Valerie Rogers

Airport scenes

2006-09-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a missionary friend last year and we both agreed that one of the hardest things about being a missionary is the “airport scenes” – that moment in the airport when I walk away from my family and friends and wonder if I’ve lost my mind for leaving my country and the people I love. Well on Monday I experienced the other side of the airport scene – this time I was the one staying behind and not the one leaving. The one leaving was my friend Muigai, who had been selected for a one year ministry internship with an organization in the UK called Careforce (www.careforce.org).

I met Muigai (pronounced Mwee-guy with the accent on the 2nd syllable) in April of last year when I started attending Karen Community Church, where he was working as an intern. We got to know each other through a young adults Bible study and started hanging out together in September of last year. In January, we decided to begin a relationship.

Muigai was born and grew up in Nairobi, and studied economics and sociology at the University of Nairobi. He is a gifted musician and plays the keyboard, guitar, and leads worship at the church. After this year in the UK, he plans to go to graduate school and get a Masters degree in peace and reconciliation studies. Eventually, he would like to go into ministry with African children and youth from traumatic or difficult backgrounds.

Muigai has been an incredible friend to me – we pray together, study the Bible together, he accompanies me to the children’s home on the weekends to play with the kids (who have completely fallen in love with him), and he takes me hiking or for nyama choma (roasted meat) when I am stressed with classes. He is committed to the Lord, caring, compassionate, and a lot of fun to be with.

Several months ago, Muigai found out about Careforce through an elder in our church who had gone through the program ten years ago. We both prayed about it and decided it was a great opportunity for him and could also be beneficial for our relationship by allowing him to experience life in a Western culture. He was accepted into the program, raised money for a plane ticket, and a few weeks ago was granted a visa, which was surprising for a young single male. God’s hand has clearly been seen throughout the entire process. He will be working with children and youth in an Anglican parish in Bargoed, South Wales.

Although I am excited for him, it will be challenging to be away from him for a year and I will really miss him. Please join the two of us in prayer for the following items:

- That as we spend time apart, we would seek the Lord and be able to discern His guidance for our future and our relationship

- That God would give us grace and strength over the next year

- That Muigai would be able to adapt quickly to life in Wales

- That Muigai would make good friends in the UK and be effective in his ministry there

Visiting ministries in Kisumu

2006-08-18T09:42:00.000-07:00

I recently spent a good but tiring week in two villages outside of Kisumu City, about 7 hours from Nairobi on the shores of Lake Victoria. A good friend of mine, Ken Prussner, founded an NGO called STARS Children Africa which supports orphaned children in secondary school. By working together with a Kenyan pastor in Kisumu called Joshua, they were able to send 55 orphaned children to secondary school this year (there is no free secondary school in Kenya). Ken offered to pay my travel expenses if I would be willing to travel to Kisumu to get stories, interviews, and pictures of children involved in STARS, as well as details for a group of 10 American volunteers who will be traveling to Kenya next year. Of course I was more than willing!

Through friends in Nairobi, I learned of another small community based program in a village near Kisumu. This program is connected with the Mennonite church and reaches out to orphaned and vulnerable children and widows in several villages. The bishop of the Mennonite churches in that region, Clyde Angola, invited me to stay with him and spend a few days visiting there. So I spent the first half of the week with Pastor Joshua and the second half with Clyde.

I spent the first two days with visiting secondary schools in the area and interviewing children who have been sponsored by STARS Children Africa. I was both inspired and heartbroken by their stories. Largely due to cultural traditions and poverty, the Nyanza district (where I was) is the hardest hit district by AIDS in the country. The five children that I interviewed had all gone through incredible challenges after losing their parents to AIDS. Two of them had contemplated suicide, one had turned to prostitution to survive, and another had become pregnant at the age of 15, when she desperately attempted to support her ill mother by finding a “boyfriend” who would give her money. All of these children are now in school and are doing very well. They have received incredible support from Pastor Joshua and his wife Abigael, but more importantly they all have a strong faith, hope, and trust in Jesus Christ which encourages and sustains them.

In the middle of the week I headed to a village called Songhor, which is about 2 hours from Kisumu City and is very rural. The small program there is called KEDHAP (Kenya East Diocese HIV/AIDS Program). This program was started several years ago when a few church members decided they needed to reach out to people affected by AIDS in their community. They began by doing a survey, and spent several months going from house to house to identify all of the orphans and widows in the community. They had kept very organized records and had recorded 648 orphans in their community (these were very small rural villages, so 648 is a huge number!). The program is organized and run completely by community members. Clyde is the overseer, and then there is a program manager, four district coordinators, and six local church coordinators. There are also five people who have been trained as community health workers. The community health workers visit HIV positive people in the community to pray with them and do home based care.

One of the things about the program that impressed me the most is that KEDHAP does not have a single paid employee – all of the people involved are community volunteers. Even Clyde is not paid anything by the program or even by the Mennonite churches – the average offering at his church is about 200 shillings ($3) because the people in the village are very poor. All of the people are involved in farming or other small projects to earn an income.

Despite a lack of resources, the KEPHAP workers are committed and are doing everything that they can to help their community. They have received donation to provide school uniforms for hundreds of orphans, and recently received a donation for 98 goats. They gave one male and one female goat to families that were caring for orphans as a sustainability project to help the community members earn an income.

They also have a support group for widows who are HIV positive. They offer these widows home based care and referrals to the closest hospital, which is one hour away. (They have a long term plan of starting a hospital in the village, and they are in the process of receiving free land from the government for this hospital). There are free ARVs available at the hospital; unfortunately, many of the members cannot afford the 200 shillings ($3) each month to get to the hospital to pick up their medicine. One of their goals for a sustainability project is to buy a dairy cow for the HIV support group. The women could sell the milk and the profits could be distributed to cover the medical costs for the women as needs arise. As the cow gives birth and continues to reproduce, the calves can be given to community members so they will be able to earn an income.

On the last day that I was there, I had the privilege of taking part in a Luo tradition (Luo is one of 42 tribes in Kenya). In Luo culture, when sons grow up and get married, they build a house for their families on their parents’ land. However, at a certain point, they move off their parents land and establish their own home on their own land. Gordon, the project coordinator for KEDHAP, happened to be moving to his own land the last day I was there. The new house is built as their old house is being demolished. According to their culture, the family must sleep in the new house that night, so the house has to be built completely in one day or they have nowhere to sleep!

Clyde told me that Gordon had spent about one year gathering material and saving money for this day. About 50 people from the community gathered starting at 9am. The women cooked and the men built the house. There was one carpenter who was paid a small amount, but the rest were community volunteers. The house was made out of wood, sticks, mud, and a tin roof. I was amazed that they were able to build a house in a single day and I really enjoyed seeing the whole process. They had very tools – for example, there was no ladder but the carpenter spent about 10 minutes nailing some branches together and making his own ladder!

Now I am back at NEGST enjoying the last few weeks of my holiday. The family who I was housesitting for has returned, so I back in student housing. All of my roommates have been away this week, so I have been there alone (although I discovered I am not really alone because there are rats living in my ceiling, but the maintenance people came today to take care of that so hopefully they will be gone soon! And thankfully there is no way for the rats to get out of the ceiling and into my room).

One year down, one to go!

2006-07-15T09:40:00.000-07:00

I am officially finished with my first year at NEGST! Now I have two whole months to relax before I go back to the books in September for my second and final year. I handed in my last term paper of the year last week Friday, which was a 30 page first draft of my thesis proposal. After changing my topic several times, I plan to do a comparative study of a community based approach and a residential approach to caring for HIV positive orphaned children. I will continue to refine this proposal over the next several months, and then begin my research in the beginning of next year. My final thesis will be due in May of 2008 and it is a major component of my program at NEGST.

We had graduation last week Saturday. The graduation ceremony was really fun, and I am glad to report that as far as I know, nobody missed graduation because of a lack of school fees (the school received donations from individuals and scholarships that were able to cover all of the balances of the graduating students). So thank you all so much for your prayers in that regard. After graduation, the graduating students had parties all over the compound. At the place where I am housesitting, I hosted 2 parties – one inside the house and one in the backyard. I helped cook and clean for one of those parties. We started setting things up at 7 am and finally finished cleaning at 8 pm, so by the end of the day we were exhausted!

For the last week I’ve been relaxing, reading, catching up on sleep, and catching up with friends. I’ve recovered completely from the minor case of malaria and have been feeling much better in the past two weeks – thank you all for your prayers. I still haven’t fixed the shower, but I bought a ski cap and a hot water bottle to help keep me warm during the cold month of July (it gets surprisingly cold here in Nairobi – even though it’s practically on the equator, the elevation is really high and there is no heating system in any of the houses or buildings. The house I am staying in gets especially cold at night, and for the past few weeks I have sleeping under 4 blankets!)

I will have the opportunity to travel a little over this school holiday – I will be traveling to Kisumu again at the end of this month to visit two ministries there. I just had dinner last night with a Kenyan couple who were missionaries in Tanzania for several years, and I am hoping to be able to visit their ministry in Mwanza, Tanzania in August.

I am hosting a big nyama choma (goat barbecue) tomorrow for the young adults at my church. We were debating whether to buy a live goat and slaughter and skin it here, or to a buy a dead goat that has already been skinned. Thankfully, the group decided on the dead goat (although the men claimed that killing and skinning a goat is a good bonding experience for them!).

Finishing up the year...

2006-06-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

I apologize that I’ve been so quiet recently – I think it’s been almost two months since I emailed an update. Part of the reason is that school has been busy, like usual, this term. But it’s also been a pretty uneventful two months. Today was my last day of class for this academic year. I have an exam next week and two term papers, and then I will have over two whole months off – and I am definitely ready for that holiday!! At the moment I’ve recovering from a mild case of malaria. I’m feeling much better today but please pray for a complete restoration of my health so that I can finish up my work for this term.

Some of the highlights from this term were:

- In preparation for my thesis, I had to do a small anthropological research project. Through a local church, I was able to meet with and interview several street boys. I was trying to discover the factors that led children to the streets in this particular town. I was surprised to find out that most of the boys were not orphans, but came from very poor families with many children. In most cases, the parents couldn’t afford to feed the kids and so they went to the streets to try and care for themselves.

- For my trauma and loss counseling class I wrote my final paper on HIV positive orphans. I interviewed a social worker at a children’s home for HIV positive and it was really interesting to find out more about the psychosocial needs of these children.

- I’m house sitting for a professor for the next two months. I moved in about two weeks ago. There are several things in my life that I didn’t appreciate until I didn’t have them anymore. Hot showers, for example. My dorm has a solar heater for the shower but it’s broken, and even if it did work, the hot water would only be available at 5 pm and only on days that it’s been sunny. So instead we heat water in an electric kettle every morning and shower using a bucket. From the time I was asked to house sit, I have been eagerly looking forward to hot showers, especially since it’s the coldest time of the year. Unfortunately, either the shower here is broken or I just can’t figure it out. I need to contact the maintenance guy to come check it out. In the meantime, my bucket will have to suffice…

- Despite the lack of hot showers, I’m enjoying the other benefits of house sitting, especially having a big house to invite people to. I hosted a dinner where we cooked “mzungu” (white person) foods – spaghetti, garlic bread, and ice cream. I’ll be hosting a lunch for my negst small group tomorrow, and in July I’ll be hosting a big goat barbecue for all of the young adults in our young adults ministry at church.

- I’ve been enjoying the young adults ministry in my church. I’m one of 8 leaders for the ministry which is about 40 people. We recently completed a series on dating and marriage, and now I’m working with one of the other leaders to coordinate a series on social justice. We did an intro last week, and we’ll be taking about issues like HIV/AIDS and poverty in the upcoming weeks

I think those are the major things that have been going on. I just found out today that there are 29 students who will not graduate unless they pay their school fees balance. Considering this is a small school, 29 students is a big deal. Please pray that God will provide finances for all of them, and no one will be prevented from graduating because of a lack of finances.

Please also pray for me as I finish up this term. I’m looking into a few short term mission opportunities for the long holiday. Please pray that an opportunity will open up for me to serve for one or two weeks.

Back to class again...

