We gathered in the back of a Nairobi gas station (14 “muzungu” - white people from the states) and met our police guard, three men and one woman bearing machine guns. These would be our protectors as we walked through the Mathare slums. Also with us were four female college students, a pastor, and Lameck, our guide while in Kenya. These four college students attend school at night so they can be free during the day to visit families in the slums. They spend three days every week visiting 60 families, all victims of AIDS. We split into three groups, each with a translator and police guard, in a quest to bring encouragement, edification, and prayer, to join the church to help bring relief to these families, to help ease their burdens.
Our partner was Fountain of Life Church, a community of 80-100 people, that is caring for 60 families in the slums of Nairobi. These mothers are all dying from HIV/AIDS and will leave behind 127 orphaned children. The church is doing home visits with two purposes: first, to delay the orphaning process through visitation, care, encouragement, and medical treatment; and second, to ease the transition for the children, soon to be orphaned. The church is making a difference!
In the slums, sewage runs like a river through the streets. Children run over trash and feces as they seek space to run. There is none. The buildings are 4-5 shoulder widths apart. The homes have no windows. It is dank, dark, and vile. Pigs dig through the dirt and trash to find scraps. Lameck reminds me not to eat the sausage while in Kenya. Chickens run wild looking for leftovers. Who knows what they find.
We entered the home of one of the HIV/AIDS victims who has six children and one grandchild from her oldest daughter. She told us she had heard that she might lose her home, after living there her entire life, some 50 plus years. Yet, through it all, she smiled. She had joy and told us it came from the Lord.
After some conversation, I noticed a beautiful woven basket on her table. I commented that it was very beautiful, and she told me she had made it. She then reached behind a blanket covering a shelf and brought out five more baskets, all equally beautiful. The bright colors combined in a mosaic of hope and light. They were made of nylon strands, tightly woven, found often times in the trash. Trash turned to beauty. We bought all five.
Her basket reminds me that out of hopelessness God brings beauty. We should have left the slum feeling hopeless and despairing and instead we left filled with hope and seeing light emerge out of darkness. That four college girls and a church would take on the burdens of others as a privilege and honor - what a beautiful image amid an otherwise hopeless scene.
This church and others like it in Kenya and Ethiopia are seeking western church partners. Does your church want to share in the joy of bringing hope to the hopeless? Contact me and I can help you do that. The church really is the hope of the world.
