A Quick Update

Wow! The last 10 days have been a crazy mixture of planning and organizing a group of 8 visitors, lots of trips to the airport, two AWESOME nights in the Masai Mara, and a ton of catching-up time with Justin. It looks like things aren't slowing down quite yet, either, as Justin and I are heading out to Kisumu tomorrow for a night to visit Cornel and check out everything on that side of Kenya.

In the midst of all of this, and in between all kinds of other stories and lessons, God is showing me again how blessed I am to be living the life that I live. I am so happy and thankful that the work I'm doing each day has an eternal significance. Not only that, but I'm getting to take part in adventure after adventure, with new kinds of excitement all the time. I'm so blessed to share life on a day to day basis with Jane, and I am so thankful for the chance to work closely with a great friend like Justin through CARE for AIDS. I have an unbelievable family who supports me in every way, and I have friends all over the world walking with me through prayer. Above it all, I have the assurance that God is watching over every step and the conviction that He is proud of the work being done by CFA here in Kenya. Sometimes my mind can't fathom why God has given me all of this, and I know I will never be able to praise Him enough in return!

Kisumu part 2

Having talked at length (maybe too much length) about the CFA center in Kisumu, I wanted to fill in a little more of the actual trip. Duncan and I, along with two other staff members, undertook the 4.5 hour drive west on Sunday afternoon - it was a gorgeous day, and the roads were surprisingly traffic free, so we made it without any incidences. Well, I take that back - just before arriving in Kisumu we stopped behind a donkey cart and heard a loud BANG from the back of the car. Then I looked out my window and saw a motorcyle and a rider (separately) flying off the other side of the road! We watched as the guy got up and dusted himself off, so I proceeded on my way assuming he was fine...

Our first stop in Kisumu was Cornel's house, where we got to meet he and Irene's 3-month old baby. They are such proud parents, and they were thrilled to show off their baby girl Sherry Linda Onyango, named after my very own mom - the first name, not the last one! It was pretty late by this time, so Duncan and I checked into a guesthouse for the night. The Palmers Guesthouse is surprisingly nice - you get a room with two beds, mosquito nets, your own bathroom, hot water, a tv, a GREAT towel, and a huge breakfast, all for about $10 each! Can't complain about that...

On Monday we had lunch with Cornel, Steve, and Geofrey at the fish shacks down by Lake Victoria. I think I've described the food experience there in detail in previous posts, so I'll stick with a couple of pictures this time:




















The final interesting part of the trip was our journey home. Cornel decided to bring his family (along with a babysitter) back along with him so that Irene could head to a class she's taking in Nairobi and he could visit the group coming from the States. Steve also ended up in Kisumu and needed a ride home. All that added up to a car full of 5 Kenyans, 2 babies, and me! Never a dull moment, as you can imagine...

Progress in Kisumu

As I sat in the shade of a tiny church in the midst of a giant slum on Monday, I had another moment of realization - God is doing great things through CARE for AIDS, and I am so blessed to find myself in the midst of it! The past few days in Kisumu gave me an opportunity to see how the newest center operating in the area is coming along, and it turned into a great learning experience for me.

The demographics of the Nyalenda slum, where the newest CFA center is located, are quite different than what I am used to around Limuru/Nairobi. For one, HIV is even more rampant around this area, with a prevalence rate of over 20%. Think about that - just walking around the area, 1 out of every 5 people you see are HIV-positive. This is caused by a combination of antiquated cultural traditions (wife inheritance, for one) and a serious lack of medical infrastructure and education, and it results in an area with an intense need for help. When Festus and Monica, the community health workers from the center at Nyalenda Baptist, started recruiting clients, they found a group of over 150 people in less than two weeks - in Limuru we have taken close to two MONTHS to get a group of 80.

Because of the high numbers, they decided to limit this group of clients to people who had been tested within the past year and a half, providing a group of 80 with significant educational and emotional needs. Interestingly, this has led to a group with the highest attendance rates at seminars and center days of any group that has come through CFA - it turns out that in many cases where people have been tested several years before, they learn how to "work the system" and bounce around from program to hospital to government office seeking handouts and sustenance. This group, on the other hand, truly desires the learning, community, and empowerment that they find at the center. In Geofrey (the Regional Coordinator's) words, "Here they are really coming to find a home."