2006-04-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

The short April holiday is over and I’m already 2 weeks into the third term. It’s hard to believe that in just 10 weeks my first year at NEGST will be finished. This term I have a much lighter course load than last term – I am only taking three classes: New Testament Theology, African Independent Churches, and Anthropological Research Methods. In addition to those classes, I am also continuing with my Kikuyu classes.

After returning from Kisumu, I spent the rest of my holiday catching up with sleep and catching up with friends. One of my friends from church, Jane, came by and finally helped me dig and plant my shamba (small garden), so now I have spinach, sukuma wiki (kales), and onions growing. Jane has a small project in a nearby slum for orphaned and vulnerable children, so I also spent an afternoon visiting the project with her. A few years ago, Jane visited a family in this slum where an old grandmother was struggling to care for several of her orphaned grandchildren. Through this family, Jane came to learn about several other orphaned children in the community. So she started a feeding program for the children. Whenever she could get money, she would stop by and cook lunch for the kids (usually children in slum schools go home for lunch but most of the time the caretakers for these kids were too poor to afford lunch for them.) Now Jane continues with the feeding program and rents a small two room tin building where she gives the kids porridge in the morning, lunch at noontime, and bread in the afternoon, teaches the kids about God, and provides them with some toys to play with. One of the children has even been sleeping in this building with his siblings because they do not have a home. There are currently 30 kids in her program, and 8 of them are HIV positive. Visiting her project was both overwhelming and inspiring. It was overwhelming to see the need in the community, but it was inspiring to see what Jane has been doing. She is only 23 years old and her family is Kenyan middle class, which means they are definitely not wealthy, and yet she has been using the little that she has in order to help those who have even less.

I also spent a morning volunteering at Grace Children’s Center, the children’s home that I visit on the weekends. I went with my friend Muigai and we washed clothes all morning (keep in mind there are no washing machines so we hand washed clothing for 37 children!) It made me appreciate how hard the house mothers work every day!

Last weekend, Glory (a friend from NEGST) and I had the opportunity to visit Mary in her home. I have mentioned Mary several times in my emails – she washes clothes at NEGST and has recently become a single mother after her husband of 19 years left her. Mary lives in a small two room tin house in a slum area (although the area is much nicer than many other slums in the city, Mary still classified it as a slum). It was nice to have her welcome me into her home and to have the opportunity to meet her three children. Please continue to pray for her – she is currently only working 3 days in the week and is looking for additional work so she can support her family.

One final prayer request is that several of the students at NEGST are really struggling to pay school fees, which are very high by Kenyan standards. Some of them still have a deficit remaining from the second term, and may be kicked out of school if they are not able to pay. Please pray for God to provide them with the funds that they need in order to continue with their education.

You can also join us in thanking God for the rains he has sent to Kenya. There was a severe famine in some parts of Kenya due to lack of rain, but in the last month we have had rain in abundance! It is the rainy season, which means we get daily downpours, lots of mud, and power outages several times a day. But these small inconveniences are definitely worth the blessings that the rain brings.

An Adventure in Kisumu!

2006-04-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

I returned to NEGST exhausted yesterday after a 4 day adventure in Kisumu. Elly and Caroline, friends of mine from NEGST, invited me and our friend Muigai to spend a few days with them in their village near Kisumu, a small city in Kenya.

We arrived in their village on Sunday evening after a very bumpy 7 hour bus ride from Nairobi. This was a real rural village – no electricity, no running water (they got their water from a well), a hole in the ground used as a toilet, a pile of firewood used as a stove, etc. Rural Kisumu is primarily made up of the Luo ethnic group, one of the largest ethnic groups in Kenya. According to their culture, once a man gets married, he can no longer stay in his mother’s house and must build his own house on her land where he and his family can stay when they come to visit. So Elly’s place consisted of four small, simple one story houses made of concrete with tin roofs – one was his mother’s house and the other were for her three sons.

On Monday morning, Elly and Caroline were busy talking to some people from their village so Muigai and I set out to explore the village. It was exactly how I had pictured a rural African village – huts with thatched roofs, cows, goats, and chickens running around, lots of farmed land, etc. We found many people working in their shambas (gardens) and we stopped along the way to chat with several people. At one house, one of the men showed me how to use a hoe and work in the shamba.

In the afternoon we visited some of Elly and Caroline’s friends in the village. One of the people we visited was an old lady who had been the chief brewer in the village for 33 years. She brewed an illegal and very toxic alcoholic beverage called changaa. She would get drunk as early as 9 in the morning and stay drunk all day. Elly is a pastor and in 2004 he had organized an outreach to minister to the people in his village. This lady came to the outreach and decided to change her life and serve God. She stopped brewing and drinking, and Elly gave her some money to start a small business to sustain herself. She was a very nice lady and was very grateful that Elly had brought visitors to come see her. She told me that she wanted to give me something that I could take back to Elly’s house and eat later. So she walked out of the house and came back with a live chicken!!! I was so shocked – nobody has ever given me a chicken before!

On Tuesday morning we headed out of the village to try to find a ministry called St Luke’s which works in another part of Kisumu. A good friend of mine from the states, Ken Prussner, has started an NGO called STARS Children Africa to assist orphaned children in Africa with secondary school fees. He had been introduced to the pastor running St. Luke’s and they have worked together to send 55 orphans to secondary school. Primary school is free in Kenya but secondary school is not, and many children with two parents cannot even afford it. Therefore, most orphans are forced to drop out of school after grade 8.

Elly’s house is very far from the main road, so we had to walk for about 15 minutes and then get on boda-bodas. Boda-bodas are bicycles with seats on the back. There are many of these all over Kisumu - you pay between 30 cents and a dollar, jump on back of the bike, and the driver will take you where you want to go. They’re a lot of fun and I got many amused looks when the villagers saw a white woman flying through their village on the back of a bicycle!

Once we got to the main road, we took a matatu (15 person van) to the town where St. Luke’s is. However, St. Luke’s is very far from the main road. So we boarded into the back of a vehicle with two benches on each side, which could comfortably fit about 4 people on each side, but we had 7 on each side! The vehicle was very hot and one of the women had just bought fish from the market, so you can image how the inside of that humid vehicle was smelling! We went for about 15 minutes in the car, jumped on some more boda-bodas, and finally arrived at St. Luke’s.

St. Luke’s was started three years ago and the compound has a church and a children’s home. We had a very nice visit and on the way back to Kisumu we stopped at one of the local secondary schools where St Luke’s was sponsoring 14 orphans. We talked with the headmaster of the school and asked if we could take a picture of the orphaned children. We went to the front of the school and more and more kids started coming out of the classrooms to be in the picture. I thought they must have misunderstood. When I mentioned to the headmaster that we only wanted a photo of the orphaned children and not all of them, he replied that 81 out of 190 students in the school are orphans!

We were all shocked that there were so many orphans at that school – Nyanza, the district that Kisumu is in, is the worst hit by HIV/AIDS in the entire country. In fact, Elly had planned for us to visit one woman in his village but she died from AIDS on Monday morning so we were not able to. One of the major problems in that district is the Luo tradition of “wife inheritance,” where a man’s brother will “inherit” his wife if he dies. Originally, this tradition was somewhat beneficial to the woman and children in a male dominated society where they would really struggle to survive without a man. However, because of AIDS, this tradition is wiping out entire families. Usually, when a couple is HIV positive, the man will die first. Because someone can have HIV for many years without showing symptoms, the woman often appears to be very healthy. Therefore, she will be “inherited” and then pass HIV to her brother in law, who will then also pass it on to his wife. When that man dies, his HIV-positive wife will be inherited by another brother, and the cycle will continue.

After we got back to Kisumu, we headed to Lake Victoria, one of the largest lakes in East Africa, surrounded by Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. It was getting late, but we had time for a quick 15 minute boat ride (the boat was just a large canoe with a small motor attached to the back, but it was fun.) Then we headed back to Elly’s house - our trip from Kisumu back to Elly’s village was quite an adventure!

We boarded a matatu but 5 minutes into the journey we got a flat tire. They finally got it fixed and we all climbed back into the matatu, but ten minutes later there was another flat tire! This time there was no spare so we had to wait for another matatu to pass that had extra space. By the time we reached the town near Elly’s house, it was after 7 pm and it was already dark (Unlike Nairobi, rural Kisumu has very little crime or insecurity, so being out at night is not a problem.) Walking would have taken at least an hour and a half, so we boarded boda-bodas again (they had little lights in the front) and headed for his house. After we were going for about 15 minutes one of the bicycles got a flat tire!!! We couldn’t believe it. So we flagged down another bicycle and kept going. Then it started raining! I could not believe I was riding on the back of a bicycle in the dark and in the rain in the middle of a village. It was crazy. I was very glad when we finally reached his house after a 45 minute bike ride. We relaxed for the rest of the evening and enjoyed my chicken for dinner.

On Wednesday morning we woke up to pouring rains but we had to head to Kisumu at 630 to make our 9am bus back to Nairobi. Once again, we had to ride on the bicycles in the rain and I was covered in mud by the time we reached Kisumu. We made the bus and started our long and bumpy trip back to Nairobi.

Reflection

2006-01-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

I am back into the swing of life in Kenya and studies at NEGST. I have to admit that it was challenging to go from one of the poorest countries in the world to the most affluent and back again in less than a month. Today I wanted to share with you a reflection that I wrote in my journal less than a week after I returned to Kenya. Before I left for the US, my friend Mary told me that her two oldest sons had qualified for secondary school but she didn’t have money to send them. She asked me if I would be able to find some money in the US to help her sons go to school. Below is my journal account of what happened:

Mary stopped by my room today and I told her that I would be able to give her 12,000 shillings (about $150) to help her sons go to school. She immediately began sobbing, hugged me, and uttered thank you and praise God amidst her many tears. She then proceeded to tell me that her husband had abandoned her on Dec 21. On top of that, she is five months behind on rent (about $30 a month) and her landlord has given her a deadline before he kicks her and her children onto the streets. She has four children and supports her family by washing clothes for students at NEGST, where she probably earns between 40 and 80 dollars each month.

As we stood there she asked if we could pray together, and began thanking the Lord for this $150 that I was giving her. To her, this was so much more than money. It was hope. Hope that her sons would get an education and have a good life. Hope that her children would be able to escape from the crippling poverty that she has known all of her life. Hope that her children will not have to suffer in the ways that she has. All that life changing hope wrapped up in a mere $150.

I wish I could say that I felt good as I stood there awkwardly in my room hugging this woman as she continued to cry and to praise God. But I didn’t feel good – instead I was overwhelmed by a sense of injustice, confusion, and anger. I had no idea what to say to Mary. I didn’t even have to pay for my secondary school. I have never faced the threat of being kicked onto the streets with no place to live, and I have never had to face the pain of not having enough money to buy food for my children.

Honestly, I am very grateful that I did not know these struggles. But, this woman is also a child of the same God that I call my Father. How is it that we come from such different worlds? How can I faithfully live out the love of Christ in a world that is so different from the one that I have known? How can I reconcile the fact that I come from the most affluent country in the history of the world when I see things every day that make me realize the evil, pain, and injustice of the poverty that devastates the majority of people in this world?

So often I struggle to know how I am to respond. I know that guilt is not an appropriate response – certainly I didn’t choose to be born in an affluent country any more than people here chose to be born in a slum or a poor rural village. I know that love is the only genuine and appropriate response. And yet as I study the book of James, I am challenged that love must be practical. If I see brothers or sisters in need and do nothing to help them, how can I say that I genuinely love them? But what does this mean for me here, and what would this practical love of Christ look like in my everyday life?

I am not looking for answers to all of the questions that this incident raised. I guess I am sharing it with you because it had such an impact on me. As far as I know, Mary’s landlord has not yet kicked them into the streets, and her sons should be able to enroll in school this month. I have not yet been able to give her all of the money because my wallet was stolen on a matatu last week and I lost my bank card. But my own struggles seem pretty insignificant in light of what this family is going through.

One term down, five to go...

