Dogwood Church Mission Team

It seemed like the last vision trip had barely left the airport when I found myself picking up a new group of American visitors in Nairobi on Monday. This team is from Dogwood Church in Atlanta, which supports our first CARE for AIDS center at Imani Baptist Church in Karanjee, so the focus of their trip was on building the partnership between the churches and serving both the church and the CFA clients. In addition to Justin, the team consists of Dogwood's Missions Pastor John, a man named Brian, and a couple named Porfirio and Andy - seeing Kenyan's try to understand the name Porfirio is pretty entertaining!

The team's first day here was spent at Imani painting the outside of the church and finishing parts of the interior. The congregation has grown so much in the past year that the church extended its building by about 15 feet, leaving it painted multiple colors and without walls on the inside. According to Pastor Linus, it would have taken the church up to three years to save up the money to complete the renovations, so they were all extremely grateful that the team from Dogwood would furnish building supplies and a lot of cheerful manual labor. We started in the morning by cleaning the outside of the church - we did this the Kenyan way, which is essentially beating the corrugated metal sheeting with a rag to throw off the dirt. Then we mixed paint with turpentine and part of the team started turning the outside of the church into a bright forest green. We rounded up a couple of homemade wooden ladders, and Justin and I climbed up the rickety contraptions to get the upper part of the walls. At the same time, a few members of the church climbed up onto the roof and started painting it red - we joked that this was now the official church of Christmas! It was a long, sunny day outside painting, but by the end of the afternoon the whole outside of the church had a whole new look. We were all dirty, sweaty, and looking quite Christmas-y ourselves with green and red paint all over the place, but it was great to see how excited the church members and pastors were when they saw the new, finished look of their church!

On Wednesday we spent the morning at the CFA center seeing how our Community Health Workers and Spiritual Counselors do their jobs, and then we split into two groups and walked all around the area visiting some of our client's homes. I went with John and Brian, along with Rosemary (the physical counselor at Imani) and Cornel. Its a whole different world when you get off of the beaten path and weave through the alleyways of the Misri and Farmas slums, only a short walk from our house. We climbed down steep hills to visit families in their wood and tin shacks, where we heard about the amazing things that God has done in their lives, as well as the challenges that they face every day. It's truly an eye-opening experience, and it always makes you stop and think, even if you've seen it time and time again.

We finished our home visits at the house of a client named Ruth - as we got to the house she was just finishing getting the three little girls who live there (all about 2-4 years old) cleaned up and the house in order. We brought with us a couple of bags of food that we'd purchased at a small shop along the way (owned by one of our former clients, Esther), and soon we were all put to work preparing dinner. I chopped up a bunch of cabbages, tomatoes, and cilantro, while the other guys prepared carrots, rice, potatoes, and onions. Over the next two hours we got to help Ruth and Rosemary cook a typical Kenyan dinner on small, charcoal and kerosene fueled stoves, inside the single room that is home for Ruth and her children. We heard Ruth's story, and we watched as the girls slowly became convinced that the crazy white people wouldn't hurt them - in a few minutes they went from quietly sitting on the bed to running all over the place singing songs and giggling uncontrollably! It's so amazing to me how special it is for a Kenyan, especially one stricken by poverty and ostracized by the community because of HIV, to have a group of people all the way from America come to visit their home and share a meal with them. It's really a dream that most of our clients would never consider, but I have a hard time deciding if it makes more of an impression on them or on us. Our lives are so infinitely different, but sharing the love of Jesus Christ and the simple act of cooking and eating creates a beautiful bond that inspires joy and hope in both parties!