I want you to be aware of this because this is too often the view of a native who lives in a slum when they meet a white person.

As a white person in the slum, you feel like a celebrity, and this should not be the case. They do not see Mzungus (Swahili for a white person) enough. There should be an awareness out there and people wanting to go show love in this dark place. Children there ran up just to touch us. They would always greet us to the same tone of “How are you?” and would repeatedly say it until we answered them. My heart swelled for the children in the slum, in ragged clothes and often without shoes, walking and looking through trash. But these children know no difference and are happy. They laugh and find things to do to have fun in the slum. In addition, my friends I met there are amazing men and women of God. In the conditions that they live in, I did not hear them utter one word of complaint. They may be the poorest people I’ve met, but are the richest in their faith. One of my friends, Bobline, shared Acts 17:26-27 to me when I was talking to him about him living there and me living in the United States.

The first day I was in the slum I met a girl named Saida. She took me down into her home, and I naively went by myself. I was able to pray with her that first day, and told her I would be back. However, because we were not allowed to go anywhere without a YCT member, I felt limited to return. God brought her back into my path the 2^nd week, and that is when I met her sister Jackie, who wanted to meet me. After that, I was able to go to their home nearly every night to talk with them, encourage them, and pray with them. They were very hospitable and gave me gifts to remember them by even with having very little. Their situations were so heart-wrenching, and that is just 2 young women in the midst of 1.2 million people in the slum. They insisted that I was there to help them financially and that they relied on me, but I kept reminding them that I will fail them because I’m human, and any amount of money they get will soon go to waste, but God will not fail them, and I can provide them with spiritual help by encouraging them and helping them in their walk with Christ. By the end of the trip, these girls started going back to church and praying. They told me God helped me to show them things they have never learned before. And, the last day of the trip, it so happened that we had extra support money and I was able to use some of it to help them out. I was blessed by their company and miss them a lot.

Coming home has been hard. Culture shock is more "shocking" coming home than going to Nairobi. We have so much. Yet, dare I say that our faith often does not even compare to the faith of some of those I met who have so little in the slum. A lot of us complain so much, when not a word of complaint was heard while I was there. We have been blessed... but as a friend of mine says, we should be pitied, because too often we do not even SEE what we have been given and entrusted to give to others.

I was not ready to leave Africa, but I knew that if I was actively seeking God and doing what He wanted me to do on the trip, then my time there was done. This time, God sent me to Africa for a full month, but I’m already praying for doors to open for Him to send me back. How can I be a part of that and see the need there, without wanting to go back and show God’s love to the people of Kibera? This trip was a trip of highs and lows in my life, yet I learned to love and worship God through those highs and lows. I was put through his refining fire and was refined by our ultimate Refiner.

God is good…. All the time, and I know that He is a Father who will never ever fail me, you, or those that live in the Kibera slum. Though many may think it... all they need is people to go over there and show them a little bit of Jesus.

Thank you to all of you who supported me on this trip of a lifetime. I have returned a different person, and I hope you can see that in me. Please keep YCT and the people in Kibera in your prayers, and my team members and myself as we continue to transition and apply what we learned to our lives here in America.

Nakupenda na upenda wa Mungu!
(I love you with the love of God!)