2005-11-30T10:33:00.000-08:00

I just finished my last exam five hours ago so my first term at NEGST is officially over! I actually only had one exam but I had five term papers of about 15 pages each, so the past three weeks have been quite busy. Now I will be busy the next three days preparing to come home for the December holiday. I leave Nairobi at 11:20 pm on Saturday, and I’ll be arriving in DC on Sunday afternoon. I would love to see you all while I am at home, so please give me a call if you’ll be in VA or NC. I’ll be in NC from Dec. 6th until the 11th, and I’ll be in VA for the rest of the time. I’ll be returning to Nairobi on Dec. 28th. I’ll be using my old cell phone, and the number is 703-298-0597. I won’t be able to access this email address, so please use Valerie@beaconafrica.org or rogers_valerie@hotmail.com to get in touch with me after Friday.

The past month has been a very busy but a very good month. I’ve joined the youth leadership team at my church, which is giving me the opportunity to get involved in ministry while I’m in school. I have been meeting with a group of four Kenyans from my church to discuss how to get the youth involved in missions. One is our youth pastor, another is the leader of an indigenous missions organization called Together Mission Africa, another is an amazing and visionary woman who has started several projects in the Nairobi area, and the fourth is the missions intern at the church. The youth pastor asked me to write up a proposal for missions in the youth, and we’ve been working on that for about the past five weeks.

We’re discussing a lot of exciting opportunities, but the most exciting project we’re discussing is a project in a slum community called Bul Bul. Bul Bul is about 2 km from the church and is a relatively small slum community. I am going there with a few people on Saturday morning to survey the area and pray. Right now, our plan is to buy a plot of land which is only about $4000 and put up a semi-permanent building which will only be about $2000-$3000. We want to use this building as a community center where we can host medical clinics, Bible studies, games for the children, feeding programs, training classes, etc. The vision is to get a presence in the community and try to understand the dynamics of the community, and then pray about how we can share the love of Christ in that place. I have really been praying for an opportunity to get involved in slum ministry while I’m in school, and I’m so excited that God is opening these doors for me to partner with Kenyans from my church and begin a new project in Bul Bul.

I hope you all enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. Although I really missed celebrating with my family, I was able to share a Thanksgiving meal with some people here. I am very thankful for the experiences I have had in Kenya this year, the opportunities the Lord has given me, and the great relationships I have made. And of course I am so thankful for all of you and all of the support that you have given me this year. Please pray for safe travels as I return home, and blessed times of fellowship with friends and family. I am really looking forward to seeing many of you soon!

Studies, studies, and more studies

2005-10-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

I am nearing the end of my first term here at NEGST and am really enjoying my classes and all that I am learning. I am especially enjoying the community life on campus. The student body is so diverse – for example, in one of my classes we are divided into small groups for papers – in my group, there is a Kenyan, a Sudanese, a Liberian, and then me. It’s so much fun to be exposed to so many different cultures and people from so many different backgrounds.

Most of my time over the past three weeks has been spent reading and writing papers. I’ve been a bit frustrated this week – the work load is so much that it’s really hard to get involved in practical ministry at the same time. One of my professors commented that NEGST is good at training scholars but not missionaries, in that there are not many opportunities or training in terms of practical ministry skills. I am really praying about how I can make my time at NEGST more holistic so that I will graduate with skills to effectively minister to people and not just a lot of head knowledge.

One opportunity I’ve had to get involved in ministry is with my church here. I had a meeting with the youth pastor about a week ago and he challenged me to find a way to get involved in the church while I am at NEGST. I’ve been involved with the youth at the church (ages 18-35) and the young adults group invited me to be a part of their leadership team. There are also people at church who are interested in starting an outreach to a slum community that is about 2 km from the church. This is the area that I’d really like to be involved in but there is nothing started up yet, so I’ve decided to start with the young adults leadership and hopefully in the next several months there will be a team of people ready to start something in the slum community. I attended my first leadership meeting this morning and we’ll be going on a retreat next month to plan for the coming year. I’ve also continued to stay involved at Grace Children’s Center, a children’s home with 17 HIV positive children and 35 HIV negative children. I visit them every weekend, and recently I’ve had some friends from church who have been coming with me.

I had some drama about two weeks ago when my purse was stolen. I was meeting with a friend in a very small restaurant. The place was practically empty because we were there in the middle of the afternoon and my purse was on the floor at my feet. We were sitting in the corner so there weren’t even people walking past us. When we got up to leave, my bag was gone. We couldn’t figure out how someone could have taken it without us seeing, but we remembered there were two people who came in, sat on stools to our right, and then left after a short time without buying anything. Another woman in the restaurant said she noticed them walking very quickly out of the place. I lost my keys, phone, wallet, bank cards, credit cards, drivers license, international drivers license, and about $7 (thankfully my passport was safely in my room!) I was able to get new keys and another phone line, and I’m working on getting all of my documents replaced.

We just finished our 7th week of classes so there are only 3 weeks to go – it’s gone by so quickly! I’ll be coming home for the December holiday. I arrive in Washington DC on Dec. 4th and I’ll be leaving to come back to Nairobi on Dec. 28th. I’ll be traveling to NC the 6th-11th. I am really excited to come home and to see many of you, so please let me know if you’ll be around DC or NC on those dates.

This afternoon I am going on a “class field trip” to a debate between Christians and Muslims, but before that I have to get back to the library to continue to work on one of my term papers. I’m writing on John Chrysostom as a prophetic voice against economic injustice in the 4th century church – it’s really interesting!

Please pray for me - my studies are getting really intense as the end of the term approaches. Please pray as I begin to get involved in leadership at my church and that I’ll have an opportunity soon to get involved in the nearby slum community. Please also pray for the students on campus – the deadline for paying the remainder of the school fees in Monday and there are many students who are trusting the Lord but have no idea where this money will come from.

Adjusting to Academic Life

2005-10-03T23:38:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of my fourth week of classes here at NEGST and I think I have finally settled into academic life. I am really enjoying my classes, although the work load is more intense than I had expected. I am taking 17 hours this semester, and my courses are Introduction to Islam, Early and Medieval Church History, Hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation), Biblical Theology of Missions, and Power Encounter (which deals with the supernatural, confronting witchcraft, the power of the gospel, etc.). In addition, I am continuing with my Swahili classes once a week.

I have settled into campus life and am enjoying the community here. The majority of students, professors, and staff stay on campus, which gives the school a community feeling and great opportunities to get to know the other students and staff. I am one of the youngest students here, and many of the students are married with children. The majority of staff and students are African, but are from all over the continent. In addition to classes, we also have chapel services 3 days a week, small groups within our departments, and a small group Bible study where all of the students, staff, and faculty are divided into groups of about 10. We have playing fields where students can be found playing volleyball, soccer, and basketball almost every evening.

We even have small “shambas” which are garden plots where we can grow our own vegetables. I was not planning on signing up for one because I don’t know how to grow anything, but one of the Kenyan students convinced me to sign up and promised to teach me. He told me that I should obtain the asset first, and then figure out to use it.

This past weekend, I went to three nyama chomas (goat barbecues). Nyama chomas are very popular in Kenya and I don’t think there can be a proper celebration without slaughtering a goat. On Friday, the missions department had a nyama choma to welcome all of the new students in the missions department, on Saturday the school hosted one to welcome all of the new students on campus, and on Sunday I went to one after church with several of my friends from church. So I definitely had my fill of goat this weekend! On Saturday, some of the guys even taught me how to roast the meat so I was in charge of one of the grills for a while. They eat every part of the goat, including the intestines and all of the organs. I still have not tried all of the parts but am getting a little more adventurous – this weekend I ate the kidney and it was actually pretty good.

I have also been visiting several community projects in the poor areas around campus. I was hoping to have time to get involved in one of the projects here, but now I don’t think I will realistically have time for this during the term. This past Saturday I visited a Christian project for orphaned and vulnerable girls. Every Saturday they have a feeding program and tutoring classes. I went with a friend who lives in the area and we thought we were just going to observe and see what it is all about. But the guy in charge divided the kids up into 2 groups and left us with about 30 children from ages 5-11 and told us to teach them for 2 hours. We just looked at each other and laughed because we had not prepared anything, and I do not know how to teach math or science in Swahili. So instead we just sang songs, prayed, and taught them about Jesus. Then we played games with them until their lunch was ready.

Please continue to pray for me as I adjust to student life, and pray for my fellow classmates as well. There are several men here who could not afford to bring their families with them, so they live far away from their wives and children. There are also several students who are struggling to pay school fees, which are pretty high for African standards. In addition, for many students English is their second or even third language. I cannot even imagine doing this level of study in a language other than English, and I know that many of them are really struggling with the readings and writing papers,

Thank you for you prayer support!

Ending one chapter and beginning a new one

2005-09-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

Last week was the final week of my internship with Beacon of Hope. Because Beacon of Hope is very far from campus, my director and I decided it would be best for me to hand over all of my responsibilities. But I really enjoyed the last week - On Wednesday, we took the sponsorship kids on an outing to a place called Jolly Roger, where they have a playground, bouncing castles, a small swimming pool, and other fun things to do. Most of the kids had never been to a place like this before, and it was fun for me to see their excitement.

Then, on Friday, we had our Beacon of Hope graduation. Our vocational training in rug weaving, kikoy weaving, and tailoring run for one year, and then the students graduate and a new class comes in. So on Friday, we had a big graduation celebration. The women graduating did songs, poems, and skits, and the sponsorship kids also did songs and a poem. Then there were speakers and a big lunch afterwards. Jane was also able to find a donor who donated machines to the top four students in each program - a sewing machine to those in tailoring, a small kikoy machine to those in kikoy, and a spinning wheel for those in rug weaving. The hope is that they will be able to continue their trade from their homes and even begin their own businesses. Some of them will also continue to be a part of our production department at Beacon. They had no idea they would be getting the machines, and they were so excited! It was a great way for me to end my time there.

Unfortunately, our celebration was dampered a bit with some sad news. We found out on Friday that Elizabeth, the guardian of four orphans in our sponsorship program, had passed away from AIDS. We were all devastated because she had seemed so healthy and this was quite unexpected. This was a family that I had been very involved with and was close to Elizabeth. She had just tested HIV positive in April, and the children had a really hard time in April because of the diagnosis. Now, the children also do not have any relatives in Ongata Rongai to stay with during their holiday times. This unexpected tragedy makes their already uncertain future even more so. Please pray for this family and especially these four children as they mourn Elizabeth's death.

On Sunday, some of my Kenyan friends from church took me out to lunch to celebrate the fact that I would be starting school, but they wouldn't tell me where they were taking me. We ended up going to a tiny and very cheap side of the road restaurant that the guys go to almost every day. They said I would need to know this place now that I would be a broke student again. A full meal and a drink costs only 55 shillings, which is about $0.75! They were laughing and saying that they have never brought girls here before, because it is certainly not the kind of place you would bring a date to! But they wanted to give me a "real Kenyan experience", and I had a great time.

All this week I have been having orientation at NEGST (Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology). Most of the week was just typical orientation things, but I really enjoyed meeting my classmates and the faculty. This is quite an international place! One of my neighbors in campus housing is from Armenia, and I have also met people this week from Hungary, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leon, Zambia, Malawi, US, Korea, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and of course several Kenyans. My incoming class is only about 40 students, so it's not a very big school. Most of the students live on campus, which is nice because there is a strong community here.

We just completed orientation yesterday, and I start classes on Monday. I will be using a new email address - Valerie.Rogers@negst.edu but I will still be checking the beacon address as well at least for a while. I also have a new mailing address, which is:

PO Box 24686

Nairobi, Kenya 00502

Please pray for me as I transition into school and begin classes, studying, and writing papers!

Meisisi Yesu!

