God Moments

Hearken back to a time when the Mi2’s were accompanied by two teams from Southeast Christian Church. This was our first week in Kisumu. If you remember back to this, you’ll know that we spent a great deal of our time doing home visits to community members to encourage them and hear their story. On one such visit, my team visited a long widowed grandmother who was caring for four of her grandchildren, whose mother had died from AIDS. Three of her grandchildren are HIV positive and are young. When we entered her home, we saw one of her granddaughters sitting up on a bed crying from pain. She is HIV positive, looks to be about 9 years of age, and her legs are so thin that it makes her knees look like abnormally bulbous. She has spent the last month at home out of school, and the preceding month in the hospital but was sent home because they weren’t able to heal her. The grandmother hasn’t been able to run her business for two months because she has had to care for the granddaughter. We heard the family’s story, and prayed for healing and provision, and went to the next home. Four days later on Sunday morning, before Nicole preached, the congregation of 14 was asked if there were any answers to prayer that came during the week. Nicole and I are sitting in the seats of honor in the front row, so we can’t see who’s coming up the aisle, but to our surprise we see this girl and her grandmother come to the front of the church. The girl is walking under her own power and is experiencing zero pain. What an answer to prayer.
I know some of you may be wondering what else has happened in the time that passed between our prayers and that Sunday morning, and the honest truth is I don’t know. But let me ask you this: is it really that difficult to believe that there is a God capable and caring enough to do such a thing as to heal a little girl? I know I believe him to be real and even if he didn’t heal the girl and some new medication did, I believe he could and would. If you don’t agree with me, I’m sure you have your reasons for believing such, but I hope that someday you’ll see as I do that there is indeed a God that is that wonderful.
Fast forward to last night. Several weeks ago, I mentioned to the Mi2 team that I was interested in being baptized here in Africa. To my surprise, the idea was echoed by a number of team members. So on Saturday we asked the pastor of our “home church.” If he would be willing to baptize us this week before we leave for our next adventure. He agreed to if he could give us a lesson on the power of baptism beforehand. Last night five us (Myself, Molly Ray, Molly Russell, Elise Omi and Kate Sawyer) received our lesson on baptism and were killed and raised again in the pool of our guesthouse complex. The water was cold, but it worked out fine.
Today we went into Kibera again, we were split into two groups. One group went to a school to play with kids and love them. The other group, pair really (Myself and Molly Ray) did a home visit to a CHE (Community Health Evangelist). Our home visit was atypical compared to our previous experiences in the homes of the community. This one was far less structured and was more conversational than our previous ones. The woman we visited was not a widow, her husband is still living and is actually the pastor of one of the churches in the community. Her name is Mercy, and speaks amazing English. To keep this story shorter, I’ll leave our some of the smaller details. They have two children, seven and three years old, and live in a concrete home the size of my bedroom with her sister, two other children and another woman. Mercy’s business has been out of commission since she has run out of capital due to the recent spike in inflation and high oil prices (which cause the cost of goods to shoot through the roof). We sat and talked about many things, including some of the difficulties of life in the slum. One of these difficulties is the ever-changing price of water and of course the limitations that come with poverty. Nearly three hours into the conversation, Mercy goes out to get us Coca-cola, and comes back with a liter of Coke and some dinner rolls.
Now, so far in this internship, I have held hands ever so lightly with another man, had to lead a church in a worship song, preached, been put on the spot to speak publicly more times than I can count, and countless other awkward moments. However, nothing has come close to making me as uncomfortable as I felt when Mercy offered us the refreshments. Having to watch someone give up a need of their own to provide you with a luxury is something so backwards and uncomfortable in our culture and lives. We had just finished listening to Mercy explain the difficulties of how her business has gone under and how she’s trying to pay her school fees, her sisters school fees, her children’s school fees and live off of her husbands earnings (which are little). To top it all off, she gave us the water that she had just finished explaining the unpredictable price of, to us to wash our hands before we drank and ate. When you’re put in a situation like this, you don’t dare turn down their offer even if you know they might not eat later because they’ve given you the resources for these refreshments. It’s a huge honor for them to host us Mzungus, so you have to accept the offer. It’s a kind of love and generosity that I admit, I’m not sure I’d be so willing to replicate. It’s one of those forms of love, sacrificial, that tells you that you mean something important to these people. And we’ve only just met them. It’s been said that we accept the love we think we deserve, and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t think I deserve this kind of love. Watching someone else go hungry because they hosted you, I can’t even describe it. After I had finished my glass of Coke, she refilled it with what I had assumed would have been her portion. It was never going to be her portion, it was always intended for us. Mercy was willing to give from something she had no excess of; perhaps we could all learn something from her.

-Nabii (Sam)