This is the phrase I heard upon first meeting alumni from the Educating Africans for Christ (EAFC) at the Nairobi airport. It is "Welcome to Kenya" in Swahili, and I have since learned the proper response: "Asante Sana" or "thank you very much."
I have been in Kenya only a short while, but have enjoyed myself immensely already. Let me start by saying I hope this entry does not seem commonplace, trite, or overly-touristy to my African friends or my ex-pat friends who've lived and worked in Africa for years...much of it is new and exciting to me, and I hope it is to some of you too. :) It's been great to see what EAFC does and I have so far been very impressed with their organization. They scholarship Christians all over Africa to study in universities in Africa. They base their student selection on how the students plan to use the education to serve the Lord in their communities when they finish. Today we had lunch with about 15 scholarship recipients at Pan African Christian University here in Nairobi. Besides meeting everyone, we got to hear what they were studying and how they plan to use their education and how they're ministering now. Just in that group there were people from Kenya, Rwanda, and the Congo with incredible ministry plans. I attended a church today planted and pastored by one of the Congolese students, there was a lady working in the Kibera slums, another lady who ministers with her husband among the Maasai tribes, another student who's getting a counseling degree to return to Rwanda to work ("we need a lot of counseling in Rwanda" were his words), etc., so it's exciting to be a part of this group and see what they're doing and also to introduce them to the work of the Chalmers Center, which will hopefully be useful to them in their communities. I was very impressed and encouraged by a student who said "God blessed me through EAFC not to raise my standard of living, but my standard of serving."
After lunch, I went to the Nairobi National Park where they have the Kenyan Wildlife Society headquarters and an animal orphanage. I visited the animal orphanage with the EAFC Kenya director and his nephew and grandson and got some pretty cool pictures, especially when I got to go in the cage with the cheetahs and pet them!! Apparently, cheetahs are fairly docile and calm when well-fed and unprovoked. Who knew?! After the park, we drove to the Kibera slums and looked over them. The country director's daughter is a public health worker who's done some work in Kibera and he's going to see if she can walk me around the slums and fill me in on them more (for those of you not familiar with Kibera, it is the largest slum in the world with over 1 million people living there). It is mentioned in the article of a previous post here. I had a ton of questions for the guys I was with today, and it was interesting to get their perspective on the slums, poverty and inequality in Kenya, and solutions for development and ministry with over a million people piled in these slums and the poverty in Kenya in general. Seeing such poverty simultaneously breaks my heart and gets my brain going a mile thinking of ways to minister in this context.
I did get some cool pictures today, but I haven't been able to load them on my computer yet. I'll try my best to get them up soon because I'm sure you're all dying to see me petting a cheetah. ;)
Tomorrow, we are doing the Leadership Training Seminar for EAFC alumni where I will present some of the work of the Chalmers Center and ways for EAFC students and alumni to be involved. Please be in prayer for the seminars and for the work of EAFC and the Chalmers Center!
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