2005-08-30T05:33:00.000-07:00

Meisisi Yesu! (that means Praise Jesus in the Maasai language). I spent a very interesting weekend in a Maasai village, but before I get into that, I have some sad news to share. When I returned to work last week after taking time off to spend with my family, I received the news that Hilda had passed away on Thursday, Aug. 18th. I have mentioned Hilda in many of my emails - she was only 21 years old and is the mother to Shiro, a 3 year old HIV positive girl that we brought to a children's home in July because of Hilda's failing health. I have continued to visit Shiro often, and she is adjusting pretty well - she has her good days and bad days, but overall I think she is doing well. She will be having her third birthday this week on the 1st of September.
In July, Pastor Njeru, one of the pastors who is connected to Beacon of Hope, asked me if I would be willing to visit a Maasai village with him and preach in a Maasai church. The Maasai are one of the best known tribes in Africa, mainly because of their determination to continue with their traditional way of life. When we went to Maasai Mara, we saw many Maasai and Maasai villages - while none of us tourists could even step out of the vans because of the lions, leopards, and cheetahs that live there, the Maasai walk around freely and know how live in the middle of all of the wildlife. Many still wear their traditional dress and live in Manyattas, huts made of sticks, mud, and cow dung. They are herders, so they spend their days herding their cows, sheep, and goats. Their main foods are meat and milk. Some men have more than one wife and the men live together with their wives and children in Bomas - a Boma is a plot of land with a manyatta for each wife together with her children, a "pen" for the animals, and a fence surrounding the whole thing made of sticks or bushes to keep the lions and other animals out.
So I was excited for the opportunity to visit the Maasai village and set out early Saturday morning with Pastor Njeru. We got into a bright blue matatu headed to Namelok, and one of my fellow passengers was a goat! (yes there was actually a goat riding in the matatu!) The village was only about 30 minutes from Ongata Rongai where I work. This area is not as wild as Maasai Mara - there are no big cats that live there - only things like antelope, zebra, etc.
We arrived in Namelok and went to the pastor's house first. The pastor of the Maasai church is called Pastor John. He had set up several meetings for Saturday for me to preach. The Maasai speak their tribal language, but most know Swahili as well. Only two that I met spoke any English at all, and it was very, very limited. So I had to speak Swahili the whole weekend, which was good practice anyway. I had prepared two sermons to preach in Swahili, but when I arrived there I learned that I would actually be preaching 5 times! The first meeting was for children - I didn't know that I would be preaching to children so I had to make something up as I went along. This wouldn't have been too hard in English, but in Swahili it was a challenge. Thankfully, there was someone translating what I was saying into Maasai, so I at least had some time to think between sentences. Then there was a meeting for youth, and I was able to use one of the sermons I had prepared.
Then, we walked into the interior parts to visit some people who live farther from the main road - and we really walked! I think we must have been walking for at least 1 and a half hours. We climbed down a hill and first brought food for a family of 5 orphaned children who live together in a small manyatta. The church does a lot to support the children and is currently raising 24,000 shillings (about $300) to build them a house.
Then we continued walking until we reached a Boma where a man lives with his 3 wives. They were having a pre wedding celebration for another woman, kind of like a bridal shower. So they had cooked so much food - we had rice, chappati (kind of like fat tortillas), cabbage, potatoes, meat and tea. The first piece of meat I was given was a huge leg bone from a goat - the bone was about 8 inches long and up to 2 inches thick! Three years ago when I was a strict vegetarian, I never would have imagined myself sitting in a hut in the middle of nowhere chomping on a goat leg and actually enjoying it!
After we ate the pastor addressed the group, then asked me to speak for about 15 minutes and pastor njeru for another 15 minutes, and then they continued with the prewedding celebration. Pastor Njeru had arranged for me to sleep in a manyatta in that Boma, but all of the Maasai kept asking the pastor if he was sure a mzungu wanted to sleep in a manyatta - they had never heard of such a thing!
After the ceremony, I met a young Maasai named Joseph who is 18 years old and has never been to school before. We visited his boma and met his mother and some of his siblings. She said that we couldn't leave without having some tea, so she pulled out a pitcher, went over to one of her cows, milked it, boiled the milk and made tea! (kenyans make tea boiling milk and water together, not just water like we do). We stayed there until 7 and then walked back - even though they were "neighbors" the bomas were far from one another and there are no lights anywhere so it was a dark walk back (none of the bomas have electricity, and the women have to walk about 3-5 km each morning to fetch water from a river!)
At the church, they have a pit latrine which is basically just a hole in the ground. But out where I was staying, they didn't even have that luxury - you just went outside of the boma and picked a bush! Thankfully they assured me they were not any snakes in that area.
Then Phillip (a young man who works at the church, lives with the pastor, and who was left behind to lead us back to the church in the morning), Joseph and I talked with Mathayo, the "mwenyeboma" or man of the boma. Mathayo has 42 animals, three wives and 13 children (6 yrs-22yrs), which means he is pretty wealthy maasai. He even had a scar on his arm from where he was scratched by a lion in the place he used to live. Some of his kids are in school but they are behind - for example his 20 yr old son is in grade 7. We talked for a while, drank milk and ate chappatis, and then it was time for bed. So I went to the manyatta of Mama Jane who lives there with her 6 children.
Manyattas look small from the outside but are actually relatively spacious inside. there are no windows so it is completely dark. there is an area for a fire in the middle of the manyatta which provides heat and light, but because there are no windows it is very smoky inside. When I arrived in the manyatta that I was sleeping in, I saw that there would also be goats sleeping in the manyatta with us! The beds are like low tables made out of sticks and covered with a cow hide. Therefore, they are very hard, and I felt like I was climbing on my kitchen table to take a nap. Needless to say, it was not very comfortable but it was a fun experience anyway to get to sleep in the manyatta with Jane, her children, and her goats.
I woke up early in the morning to the sounds of cows and roosters. We had tea, milk, bread, and chappatis, and I was given a bucket with a little cold water and soap to wash my face. Because it is so hard for them to fetch water, bathing is not a daily activity. I talked with the family, we prayed together, and then we set out on the long walk to get to the church.
We walked for about an hour (this time we had to go up the hill) until we finally reached the church. It is a small congregation of about 100 people but there are not many people that live around there, and some people walk between 10 and 15 km just to get to church! Although they are small in number, they are very committed.
The service lasted three and a half hours! We sang a lot, prayed, and there were three preachers. I preached first, then pastor njeru, and then another pastor. We all spoke in Swahili which was translated into Maasai, so the sermons took twice as long as they usually would. But it was a very enjoyable service. After that, the youth had another meeting and I preached at that, and then we ended the meeting with a "nyama choma" which means we ate roasted goat, ugali (a very stiff porridge made from maize flour and eaten with your hands), and sukumi wiki (kale greens). After the nyama choma, we prayed together and then headed back to Nairobi.
Overall, I really enjoyed myself and the experience of participating in such a different way of life. It was also an opportunity to experience the reality that the body of Christ truly is made up of people from all tribes and nations. The Maasai were all very gracious and friendly, and excited that a mzungu wanted to sleep in their houses, eat their foods, and visit with their people. Part of their traditional dress is a lot of beaded jewelry, so I even received a few handmade necklaces and bracelets as gifts.
Please pray for this church and these people, and especially their challenge of getting water. Building a borehole costs about 8000 dollars, which is many, many times their annual income. Pray that they would continue to grow in faith and in love, and continually learn more about God's grace and His love for them.

The blessing of friends and family

2005-08-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a very busy but very exciting past three weeks for me here in Kenya. I've had the wonderful blessing of spending the past three weeks with friends and family from home, and having the opportunity to share Kenya with them. In the beginning of this month, a group of 23 people from the Chapel Hill Bible Church came to Kenya, including several good friends of mine. It was great to see them! They spent two weeks here, and it was definately a full two weeks! The team invited me to stay in the guesthouse with them and to become a part of the group while they were here. The Bible Church has partnerships with Nairobi Chapel and Beacon of Hope, so they divided their time between the two groups. For the Nairobi Chapel activities, our focus was on prayer. We visited and prayed with some Nairobi Chapel social justice ministries, and visited and prayed with the leaders of the 5 new Nairobi churches that were planted the first weekend of August. We also visited Nairobi Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), the school I will be attending, and I was blessed by the group with prayers for my upcoming two years of study there.
For the Beacon of Hope activities, we did a three day program for about 100 children from the Kware slum community with music, games, crafts, devotions, and teachings. Our teachings were on HIV/AIDS, abstinance, and sexual abuse. Another day there were a group of doctors from a local hospital who put on an eye clinic at Beacon, so the group helped out with the eye clinic - about 150 people were seen! The final day of activities at Beacon of Hope was a sports day with a youth group in Kware that Beacon of Hope partners with. We divided into teams and competed in different games and races, and then finished off the afternoon with a big soccer match. It was a really fun day and a good opportunity to interact with the teenagers and young adults in this youth group.
The group ended their time in Kenya with a trip to the Maasai Mara, one of the largest game parks in Kenya. But, a day before the team left for Maasai Mara, my parents and younger sister Kelly arrived in Kenya! I was very excited to see them after being away from home for 7 months, and I was also excited for them to have the opportunity to come to Kenya, since none of them had ever been to Africa before.
So my family joined the group from the Bible Church, and we all went together on a very bumpy six hour drive to the Maasai Mara - the last 80 km were not even roads at all, and even calling them dirt roads suggests something much more defined than what they were. But it was definately worth it - we saw a lot of animals including lions and elephants, and thousands of wildebeasts as it is now the season for the wildebeast migrations.
Then we returned to Nairobi, the BIble Church team returned home, and I spent another week in Kenya with my family. In Nairobi, we made several visits to the children's home, and had a great time playing with the children there. We also spent a day at Beacon of Hope, so my family was able to meet my coworkers, walk through the Kware slum, and visit with some families in the slum community that we work with. We also spent an afternoon having a Swahili and African culture lesson with my Swahili teacher. Several of my friends also invited my family to their homes, so my family was able to meet a lot of my friends here and enjoy Kenyan hospitality (which means we ate a lot of good Kenyan food!)
We ended their trip with a visit to Watamu, a coastal area of Kenya, and enjoyed three days of relaxing at the gorgeous beach there. I slept a lot during those three days, and it was nice to get a chance to relax after so much activity. We returned to Nairobi for two more days before my family left, and they were able to help me move my things into NEGST.
My parents left late last night, and will be arriving home today. I am so glad I was able to share with them my life in Kenya, and that they were able to experience all of the beatuiful as well as all of the difficult aspects of life here. Kenya is such a country of contrasts - it is a beatiful country with wonderful people and rich culture, but at the same time the society is plagued with heartwrenching poverty, HIV/AIDS, and all of the challenges that come with them. Yet, in my seven months here, I have found so much beauty even in the midst of the pain in the Kware slum community, and have really come to love the people there.
Right now I am writing this from my new home, a small but comfortable dorm room on the campus of NEGST. I took the day off to relax and do some errands today, but I will be returning to Beacon of Hope for the next two weeks to finish up some things and then will begin orientation on the 5th of Sept.

Some prayer requests

2005-07-22T07:26:00.000-07:00

About two weeks ago I moved into a new place! My host family is traveling this
month, so Melanie, one of my friends from church who is also traveling this
month, said I could stay in her room while she is away. She stays with a
Kenyan woman named Wanjiku who is about my age. Wanjiku is a lot of fun, we
have been getting along really well, and I am really enjoying staying there.
In addition, Melanie has a car that she said I could use while I am staying in
her room. After 6 months of an hour matatu ride and then a 1.7 km walk home
each day, having a car has been a nice treat (matutus are 15 person vans used
as public transportation in Kenya).

There have been several cases at work which are making me realize how important
it is to educate women on parenting issues – so many young girls are having
babies, and their mothers and relatives are living in rural areas so there is
no one to tell them how to take care of a child. For example, we visited one
mother who is 20 years old with 3 children – 5, 3, and 4 months. The 5 year
old boy has severe rickets and can barely walk. When we visited the home to
follow up the case, we found out that the mother hits the boy because he goes
to the bathroom on the bed (most likely it is because he is too weak to do
anything else.) The husband also suggested that she not give him much food so
that he won’t go to the bathroom – so she was withholding food from this boy
who is already suffering from malnutrition! Her actions were not done
maliciously, but she was just doing what she thought would solve the problem so
that he wouldn’t go to the bathroom on the bed anymore. Thankfully, we were
able to counsel her, we have been buying extra milk to give to the boy every
day at our day care, and he was taken to a hospital to get treatment. Please
pray for this boy Franco that he would recover from his sickness and gain
strength.