The people in Nyalenda are also very concentrated - all 80 clients live within about 500m of the church building, so it is easy for Monica and Festus to visit all of them each month and spend quality time encouraging them in their homes. This encouragement has gone a long way in creating economic progress as well. Monica tells me that in Kisumu, when people discover that they are positive, most will stop doing any work and start relying on relatives or charity to support them - essentially giving up on their potential to have any meaning in life until they die. By helping the clients to understand how to "live positively" with an optimistic state of mind, while also teaching them about financial management, business, medication, and health, Monica is already seeing a shift in this attitude and is finding more and more clients each week who are doing some sort of work and making money to provide for their needs themselves.

I was also able to talk to the Spiritual Counselor, Festus, about the spiritual state of this group of clients, who are only in their second month at the center. He told me that initially almost all of the clients said they were "saved," because they thought it might be a prerequisite for being part of a church program. After talking to each one at length during the counseling sessions, he found that only 8 out of the 80 were truly believers. We thank God for such an amazing opportunity to share the Gospel with people who have never truly understood it, and in the past six weeks an amazing 36 clients have expressed their desire to follow Christ. Each of these people is going through a curriculum of Biblical teaching with Festus, and we all pray that they will have built a firm foundation and a true commitment by the time they finish the program.

Thank you all so much for your support of CARE for AIDS and your continued prayers - it is only through you that these amazing things are able to take place! Please continue to pray for all of the clients and staff in Kisumu, especially as we look to open our third center in this region sometime in the next month or so. We have so much to be thankful for, but an amazing amount of need still exists!

Picture below from left to right: Geoffrey (Regional Coordinator), Monica (Physical Counselor), Cornel (Director), Festus (Spiritual Counselor)

Heading West

Hi everyone - just wanted to give you guys a quick heads' up that I'll be leaving in just a few minutes to drive to Kisumu, in the Western part of Kenya next to Lake Victoria. Duncan and I are going to spend some time with Cornel, meet two new staff members who have recently been hired, and check up on the progress of the two CARE for AIDS centers in the region.

I would love your prayers for safe travels - if you've read my previous posts about driving here, you know that driving across the country isn't quite as simple as it might be in the States! Please pray that we would have safety on the roads and that we wouldn't come upon any unexpected difficulties that might lengthen our trip. Please also pray that we could be an encouragement to the staff and clients in Kisumu, and that we would be able to get an accurate understanding of how everything there is progressing.

Check back later this week to see how it went! Thanks so much...

A Story of Transformation - Simon Gicheru

Simon Gicheru is a painter from an area called Gathanga, near the CARE for AIDS center in Ruaka. If you met Simon a couple of years ago, you would have learned that he was happily married with three children and a painting business that provided him with enough money to live in a house and send his children to school.

In 2009, though, Simon started getting sick frequently. He fought through Tuberculosis, among other infections, and by October he was confined to his bed, unable to move about or work. At this point, Simon was tested for HIV at the hospital and was found to be positive, with a CD4 count of only 14. Learning of his status, Simon’s brothers and sisters refused to come and visit him, and most of the people around him came to the conclusion that he had little chance of living a normal life again. On top of all this, Simon’s youngest child fell sick and died during the same year, leaving him mired in feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.

By the grace of God, Esther and Peter from the CFA center in Ruaka found Simon in November 2009. Since he couldn’t come to the center on his own, the workers visited him as often as they could at home. They met with his wife, educating both of them about the disease and the medication, and they helped to supplement the food that the family could buy from his wife’s meager income selling vegetables. Only a few months later, Simon regained the strength to walk around and started coming to the center each week. He also found a community that would look past the stigma of HIV/AIDS and accept him for who he is. Esther has this to say about Simon:

“Simon confesses that he found friends who could really care about him. When he joined the CFA program he was a desperate man who needed people to embrace him, give him hope and walk with him. Since March, he has been a regular attendee at the center and at seminars. His health has been restored and his CD4 count is now more than 200. Simon, who is professionally an admirable painter, came this month and told us to pray for him since he feels strongly to get a job. No sooner than the Lord answered our prayers and provided him with a contract just at his neighborhood. He has now started saving with DOREP and is moving forward with his family.”

