Day 8: God's Little Gardeners

Jambo; it's Kenya-time! After making our flight to Addis, we boarded one more flight in the middle of the night to Nairobi. After a slightly stressful visa extravaganza (the price had doubled), we made it through customs and met our driver Daniel, who turned out to be God's saving grace quite a few times during our trip. We drove about 3.5 hours to a city called Kinangop. Since it was the middle of the night, we pretty much slept the whole bus ride, but awoke to somegargantuan pot holes and a slightly colder Kenya than we had expected. Nonetheless, our gracious hosts helped us get all of our bags off of the top of the bus, and some of the boys carried our bags all the way up to our rooms on the third floor,even though it was like 5 in the morning! Everyone always talks about Southern hospitality, but Kenyan hospitality is where it's at! Since we had had quite a long night, ourhostsatHope Community Center let us sleep through themorning, and we got to meet the kids in the afternoon.

Here are some pics of Hope CC:

A view from our 3rd floor room

Behold, the squatty-potty and all its glory!

Part of the Primary School

Before we had any interaction with the kids, though, Lucy the director of the orphanage showed us a video they had made about the history of Hope CC. Lucy has anincredible story! Having grown up with next to nothing, Lucy worked really hard and got to a place where she was living in a house. She took in one boy that she found onthestreet, and this step began her life as "Momma Lucy" to many orphaned Kenyan children.God continually provided (and still provides) for Lucy and her family, always giving them more space when they needed it, though at one point this meant living in tents. If youvisited Hope CC today, you might find it hard to believe that the acres of land once held only tents. Now, they have multiple buildings, a self-sufficient farm, a dining hall, and kitchen. Lucy's story is truly an example of God's provision. She has been wise with the resources He has given her; every monetary donation she receives, she requires the donator tell her exactly which project he would like the money to contribute to. Our team, having heard Lucy explain her plansto expand Hope's Nursery to accommodate many of the babies who are abandoned and die in Kenyan hospitals, decided to use some extra money to contribute to this project. When we told Lucy the project we had decided, she immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) pulledout her phone and called a man to have grave delivered as soon as possible. Wealso contributed some money toward a greenhouse, and Lucy had part of our team working on the greenhouse the next morning! Lucy also told us that she wanted to be able to tell the kids who "planted the seeds" for the nursery and greenhouse.

The gravel that began a life-saving nursery project

The beginnings of the greenhouse

What an interesting thought…serving God is definitely all about planting the seeds He's given us. When we think about the diversity of the body of Christ, it makes sense that each of us would have different "seeds" we can plant in others' lives, and we just have to plant the seeds, but it's God who grows them. How cool would it be if every church inAmerica planted all different kinds of seeds across the landscape of the world? God could easily grow the beginnings of a flourishing garden!

So with our nursery and greenhouse seeds planted, we had worship, or as the kids at Hope call it, devotion time. In addition to singing and introducing ourselves, Lucy wanted someone from our team to share a word of encouragement during each devotion time (there are 3 per day, one at each meal). At the conclusion of devotion, we started one of our VBS type programs with the kids. We taught them songs and also an interactive lesson on creation. I absolutely loved what we got to teach them about day 6, the dayGod made man. One of our leaders, Diana, explained that when God made man and woman, He said it was very, VERY good, as opposed to the "regular good" of the other created things. We talked for a while about how we have a special identity in Christ. Think about whata lesson like this means to an orphan, someone who probably hasn't felt valuable or worthy for much of his or her life.

We then proceeded to make a craft with the kids, tissue paper crosses. In order to also explain the salvation message, Diana tied in the concept of mankind being highly valued by God into His great love in sending Jesus to die for our sins. It was encouraging to know that the kids would have a reminder of God's great and special love for them because of the tissue paper crosses.

After crafts, we split up into groups to play games. I was part of the team that valiantly attempted to teach them how to play kickball. For someone who has a concept for baseball, kickball is fairly simple, but Kenyan children don't know what baseball is, so explaining kickball was quite difficult. I think they finally got the general hang of it, but for a while we had kids just piling up on the bases, or all standing in one line in the outfield. They seemed to be having fun, though, so we considered it a success!

At dinner devotion, I really felt God stirring my heart to get up and share a part of my testimony with the kids. I had actually been praying about it for a while that day, so when Lucy asked who would be speaking that night, God gave me the courage to do it. Before I got up to start talking, I whispered a quiet prayer for God's words to come out of mouth, that the kids what hear what He wanted them to hear. I was afraid that I wasn't going to be relatable enough, because my life is fundamentally different from the life of a Kenyan child, but I truly believe God worked through that culture gap. I shared about my life in high school (though it had only just recently ended), how moving away from my friends and living in a completely new place was really difficult for me. I told them about how I had a hard time making good friends in the new place I lived, that I was so sad, and that I ranaway from God and forgot about Him because I concentrated too much on my worries. For much of high school, I forgot that I was a daughter of the King Most High. I also said that the awesome thing about our God is that even when we turn our backs on Him, He will never turn His back on us. God kept pursuing me, even when I ignored Him. He finally gave me good friendships, and people to encourage me. I encouraged them to never forget their identity in Christ like I had and to continually remember His great pursuit of our hearts.

I hope that God was able to plant some more seeds with the short encouragement spiel I gave that night. I hope that the kids at Hope Community Center never ever forget that their God loves them, and He will help them through any worry and fear that they have.