Thank you for all of your prayers for Shiro and Hilda (Shiro is the 3 year old
HIV positive girl that we brought to a children's home, and Hilda is her 21
year old mother who is dying from HIV). We brought Shiro to the children’s
home on a Thurs (the 7th), and then that Saturday (the 9th) I visited to see
how she was doing. She called me “Mzungu wangu” (my white person) and kept
saying that she wants me to take her home. She cried when I told her that she
would be staying there, and then she cried again when I left and she kept
saying that she wanted to come with me. I visited her again on Sunday, and
then both days of the following weekend (last weekend) as well. When I went
last Saturday, Shiro was doing much better. The house moms said she was
adjusting well but she was still frequently asking for her mom. I was there
for a few hours and Shiro was laughing, playing, and talking more than I have
ever seen before. So overall, I think she is adjusting very well. Please
continue to pray for her.

Unfortunately, Hilda isn’t doing as well. Since we brought Shiro to the home,
we have visited her at least twice a week to pray with her, encourage her, and
see how she is doing. Last week, she even agreed to go for a walk and was able
to walk all of the way to Beacon and back again. This was so encouraging since
she hadn’t been out of her compound for about three weeks.

However, yesterday we received news in the morning that Hilda was doing badly
and would need to be taken to the hospital. We went to see her before she went
and she was very weak. Her chest and throat were hurting and she was having
trouble breathing. Her legs were also very painful and she couldn’t even stand
up. It was amazing to see how quickly she had gone downhill, and we were all
very upset to see her like this. Today, we returned to her place and found out
that she had refused to go to the hospital. She is still in pain and is
suffering from dimentia. Please continue pray for Hilda.

I am really looking forward to the upcoming month – in a little over a week,
the group from Chapel Hill Bible Church will be arriving, and then in about two
and a half weeks my parents and sister Kelly will be coming. Please pray for
safe travels and blessed fellowship as I spend time with friends and family
from home.

Some prayer requests

2005-07-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,
>>>
>>> About two weeks ago I moved into a new place! My host family is
>>> traveling this
>>> month, so Melanie, one of my friends from church who is also traveling
>>> this
>>> month, said I could stay in her room while she is away. She stays with a
>>> Kenyan woman named Wanjiku who is about my age. Wanjiku is a lot of fun,
>>> we
>>> have been getting along really well, and I am really enjoying staying
>>> there.
>>> In addition, Melanie has a car that she said I could use while I am
>>> staying in
>>> her room. After 6 months of an hour matatu ride and then a 1.7 km walk
>>> home
>>> each day, having a car has been a nice treat (matutus are 15 person vans
>>> used
>>> as public transportation in Kenya).
>>>
>>> There have been several cases at work which are making me realize how
>>> important
>>> it is to educate women on parenting issues so many young girls are
>>> having
>>> babies, and their mothers and relatives are living in rural areas so
>>> there is
>>> no one to tell them how to take care of a child. For example, we visited
>>> one
>>> mother who is 20 years old with 3 children 5, 3, and 4 months. The 5
>>> year
>>> old boy has severe rickets and can barely walk. When we visited the home
>>> to
>>> follow up the case, we found out that the mother hits the boy because he
>>> goes
>>> to the bathroom on the bed (most likely it is because he is too weak to
>>> do
>>> anything else.) The husband also suggested that she not give him much
>>> food so
>>> that he wont go to the bathroom so she was withholding food from this
>>> boy
>>> who is already suffering from malnutrition! Her actions were not done
>>> maliciously, but she was just doing what she thought would solve the
>>> problem so
>>> that he wouldnt go to the bathroom on the bed anymore. Thankfully, we
>>> were
>>> able to counsel her, we have been buying extra milk to give to the boy
>>> every
>>> day at our day care, and he was taken to a hospital to get treatment.
>>> Please
>>> pray for this boy Franco that he would recover from his sickness and gain
>>> strength.
>>>
>>> Thank you for all of your prayers for Shiro and Hilda (Shiro is the 3
>>> year old
>>> HIV positive girl that we brought to a children's home, and Hilda is her
>>> 21
>>> year old mother who is dying from HIV). We brought Shiro to the
>>> childrens
>>> home on a Thurs (the 7th), and then that Saturday (the 9th) I visited to
>>> see
>>> how she was doing. She called me Mzungu wangu (my white person) and
>>> kept
>>> saying that she wants me to take her home. She cried when I told her
>>> that she
>>> would be staying there, and then she cried again when I left and she kept
>>> saying that she wanted to come with me. I visited her again on Sunday,
>>> and
>>> then both days of the following weekend (last weekend) as well. When I
>>> went
>>> last Saturday, Shiro was doing much better. The house moms said she was
>>> adjusting well but she was still frequently asking for her mom. I was
>>> there
>>> for a few hours and Shiro was laughing, playing, and talking more than I
>>> have ever seen before. So overall, I think she is adjusting very well. Please continue to pray for her.
Unfortunately, Hilda isnt doing as well. Since we brought Shiro to the home, we have visited her at least twice a week to pray with her, encourage her, and see how she is doing. Last week, she even agreed to go for a walk and was able to walk all of the way to Beacon and back again. This was so encouraging since she hadnt been out of her compound for about three weeks.
However, yesterday we received news in the morning that Hilda was doing badly and would need to be taken to the hospital. We went to see her before she went and she was very weak. Her chest and throat were hurting and she was having trouble breathing. Her legs were also very painful and she couldnt even stand up. It was amazing to see how quickly she had gone downhill, and we were all very upset to see her like this. Today, we returned to her place and found out that she had refused to go to the hospital. She is still in pain and is suffering from dimentia. Please continue pray for Hilda.

I am really looking forward to the upcoming month in a little over a week, the group from Chapel Hill Bible Church will be arriving, and then in about two and a half weeks my parents and sister Kelly will be coming. Please pray for safe travels and blessed fellowship as I spend time with friends and family
from home.
Love, Val

Finding a home for Shiro

2005-07-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

The week started on an interesting note when Shiro, a 2 year old HIV positive girl in our day care, was brought to the day care by one of the women with all of her clothes and a note from the mother saying that the mother had left for Tanzania and was leaving the child with us.
Hilda, Shiro's mother, is HIV positive and had been recently hospitalized for about a month with cerebral menigitis. She is from Tanzania but has lived in Kenya for many years illegally.
So, when we found Shiro waiting for us at BOH Monday morning with all of her clothes, we had no idea what to do with her. Hilda's first husband (Shiro's father) has already died from AIDS and Hilda does not have any realtives in Kenya. Hilda's mother died while Hilda was young, and her father has remarried in Tanzania. In Africa, many women will not accept their husband's children from a previous wife, let alone a young grandchild from a previous wife who is HIV positive. And, even if we sent Shiro to them in Tanzania, she would not have access to medical care which is so important since she is HIV positive.
So the social workers and I went to Kware to speak to Hilda's friends to find out what happened. We were shocked when we found Hilda at home in bed! She had planned to go home to Tanzania, but she was not feeling well so she turned back and came home. But, she told us she is no longer able to care for Shiro because she is bedridden so she asked us to find a place for her.
Unfortunately, there are very few children's homes who accept HIV positive children and almost all are full. So Jane and I stopped by Grace Children's Center, the home I visit on the weekends, to see if they have space for Shiro. They had been completely full, but a few weeks ago two of the young children were retested for HIV and found to be negative (false positives are common in infants due to maternal antibodies and many "turn" negative before 18 months). These two children had been moved to the main house, so there were two beds available. One had been taken, and there was one bed left, so they agreed to take her.
We went to Hilda's house on Wed to tell her the news and have her sign paperwork since she wouldn't be able to come with us to take Shiro because she was too weak. As we were filling out the paperwork, we learned more about Hilda's past. She is only 22 years, and her husband died from AIDS two and a half years ago. Then, last year December, she had a 4 month old baby who also died from AIDS. Now, she is in the final stages of AIDS herself, and is "losing" her other daughter. This was definately the hardest home visit I've done since I've been here - I kept thinking about how this girl was younger than me, has already buried a husband and a child, and is now dying and unable to care for her other child. I was fighting back tears the entire time I was there - Shiro was so depressed when her mother was in the hospital for a month and I kept thinking that they may never see one another again. I couldn't imagine what Hilda was going through as she was making preparations for her death at only 21 years of age.
So on Thursday, the social workers went to pick up Shiro. They prayed with Hilda, she said good bye, and then they brought Shiro to BOH, where we picked her up to take her to GCC.
Shiro received a warm welcome at the home, where they greeted her with a bright orange and pink teddy bear. We finished the paper work and Shiro was shown around her new home. The house moms there are great with the kids and I know Shiro will receive excellent care. There is a school right on the compound and the children receive excellent medical care, good nutrition, and access to ARVs. She seemed a little scared when we were leaving but she didn't cry.
I also took some pictures of the home, and we visited Hilda in the afternoon to show her the pictures. We had two good pictures of Shiro smiling and Hilda laughed when she saw the pictures because she said she hadn't seen Shiro smile in about two months since she had been hospitalized. She asked us if this was really her daughter. She was very impressed with the pictures, but she became emotional as we were leaving. We prayed with her, brought her some food, and then left.
Please pray for both Shiro and Hilda as they make this difficult adjustment. Please pray that Shiro will fit in well and adjust easily to her new home, and that she will begin smiling and laughing again. Please also pray for Hilda as she deals with the loss of her daughter. Pray for peace in her soul over her decision, and pray for increased health and support as she is in the final stages of AIDS.

June update

2005-06-26T23:58:00.000-07:00

Things at Beacon have been busy but pretty status quo since the last time I wrote. The months of June, July, and August are busy for us at Beacon because we have many visitors coming from the US and Europe. Most of these visitors just come by for a day or two to see what BOH is and what we are doing, but in the past few weeks we've have visitors two or three days of the week. We also have 2 interns working with us from a local Bible school. One of them, Yotur, worked with the sponsorship program at Christian Children's Fund in his home village in Kenya for 3 years. This week, I'll be working with him to go through all of the forms that I've come up with for the sponsorship program to see how they can be improved. He has a lot of great ideas and experience so I am excited to work with him to improve our program.
The weather has gotten quite cold - June and July are the coldest months here. Even though the temperatures don't get too low compared to winter in the US, there is no heating in the buildings so sometimes it can even be colder inside than outside. Because of the change in the temperatures, many people have been getting sick, including me. I've had a cold all week - sore throat, congestion, and a bad cough. I stayed home from work one day this past week to rest and I'll be staying home and resting all weekend, so I hope to be feeling better by Monday.
There are many things coming up in the next two months - next weekend we have an overnight staff retreat, and then the week after that I'll be moving. My host family will be traveling to Europe for a month and I don't want to stay in their house by myself for transportation and security reasons. So I'll be moving in with a Kenyan woman who is around my age named Wanjiku - her roommate Melanie is an American who is spending June and July in the US so I'll be staying in Melanie's room while she is away.
Then, in the beginning of August there is a group of 24 from my home church, Chapel Hill Bible Church, who will be traveling to Nairobi to work with BOH and Nairobi Chapel for about 2 weeks. I have several good friends who are a part of that team so I am very excited for their arrival. After that, my parents and my younger sister will be coming to Kenya for 2 weeks, so of course I am VERY excited for them to come as well. While my family is here, I'll be able to move my things into school housing, and then I start orientation the first week of September.
So July will really be my last month of working at BOH. It's hard to believe I've been here for almost six months already. Although I am excited to go to school, I am disappointed that my time at Beacon is almost over.
Please pray:
- that I will recover quickly and completely, and that I will have good health and strength for the busy upcoming months.
- For one of our BOH families - I think I have mentioned them before. There are four orphans who are in our sponsorship program. In April, their aunt, Elizabeth, who is their guardian, was in the hospital for several weeks and found out she is HIV positive, which was really hard for her and for all four children who have already lost both parents to AIDS. Because she was sick and couldn't work, she wasn't able to pay rent and was forced out of her house. She was really beginning to lose hope, so we are helping her get back on her feet - helping her with rent and giving her some work to do with the tailoring department at BOH since she has been trained as a tailor. The three younger orphans are in school, but the oldest orphan Isaac has finished with high school but didn't score well enough to qualify for college. We have a sponsor for him and are trying to get him into a very good vocational training program called Don Boscos but the deadline had passed. The program is specifically for needy children, is a boarding school, and very affordable. So Jane and I visited them and met the director and begged him to consider this case. He agreed to give him an interview on the 14th July - but there are still about 800 boys who applied and only 80 or 90 spots for the boys so we are praying that he will be accepted.