At the same time that his strength was improving and he was starting to work again, Simon was continually learning from Peter about Jesus and the prospect of life as a Christian. Simon had never been exposed to the Gospel before, but he accepted Christ at the center in April and has since joined a church in his neighborhood, where he regularly attends with his whole family.

As Simon finished his 9-month term with CARE for AIDS last month, he was one of the most appreciative clients, praising God for the change in his life. Hearing stories like his – stories of people who have moved from hopelessness to joy, people who are empowered to live with a purpose, people who are walking with Christ daily towards a better life – give me such cause to thank God and to praise Him for his faithfulness!

The Great Migration

To finish off the CARE for AIDS interns' African experience, I traveled with them to the Masai Mara Reserve for a two-night safari. The Masai Mara is the Africa of "The Lion King," endless golden savannah dotted with acacia trees and filled to the bursting point with all sorts of wildlife that exist nowhere in the world outside of Africa. We had an unbelievable safari - hanging out with giraffe, rhino, and elephants ambling through the fields, holding our breath as a gorgeous cheetah stalked a group of gazelle, and taking in the sunrise along with a playful group of two lionesses and seven beautiful cubs. The highlight of this safari for me, though - and the part that distinguished it from any of my other trips to the Mara - was the Great Migration.

The term "Great Migration" refers to the annual movement of 1.3 million wildebeests, 360 thousand gazelles, and 200 thousand zebras North from the Serengeti to the Mara in June and July, then back south again in August and September. It's hard to wrap your mind around numbers like this - but when you look out over the grasslands and see herds of wildebeest and zebra as far as the eye can see, it starts to hit you how vast the amount of animals moving together is. From a high point they look like swarms of ants covering the ground, but after moving closer you realize that each "ant" is a 500 pound wildebeest!

The drama of the Migration reaches a climax when the herds of animals are faced with a river to cross, bringing along with it fears of drowning in currents or being eaten by crocodiles - fears that the animals seem to know all too well. Some people come to Kenya and spend days fruitlessly trying to observe a crossing, but on our second day in the park, we drove to the Mara River and had the awesome blessing of getting to see two separate crossings only an hour or so apart. First we drove up to the top of a hill to scout out where the animals were gathering, and then placed ourselves next to the river where we could see the action. As if they shared one mind, a group of about 500 wildebeests all began to push one another towards the edge of a 40-foot gorge, with the 200-foot wide river waiting at the bottom. We could see the animals get more and more agitated, scrambling down the dusty cliff then climbing back up, making all sorts of noises and raising a huge cloud of dust. After about fifteen minutes of this, one wildebeest leaped into the water and started bounding and swimming across, fighting the current to climb out on the steep rocks of the other bank as quickly as he could. As soon as one entered the water, it was like a dam had been opened - wildebeests began to stream down the cliff and jump into the river, fighting to cross as quickly as they could and producing an impressively loud cacophony of splashes and grunts. This spectacle went on for about 10 solid minutes, and while we didn't see a crocodile kill this time, we were all left breathless by the enormity of what we had seen.

Later that afternoon I started thinking about how interesting the preparation for the crossing had been. Even though there were hundreds of animals that all seemed to badly want to go across the river, they spent a long time milling around, afraid to take the first leap. It only took one wildebeest entering the water, though, before the whole herd found the courage to jump into the dangerous current and move across the river en masse. This made me think about how often many of us might know something is wrong or needs to change, or we might all want to take some step of faith, but in many cases no one will move until one person steps out alone and takes a stand. Maybe it takes the first wildebeest to prove to the other ones that they can live through the water, or maybe it takes the first wildebeest to show that there even IS another option besides staying on the bank. Regardless, it is obvious that the action of one individual can prompt a gigantic response in the larger group for a herd of wildebeest - I think it's the same for us...