A busy month

2005-06-06T05:44:00.000-07:00

It has been about a month since I have posted an update - this past month has really flown by! May was a very busy but a very good month. Thanks to the efforts of the Chapel Hill Bible Church, all of the children in our sponsorship program now have sponsors! This has been very exciting because there have been several people who have inquired about child sponsorship, but our funds were already so stretched that there was no way we could consider other children until we found enough sponsors to cover the ones we already have in schools. Now that we have sponsors for all of them, I have spent a lot of time these past few weeks working with the social workers to follow up, collect case histories, and interview children and families who will potentially qualify for our sponsorship program.
Last week there was a visiting team of 6 people from Blackhawk Church in Madison, Wisconsin. They arrived in Kenya last Saturday night and left early yesterday to spend two days in Masaai Mara, a safari park, before they head back to the US on Tuesday. They were coming to work with Beacon and explore the possibility of their church forming a partnership with BOH. I was in charge of a lot of the logistical arrangements for the team and so I ended up spending a lot of time with them while they were here. On Monday, Thursday, and Friday, they spent the days at Beacon interacting with the women and staff, going on home visits, and helping us prepare for a medical camp. The visitors came to Jane's house for the afternoon on Wednesday because it was a public holiday so Beacon was closed.
On Tuesday, I went with the team to spend the day in Kibera. Kibera is the largest slum in Kenya and I think even the largest slum in Africa (or it might be the second largest or something.) But there are more than a million people that live in this community. There is a medical clinic there called Tumaini Clinic that was started by and is run by a woman from Nairobi Chapel. They have a doctor, lab, preschool, and a feeding program for children suffering from malnutrition and an education program for their mothers. After taking a tour, we split into groups and went to the different areas. I went with Rachel, one of the team members, to the nutrition program. The children and their mothers come from 9-12 every day, they are fed, and educated about nutrition, childcare, etc. When we walked in, Ann, the woman who leads the program, sat down and said to us, "ok, you can teach the women." Rachel and I just looked at one another because we certainly weren't expecting to teach anything. So Ann gave us a list of about 11 topics and one of them was Bible so I attempted to explain a Bible passage in Swahili. What I said was not very profound because of my limited vocabulary but I think the women appreciated the effort anyway. Then we prayed for the women and their families individually. After that we spent some time with the kids in the preschool.
After lunch, we did home visits in Kibera. Ann and two other women from Tumaini took us to seven different homes to bring food assistance and to pray with the women. But we only had about 1 1/2 hours to do seven home visits - we were really booking it through Kibera! It is the rainy season so we had to avoid mud and puddles of sewage because there is no sewage system in the slum. There are also lots of rocks and hills, so we were jumping from one rock to another and climbing up and down the hills. In addition, the houses were so close to one another that you can't even stretch your arms all the way out to the sides without hitting the houses. So to get to some houses we had to travel through a maze of very narrow alleys. It was an interesting journey!
Then on Saturday Beacon of Hope organized and hosted a big medical camp. There were about 7 dentists and dental students, 5 nurses and medical students, 4 VCT counselors (voluntary testing and counseling for HIV), and many other volunteers. My job was to help with the cooking for about 50 volunteers and washing the dishes as well. The cooking area is outside and we were serving tea and then lunch upstairs, so I spent a lot of the day running up and down stairs bringing up clean dishes and taking down dirty ones, refilling tea, bringing the food up and down, etc. I had a really good time and the camp was a big success - overall, we saw 506 people!
Personally, things have improved a lot over the past month. I had a really good time with the visiting team, although hanging out with Americans made me a little homesick and definately made me miss all of you!
For the time being, I have decided to continue going to Karen Community Church instead of going to Nairobi Chapel. Although I really like Nairobi Chapel, the distance made it really hard for me to form relationships there. KCC, on the other hand, is walking distance and they have a young adults group about about 20 that meets after the service. So I have really been enjoying that, I've met so many people, and I am finally beginning to develop a social life.
To end on a light note, when I went to KCC yesterday I got locked in the bathroom! I was in a stall and the lock was broken. Basically, I was still able to lock the door but I didn't realize that because it was broken it would be impossible for me to unlock it! There was only a few inches of space under the door so there was no way I could crawl under the door. After trying in vain for several minutes to open the lock, I called for help to another woman who was in the bathroom and she tried to find something that I use to unlock the door, but it didn't work. So finally, I stood on the toilet, jumped, and hoisted myself up to climb over top of the stall! At this point there were three women on the other side trying to help me so two of them took my hands and helped me jump down. I was quite embarrassed but relieved that I was finally out!

A refreshing few weeks

2005-05-06T06:59:00.000-07:00

I am glad to report that the past two weeks have been much more relaxed and much less intense than the previous month. Last Friday and Saturday, we had a workshop on abstinence and sexuality for about one hundred children from the slum ranging in age from 7 to 19. We are hoping to have a similar workshop every school holiday for the children. It is really important for the children to have correct information about sex, especially for young girls who are so vulnerable. Many times, men will offer to give young girls money, food, or clothing in exchange for sex. There is also so much sexual abuse of young girls - for example, one woman in our program who is now 26 and HIV positive had her first baby at the age of TWELVE when she was raped by a schoolteacher. Sex is a taboo subject in Kenya so many children do not not know much about sex and even about what happens to their bodies during adolescense - for example, one child told us that sex came to Kenya from animals and foreigners!
My Swahili classes have been going well and last week I had a good opportunity to use what I have been learning. Every morning, we have a devotion at Beacon of Hope before work. Every Tuesday, a different staff member leads the devotion. Last Tuesday was my turn and since my coworkers know that I am learning Swahili, they told me that I was not allowed to preach in English! So I preached in Swahili - I think all of the women were very surprised when I started talking. My sermon was very short though because of my limited Swahili but I think I was able to understood for the most part.
In a nutshell, I spoke about what it means to love God and how we can love God by loving other people. I have learned so much about loving and serving others by being at Beacon of Hope because the women in our program live this out everyday. I have seen so many examples of women helping their friends and neighbors who are sick or in need. Even though these women are often struggling financially themselves, they are extremely generous when someone is going through a hard situation. So I spoke about all of the examples I have seen since I've arrived here, thanked the women for teaching me so much about love, and encouraged them that these things they were doing for one another are not small things, but in the eyes of God are so important because they are acts of love, and Jesus told us that as Christians, the most important thing for us to do is to love God and love one another.
On Thursday of last week I spent the morning at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology to hand in my paperwork so that I can officially enter their Masters program in September. I will be getting a Masters of Arts degree in missions studies which will take two years to complete. After spending the morning there, talking with students, and attending the Chapel service, I am very excited to begin school in just a few months. I am hoping that I will still be able to be involved in some way at Beacon while I am in school, although I will definately miss working in the community every day.
For the past few weeks I've been attending Karen Community Church to plan and organize the outreach that they did at Beacon of Hope a few weeks ago. This past Sunday, they had a youth fun day which they invited me to attend. (In this church, youth is not just high school students but is basically anyone under the age of 30.) This fun day was like a crazy olympics - we were divided into teams and competed in different silly games - for example, one was an eating contest where two teams raced each other - there were six on a team - the first would eat something like a loaf of bread and a coke, and when they were finished the next would go, until all six had finished. I was the last one on my team to go - myself and a teammate were both blindfolded and we had to spoon feed one another porridge! I ended up with porridge all over my face and shirt but at least my team won. We also did things like tug of war, but we had to be barefoot on a long tarp that was covered with soapy water! So it was very slippery which makes tug of war a lot more difficult! There were many other games as well and a big lunch. I had a really good time - I think it was really beneficial for me to have an opportunity to just relax, laugh, and play silly games.
Then Monday was a public holiday so I had the day off, which game me even more of a chance to relax. So thankfully, I've been able to rest a lot and have fun in the past two weeks which I think I really needed because everything was so intense for a while.

More news from Nairobi

2005-04-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

Life continues to be quite hectic here in Kenya. Last week, Florence (a BOH social worker) and I went to a two day conference on caring for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs). The conference was sponsored by a local AIDS ministry and was for people in our region that are involved in organizations that address that needs of OVCs. It was very encouraging to meet so many Kenyans (I was the only mzungu) who are actively engaged in responding to the needs of OVCs and hearing about the different programs and ideas that the other organizations are using. It was a really good time of networking and learning more about the challenges that AIDS is creating for children.
I returned to Beacon after to the conference to sad news - Winfred, the woman I had mentioned in my last email who I visited with the support group members, had passed away just four days after our visit. Although I was sorry to hear that she had died, I was so grateful that we had been able to visit her as a sign of our love and support before she passed away.
Early the next week, I went on a home visit with one of the women in our program to Juliana's house, a woman that I have visited many times before. We had not visited her in a while because she had TB and was refusing to take the medicine. However, when we arrived at her house, we found that she had died the Friday before. I was very saddened by this news and disappointed that I hadn't been able to see her again before she passed away.
On a lighter note, we had a really fun week this past week with the sponsorship kids, There is church here called Karen Community Church that is very close to where I stay. Jane knows many people in this church and the youth pastor approached her about forming a partnership with BOH. So she intorduced him to me and we had been working together to put together an outreach opportunity. I visited their church a few times to encourage the youth (high school, college, and young adult) to volunteer to spend time helping out with our holiday program for the sponsored children.
Karen Community Church is a wealthy church - oftentimes I feel like there are two worlds in Nairobi. One is life in the slums which I encounter every day at Beacon. But there are also many, many Kenyans who are wealthy, live in nice houses, drive nice cars, have many servants, go to country clubs, and send their kids to exclusive private schools. A lot of the kids in this church have been raised in environments like this and so have been very sheltered. For many of them, this was the first time they had been to a slum area. So they led devotionals, tutoring, arts, and music for the kids but we also took them on home visits to visit houses in the slums and pray with people who have been affected by AIDS. I think it was a great experience for the youth that came and they are interested in making this a regular thing so that each holiday they will send some of their youth to interact with the kids. We are also hoping some mentorship relationships will form through these interactions.
Personally, this past month has been the most challenging for me since I've arrived in Kenya. Emotionally, work has been the most intense and I've still been dealing with the inevitable challenges of adjusting to life in another country and another culture (and of course missing all of you back home!).
But I think my biggest struggle has been relationships - Although my relationships at work are very good and I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and interactions with my coworkers, I know very few people my age outside of Beacon and live far from the few that I do know (and I also live far from my coworkers). Therefore, the emotional challenges are that much harder since I don't have many opportunities to just relax and hang out with friends. There are a few options I am considering right now to address this issue, so please pray that God will give me wisdom as I make these decisions in the upcoming weeks.

A very challenging week

2005-04-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

This past week has been by far the busiest and most emotionally challenging week I have had since I arrived. It started on Monday when a 14 year old named Tony came into the office. He is an orphan and both parents died from AIDS. He is the grandson of the one of the women we support and the nephew of one of the boys we sponsor in secondary school. He has been living on the streets for several months now, and in January there was a rehabilitation center that agreed to take him, and he was eager to go. However, they cancelled the pick up date saying that they would reschedule. They never did, so after two month we went to visit them. The director was out but talked to Jane the next day, and said they would no longer take him unless we paid for his upkeep, which we could not afford to do. So he came into the center on Monday to talk to us – he was very dirty and appeared to be high. He admitted that he uses drugs often (sniffing glue) and was staying in a place notorious for the drug activity. He had he had been getting some work to pay for the drugs but more likely he has been stealing. We spoke with him and he agreed to move back in with his grandmother and come back to Beacon the next day, but he never returned home and has not come back to the center.

Then, on Monday, I also found out that the aunt who is caring for four orphans we are supporting had been in the hospital the week before. These four orphans (ages 12, 14, 16, and 18) had lost their father to AIDS several years ago and had just lost their mother last year. They have an aunt who agreed to be their guardian until they become adults, and we found sponsors who are paying school fees for the three younger ones in a boarding school. Now that they are on school holiday, they are staying with their aunt in a TINY two room house – a bed literally takes up one entire room and the other room there are two couches and a coffee table with almost no room between the couches and table because the room is so small. They have a mattress they lay across the table and couches in order to have enough room for everyone to sleep. There is also another 20 year old relative staying with them – I honestly don’t know how 6 people can sleep in that house.

But the aunt had been very sick last week and in the hospital found out that she too is HIV positive. The kids were crying the whole night when they found out and the aunt is not taking the news well at all. Then, on Tuesday, the kids were late to Beacon because they had to take the aunt back to the hospital, she was admitted, and is still there now. We think she might have meningitis which is not a good sign at all. She spent all the money she had on hospital bills and could not pay the rent or buy food to feed the six people in her house. We are helping her where we can but it is a very difficult situation, especially for the orphans.

Then, on Wednesday, I went with one of the women from the weaving class in Beacon to visit her neighbor who is in the support group at Beacon. She is HIV positive, has not been feeling well, and has a very abusive husband. When we arrived, we found out that her husband had locked her and two of her daughters, ages 18 and 20 out of the house the night before. It is the rainy season so it was very cold and there were very heavy rains. The two girls got a ride with somebody at 11 pm to find a place to sleep which is very dangerous where they live because the girls were very vulnerable for rape. The wife slept under covering by her home but left early in the morning before the husband woke and found her there. She has tried to register with two different agencies for domestic abuse but has not made progress. Her husband has threatened to pay somebody to kill one of the children if she leaves. She and her children are all very afraid but don’t know what to do. The husband works but spends all his money on alcohol and they had very little food in the house (there are 5 children total).

Then, on Thursday, the social worker and I had arranged for our van to take the members of the HIV support group to visit a women who had been part of the group but was very sick. In order to get to Beacon, she had to walk 5 km each way so she hadn’t come in 7 weeks. So we all piled into the van and set off for her house. When we arrived, we were told that she was not there because she had been taken to the hospital. So we went to the hospital to see her there. I was absolutely speechless when I saw her – seven weeks ago she had been only 88 pounds and now she was much, much thinner. I have never seen a person so thin before. She could not walk anymore, and couldn’t speak above a whisper, and even that took a lot of effort. But she was able to recognize the members of the support group, and was so grateful that we had come to visit her.

But I did receive one piece of good news on Thursday – there was a 4 ½ year old boy who is in our day care who had been admitted to the hospital three weeks ago for what appeared to be polio. His mother is only 20 years old and has two other small children and his father is HIV positive. They boy was discharged after a week but the parents could not afford to pay his hospital bill so they kept the boy at the hospital for three weeks. There are no extra beds for parents to sleep in (in fact there are three or four children in one bed), the hospital is far from where they stay, and finding money for bus fare was a challenge so this young boy stayed in the hospital for three weeks by himself most of the time because of a mere $200 dollar hospital bill that they couldn’t pay, which is several months wages for them. However, we found out on Thursday that he was finally discharged after working out a payment plan of $4.50 each month which is all they can afford. And, they realized it was not polio but something that can be cured with medication. Our nurse was able to provide medication for him and we are very grateful he is finally at home and that he will recover.

So every day this week there was a new crisis. In addition, we started the holiday program for the kids this week so all of the kids in the sponsorship program come to the center from 9-3:30 every day and I have been very involved with that as well, although I wasn’t able to spend very much time with the kids this week because of all of these other issues. In my work at Beacon, I’ve come across so many people who are in need and have constantly been challenged by the verses, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:17-18). I am also learning the importance of prayer and bringing all of these needs and burdens before the Lord so that I do not get hard hearted or burned out. The faith of many of the women and staff at Beacon is so strong that it has been a inspiration and encouragement to me. Please pray for all of the situations that I’ve mentioned above, and pray that I’ll have better things to report in my next update.

Keeping busy at Beacon...

2005-03-20T01:57:00.000-08:00

I hope you all are doing well this Holy Week, as we prepare to celebrate the greatest miracle of all time – the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I have been doing well and have been keeping busy at Beacon working on the child sponsorship program and setting up a file system for all the families we work with. I’ve also been doing a lot of home visits in the slum, visiting and praying with people in Kware.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had more opportunities to connect with the women in the programs at Beacon. One of the women, Paris, has been undergoing treatment for TB. Her daughter, Cassandra, is one of the kids we sponsor at a local Christian day school. Paris also has two other sons, ages 6 and 2. She hadn’t been feeling well and didn’t show up at Beacon so I went with two of the women to visit her and make sure she was ok. We didn’t find her in her house or in the TB clinic that she had been visiting for treatment every day. So we started asking people if they had seen her. We returned to the clinic and found out she had been admitted because we was too weak to walk home. She had been in the clinic all day connected to an IV. We brought her lunch and then myself on one side and one of the other women on the other side practically carried her through the slum and back to her house (she was at the very end of her treatment so the TB wasn’t contagious).

Thankfully, Paris has been feeling much better and has completed her TB treatment. (This is the same woman who had been kicked out of her house and the tailoring class spent a day washing her clothes and dishes.) Please pray for Paris and especially for Cassandra. Cassandra is an extremely bright girl but is very vulnerable right now because of her family situation.

All of the schools are closing for a one month holiday at the end of this week. So starting the Tuesday after Easter, we’ll have all of the sponsored children coming to BOH every day for a holiday program (at least 20 kids). I’ll be working with one other person to plan and run the program. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to get to know the children more and it will also be a good opportunity to practice my Swahili!

I’ve started taking a lay counseling class at Nairobi Chapel. It can be intense but I’ve been enjoying it and I think it will be very beneficial for the work I am doing at Beacon. I am also hoping to start taking a weekly child counseling class offered at a local hospital here in Nairobi.

I’ve attached a picture of some of the children from Grace Children’s Center. I visited Grace Children’s Center in 2002 when I came to Kenya for the first time, and I fell in love with the kids there. There are about 52 kids ranging in age from 8 months to 14 years – 35 are HIV negative and 17 are HIV positive. This home is only about 10 km from where I stay so I have been going there every weekend to spend time with the kids – we play soccer, read books, run around outside, and some of the older girls have even taught me some dances they made up to Mary Mary and Kirk Franklin songs. My time with these kids is one of the things I look forward to most during the week. The girls in the picture are (from left to right) Wairimu, 8, Hellen, 8, and Sharon, 6.

Going to the hospital...

2005-03-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

I had my first hospital experience here in Nairobi (and hopefully my last!) Two weeks ago I was talking to my parents on my cell phone in the evening outside of the Wathome’s house. They have two big German Shepherds who they keep fenced up during the day and let out at night for protection. I had been talking for about 45 minutes and the dogs had ignored me. But then, after I hung up, I was sitting on the driveway and one of the dogs came up and started sniffing me and then started barking. I stood up and as I did, the other dog came running over and both started barking and growling. Then they started biting my legs, so I turned and ran, screaming for the gardener to come and help me! They chased me for a few steps and then lost interest.
But they broke the skin on two places on my leg – one place was not bad but the other was pretty deep. Of course, this was the night that Ken and Jane went out of town so I was at their house with the kids by myself. I finally got through to Ken after two hours. He called his sister who lives in Nairobi and she picked me and the kids up at 10:30 pm and took me to Nairobi hospital, where they cleaned the wounds, gave me a tetanus shot, and gave me antibiotics to prevent infection. I finally left the hospital shortly after midnight.
My leg has been healing fine – I still have some bruises on both legs still but there has been no sign of infection. The dogs have been up to date on their rabies vaccines, so I don’t have to worry about that. And thankfully, the Wathomes have decided to get rid of the dogs since they are so vicious. Because they are kept fenced all day, they are never around people and they actually bit another person a few years ago.
Things at Beacon have been busy as usual. Last week, we had a visitor who runs a large community based orphan program in Kisumu. He visited the center and told us about all of the administrative systems that he uses to run his ministry. So for the past two weeks I’ve been working to type up forms on excel and compile files for every family that we are working with, which is over 200 families. I’ve also been continuing to work on the child sponsorship and doing home visits to people in the slum.
It’s been amazing for me to see how Beacon is not just providing a way to earn an income, but a genuine sense of community among the members. We have one lady, Paris, who is in our tailoring program and had been kicked out of her home by her landlady, who came in the middle of the day and completely removed her doors and windows to force her out. She has three small children, and the oldest, Cassandra, is one of the girls in our sponsorship program. For several days Paris didn’t know where her family would sleep. Although she has finally found a place, she has not been doing well. She has very little food and has not been able to afford water for washing for a month now! So, this week, the other eight women in the tailoring class spent several hours at her house washing all of her clothes and dishes for her. They even cleaned the baby’s soiled cloth diapers that had not been washed in one month! Please keep this family in your prayers and especially Cassandra, who is a very bright and well behaved grade 3 student.
Yesterday one of the women who is involved with Beacon had a baby! SHe is only twenty and already has two children - a 3 year old and an 18 month old. Her husband is HIV positive, and although she tested negative the HIV may have just not shown up on the test yet. So we wanted her to give birth in the medical clinic so she could get the drugs that greatly reduce mother to child transmission of HIV. We went to visit her yesterday and brought her some lunch (the hospitals only provide bread and tea and your relatives are supposed to bring you food) and so I got to hold the 16 hour old baby girl! She was SOO cute!
Last weekend, I went with the Wathomes to Machakos, a rural area about 1 ½ hours from Nairobi. Ken’s mother lives there so we went to visit for the day. On the way back to Nairobi, we stopped at Ken’s aunt’s house in Machakos as well because one of his cousins had just passed away from AIDS. Although AIDS is a huge problem in Nairobi, there are so many resources here and a good transportation system so people can access them. In the rural areas there, there are very few resources and finding transportation to access the resources that are available is much more difficult.
This week I have started Swahili classes here. I took classes for several months in the US but once I came here I realized how much I still don’t know! Although many people speak English in Nairobi, many of the women and children in the slum and the younger children at the children’s home I visit have little or no knowledge of English. I found a language school that is right on the way to the Beacon center where I will take four hours of lesson with a tutor each week, so I am determined to improve my Swahili skills.
Please continue to pray for Beacon and especially the orphans that we are supporting. There are so many children here who cannot afford secondary school. Please pray that God will give me wisdom since there have been a few women looking for support for their relatives who have been deceitful and have tried to take advantage of us. Please also pray that God will continue to give me strength, energy, and good health as I work with Beacon. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and encouraging emails.