ps - click here for many more pictures from this trip to the Mara

Putting Faces with Names

The three CARE for AIDS interns - Chris, Kyle, and Preston - who visited last week provided a unique look into what CFA is doing here in Kenya. These guys have spent the last two months or so working in Atlanta on all sorts of CFA business: writing grants, putting together newsletters, planning speaking engagements, making phone calls, and brainstorming on all sorts of topics. Through this, they each developed a detailed understanding of what CFA does in theory - they could all explain the mission and vision, the process and model. Not until last week, though, could they actually see what was happening with their own eyes and decide for themselves if it was working.

The guys got into Nairobi at 6:30am on Saturday (ouch!), and after a few luggage issues, made it up to the office at around 10, right in the meeting of our bi-weekly staff meeting. They each got to meet all 16 staff from the Limuru region, and I think they were a little overwhelmed by all of the talking, hugging, singing, and laughing right off the bat! After the meeting we all shared a big lunch of ugali and beef stew (plus a little Tabasco for the Americans), so they were properly introduced to Kenyan food and "swallowship."

The next day we spent the morning, and some of the afternoon, attending church at Banana Hill Baptist, where one of the CFA centers is located. The guys got to experience a true Kenyan church - all four hours of it - and even share some tea with the pastoral team as honored guests. We also had dinner at the home of one of our admin staff, Kevin, who was thrilled to have 4 "wazungu" guys hanging out in his house.

Monday and Tuesday saw the guys really getting into the nitty-gritty of CFA. We drove down to the newest CFA center at Gachie Monday morning and spent three hours walking through the town and slum areas visiting clients in their homes. The interns got a taste of the attention that white people garner around here, with constant yells of "mzungu," "how are you," and even, when people saw Kyle, "Johnny Bravo!" We visited 5 or 6 clients in their homes, hearing their stories, encouraging them, and praying with them, and then drove back to Limuru for lunch in a little local restaurant. The afternoon was spent doing more home visits around the Kamirithu area, and then we ended up in the home of a client named Rahab around 6:00. For the next few hours, we helped Rahab and the center workers peel and smash potatoes, cut up vegetables, and prepare a typical Kenyan meal in their home. It was a fantastic experience for all of the guys to share the meal with Rahab and her children by lantern-light in their humble wooden home, and by the end of the day we all had a much better idea of what it is like to live here with AIDS.

On Tuesday we got to see the other side of the CFA model by sitting in on a center day at both the Banana Hill and Imani centers. The guys got to hear from Rosemary, the original CFA Physical Counselor, about the challenges that clients face and the creative methods that she uses to help and educate them. They were able to talk, laugh, and pray with clients, helping to hand out food and offering an encouraging smile to everyone they sat down with.

That evening we got to have a great conversation about what the interns had taken from their experience. I asked them whether the things they had seen here in Kenya matched up with all that they had talked and written about over the summer, and they agreed that everything is really happening in just the way it is being presented back in America. They talked about how impressed they were with the job the center workers are doing - they had no idea what difficult and unique situations each client presents, and they were amazed at the way the center workers tirelessly invested in each and every person. We are so blessed to have such high-quality, hard-working people who truly love our clients, and all of the interns agreed that they really are the lifeblood of CARE for AIDS. After seeing what they have been working so hard to promote, I am so thankful that Chris, Kyle, and Preston all agreed that it was worth it. They were able to see that lives are truly being transformed, and I don't think any of them regret their summer's labor in the slightest!

First reactions to the Intern trip...

Whew - the last week has been a whirlwind of the best kind, and I am trying to get my life back together today after putting the three CFA interns on a plane back to the US last night. We had an incredible time in Limuru and the Masai Mara, and it was such a pleasure to share this part of CARE for AIDS and of Africa with three awesome guys. Thank you all so much for your prayers - there are very few things that I would have changed about the week, and I am thanking God for being faithful in so many ways!

In the next few days I'll come up with a full recount of our time in Limuru and our safari to the Masai Mara (complete with the great wildebeest migration!), but for now I just have time to give you a couple of teaser photos...