Adventures in Nakuru

2005-02-11T00:52:00.000-08:00

I have had a busy week! I have been working hard with Florence, the social worker at BOH, to get these four orphans ready to go to boarding school in Nakuru. Three of them are siblings - Carol, Keziah, and Bernard. Carol is in grade 9, Keziah grade 7, and Bernard grade 6. All three kids are repeating their grade from last year because their mother was so sick throughout the year that they all had to miss a lot of school to care for her.
The other girl that we brought is named Maureen. I mentioned her in my first email. Both parents died from AIDS, her brother died from AIDS, and she has been living with HIV since birth (she's now 15). Maureen absolutely amazes me - she is so determined and strong, and was incredibly excited when we told her that we would be taking her to boarding school.
It's a lot of work to get kids to school here - I had no idea! I went to a public high school so all I had to do was buy a few school supplies and then show up at the bus stop on the first day of school. But here, all of the kids take exams at the end of 8th grade like SATs. Many high schools have a minimum score so not all kids who finish primary school can get into secondary schools. Then, once the kids get into a high school, they have a long list of things to buy. Many of these kids have almost nothing to bring with them. We have to buy uniforms, bedding, towels, personal supplies (soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, etc), school supplies, a lockable box, and several other items. And since BOH is a nonprofit, we had a very small budget for these things. So we went to the markets! This is where a lot of second hand things are sold from small stands contructed from tin and wood. There are no set prices so we had to bargain for everything. Thankfully, Florence is good at bargaining so she was able to get good prices. So we spent all day Tuesday at markets in Nairobi, and then all day Wednesday at markets in Ongata Rongai and at the center helping the kids pack their boxes.
Thursday morning we headed to Nakuru! It was myself, Florence, Sylvester (the driver), the four kids, and then the two aunts of the four kids we were bringing plus two other relatives of John and Julius', the two boys we brought to Nakuru last week. So there were 11 of us plus four big bixes - the van was full!
Nakuru is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Ongata Rongai and it is a beautiful drive. At one point we were on a mountain road overlooking the great rift valley. On the way back, we were driving on this road just as the sun was beginning to set and it was absolutely breathtaking. We also saw babboons, many zebras, and warthogs along the way.
When we were at about the halfway point on the way to Nakuru, we were stopped at a police check. They claimed that we had been going 94 km per hour and wanted us to pay 4000 shillings and then appear in court. However, the van has a speed governor - this is a safety regulation on a lot of vehicles in Kenya that will cut off the fuel when the car goes above 80 km per hour. So it is impossible to go above 80 in the van. But the police insisted that we had been going 94 and were clearly just looking for a bribe. They kept us there for one hour before Florence and Sylvester finally convinced them to let us go!
The first stop was Shiners boys high school, where Florence had taken the two boys last week. We had to drop off some additional paperwork there. Nakuru can be very windy and very dusty so occasionally a bug gust of wind will come and all of the dust will get caught up in the wind so it looks kind of like a miniature tornado. Well we had been at Shiners for about 10 minutes when we heard a loud noise and saw a huge piece of tin go flying through the air - a huge gust had blown a part of the roof right off of one of the dormitories!
After we left there we headed into Nakuru for lunch and then to Shiners girl high school to drop off Carol and Maureen. We went into the secretary's office and he told us that he was sorry, but there was absolutely no room left in the boarding facilities and there was no chance that our girls could go there this term. He said we had come too late and they would have had space if we had come earlier in the week. After about 30 minutes of discussions with different staff people, they finally agreed to take the girls. The secretaries were actually very friendly and once they understood the girls' situation they were really helpful in talking to the headmaster on our behalf.
So we were at Shiners girls for a lot longer than we had planned - we wanted to be on the roads by 4 but didn't even leave there until 4:15. We made a quick stop at Roots Academy to drop off Bernard and Keziah, but we found out that they had a very specific list of things that the kids had to buy and we were missing about half of what they needed! By this point, it was getting close to 5. It gets dark at 7 and it is really not safe to be driving on the rural roads after dark. So we had no time to go into Nakuru to do shopping with them. Thankfully, the staff at Roots was very welcoming and accomodating. They offered to personally take the kids shopping for what they need and then we'll just wire the money into their bank account.
So we finally left and got back on the road at 5:30. We were all exhausted. Once we got back into Nairobi, Sylvester took everyone back to Ongata Rongai and then dropped me at the Wathomes at 8:30. It was a very long and interesting day, but I am so excited that all of the kids are finally at school!

Searching for schools

2005-02-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

I have great news - we have been able to place all 6 children in schools that I mentioned in my last email! We are sending them all to great boarding schools in Nakuru, a town about 2 hours from Nairobi. We had two boys, both age 17, that Florence, our social worker, drove to Nakuru on Wednesday. They will both be in 9th grade at Shiners Boys Academy. One of them, Julius, is an orphan who has been helping out at Beacon for the past several months. He is very hard working and we know he will do well. The other, John, is the youngest in a family of 7. He is the only one out of all 7 children who has been able to go to school. His mother is still alive but is now caring for 4 grandchildren - as one of her daughters died from HIV and another has AIDS related dimentia and is unable to care for her 3 month old son, who is also HIV positive. Both boys were so incredibly excited to be going to school. When they arrived at Shiners, John was in shock - he has lived in the slum his entire life and could not beleive he actually has the opportunity to attend such a great school. The school has good facilities, a healthy diet, and a lot of sports, clubs, and activities. In fact, Florence was so impressed with the school she also got information about Shiners Girls Academy and Roots Academy, a primary boarding school affiliated with Shiners.
So I made several phone calls yesterday and these two schools agreed to take the other four children we are trying to place. So we will have two girls in 9th grade at Shiners Girls Academy, and a 7th and 8th grader at Roots Academy. We are planning to bring the other four to Nakuru next week.
However, when we sat down to calculate how much we would need for the first term school fees, registration, uniforms, bedding and personal supplies, school supplies, and transportation, we realized it would be about $1000 to take the 4 of them to school. I had recently received a very generous and unexpected donation that covered about half of that, but we still needed several hundred dollars. As we were talking, Jane called one of her friends who had said her organization would be giving a donation to Beacon. The woman said that the check had actually arrived just that day, so we picked it up yesterday and now have more than enough to get these kids started at school!
So it's been a very encouraging week. On a lighter note, while I was waiting for a bus in Ongata Rongai this week, I took a step back as the bus was approaching and fell into a ditch up to my waist! Fortunately, I landed on my feet. Unfortunately, the bus was filled with schoolchildren who thought it was pretty amusing to see a mzungu fall in a ditch.
Otherwise, I am doing really well. The Wathomes have been very hospitable and I am really enjoying my work with Beacon of Hope. The weather here is wonderful and the people I've met have been so friendly.

Week 3 in Kenya

2005-01-26T05:14:00.000-08:00

I am in the middle of my third week at Beacon and I have been keeping busy! I spent a lot of time last week visiting several schools in the area. We have six orphans right now that we need to get placed into schools by the beginning of February. I also went to a private Christian primary school in the middle of the slum where BOH is sponsoring several children. I interviewed them in Swahili to practice my limited Swahili skills and get information about them for the sponsorship program. We visited some more school today but it rained last night and our van got stuck in the mud! We were stuck there for 20 minutes until three of us were finally able to push the van out of the mud.
On Tuesday of last week Jane and I went to Grace Children’s Center (GCC), which is the children’s home I went to when I came to Kenya for the first time in 2002. The home is run by David and Jennifer Hatley. They have 17 HIV positive kids, 35 HIV negative kids, a preschool, primary school, and child sponsorship program. So Jane and I talked to them for several hours about the programs they have and some practical ideas for implementing programs for orphaned and vulnerable children.
On Saturday, I wanted to go back to GCC to play with the children there but both Jane and Ken were out. I could have driven the BOH van, but considering it is a stick shift and about 2x bigger than anything I have driven before, I decided to set out on foot. (although I did drive the van today and I actually did quite well thanks to Jana and all of the stick shift lessons she gave me!) GCC is about 10 km away from where I stay, so I walked part of the way and took matatus the other part (matatus are vans used for public transportation in Kenya.) It took me one hour to get just 10 km! But it was worth it – I had a great time running around with the kids at GCC.
On Sunday, I was invited to a goat barbecue after church. Will, one of the American interns at Nairobi Chapel, had gone with his roommate Mark to select the (live) goat on Saturday. It was slaughtered and skinned on Saturday and they grilled it on Sunday. There were about 30 young people from the church there and when I walked into their back yard the first thing I saw on the grill was a black, charred goat head and mounds of squiggly intestines! I am not much of meat eater – I used to be a vegetarian – but the goat meat was actually pretty good, although I wasn’t brave enough to try any organs or intestines. I am sure that I will have other opportunities for that!
I had a frustrating day yesterday – I was quite overwhelmed with the magnitude of the orphan crisis here. Right before I left work on Monday a lady named Elizabeth came in. Her sister in law was in the BOH support group and died last year, leaving four orphans. These kids were staying with their grandmother in the country but the schools are not good there. So Elizabeth wanted to bring the kids here to Ongata Rangai but she cannot pay their school fees and the children do not have a place to stay. So I have been assigned to find schools and a place to stay for these children.
There is also a small baby in the slum whose mother is mentally handicapped because of HIV. The grandmother is caring for the 4 month old, but the baby is also HIV positive and was hospitalized for a short time last week. The grandmother had a mild stroke a while ago and didn’t think she could care for the baby anymore. So we have been trying to find a place for this baby but all of the children’s homes are full. I am also trying to find a home for a 13 year old orphaned girl who ran from her guardians when she found out they were planning to sell her into prostitution. We finally found a children’s home for her and also an 11 year old boy who has been orphaned and is beginning to hang with a bad crowd on the streets. So this home was supposed to pick up the children yesterday but something came up and now they don’t know when they’ll be able to get these two kids.
Yesterday we also stopped at a children’s home for HIV positive children. We asked if they could take this baby but they said they were full. There have been a few young children involved with BOH who have died in the past couple months so Jane begged this woman to consider taking the boy. The woman said she would consider it but when we told the grandmother this she said she had changed her mind! This home would even allow the grandmother to have the baby back after a few months when the baby has become strong but the grandmother refused.
Jane and I are planning to visit a few other programs for orphans in the next couple of months so please pray that we will get some ideas for what else we can do for these children. BOH is also planning to relocate soon – Jane has found an 8 acre property in the middle of the slum for a very low price (the whole thing is only about $250,000 for 8 acres and a huge house!) Jane has raised some of the money but needs the rest by February. Please pray that we will be able to get the money for this land – Jane has a lot of ideas for expansion when we move and I think that the new land will offer a lot of potential for programs for orphans and vulnerable children, because there is really no room right now for these programs at our current facility.
I have continued to have problems sending emails (I have been receiving emails without a problem) so I apologize if I have not responded to your emails. I am working from an internet café today and hopefully I will have this problem fixed soon.
Overall, I am doing well and have been enjoying my time in Nairobi. Thank you very much for all of your prayers.

First week in Nairobi

2005-01-20T04:25:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! I arrived safely in Nairobi last Friday (the 7th) and have had
a very busy first week here! I have been struggling all week with my email because American email servers don't work very well here. So I will only be using the email address valerie@beaconafrica.org.
I am staying with Jane Wathome and her family in Karen, a suburn of Nairobi.
Jane is the founder and director of Beacon of Hope, her husband Ken owns his own
real estate business, and they have three children, Kevin, who is 15, Brian, 13,
and Debbie, 10. They have a very nice house and I have been enjoying getting to
know them all,
I spent Tuesday of last week at Nairobi Chapel getting to know the interns
who will be working at the church, and then I spent Thursday typing reports for
the Beacon of Hope store in downtown Nairobi, where they sell the things that
are made in the center.
I spent Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of last week at the Beacon of Hope
Center in Ongata Rangai. The Center is where they all of their income
generating activities (weaving, spinning and dying wool, making kikoys, and
tailoring) as well as a daycare, HIV testing and counseling center, support
group, home based care classes, and offices. On Monday and Wednesday I spent
the day getting to know the staff, the women, and the children and learning
about the ministry.
I spent a lot of time this week walking around the Kware slum area with one
of the staff from Beacon. We visited some people in their homes (most of which
were only one room homes smaller than a typical bedroom), visited a Christian
primary school where we are supporting some children, and chatted with some
people we ran into on the streets.
The children in the slums are not used to seeing white people so everywhere
I went children would yell "Mzungu!" (which means white person) and run up to
me, shake my hand, and say "how are you?" which is probably the only English
phrase many of them know.
I also had my first driving experience in Kenya. I won't be getting my own
car but I will be driving Jane's car occasionally. Thankfully, it is an
automatic! The roads in Kenya are crazy - there are potholes everywhere, lots
of pedestrians, bicycles, and carts led by donkeys. I even got pulled over by a
policeman my first time behind the wheel! I wasn't doing anything wrong - they
just do random checks and he thought I was going a little slow.
On Friday, I began working on a sponsorship program for orphans that BOH
supports. My focus while I'm here will be an orphans and vulnerable children.
They are supporting several orphans at local schools, but they have not had a
staff person available to focus on this task. So that will be my first
responsibility.
On Friday, I also had my first interview with one of the orphans we will be
supporting. Her name is Maureen, and she has been living with HIV for 15 years!
She was born with HIV and has not been taking any antiretroviral drugs but has
an incredible spirit and is still relatively healthy.
I hope you all are doing well, and I am looking forward to hearing from you
now that I think I have finally figured out the email here. But please be
patient with me to respond to your emails!

Preparations

2004-12-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

I've never written a blog before, but I thought it would be a good way to keep in touch while I'm in Kenya, so I'm trying it out. I leave in less than a month and things have been hectic as I have been preparing to leave. I leave NC in just one week, so I'll have my first round of goodbyes, and then I'll be in VA for three weeks with my family before I board a plane on Jan. 6th headed to Nairobi!