I stepped off the airplane in Nairobi the night of April 23, knowing very little. Flight times in and out, something about a team, IDP camp, contacts somewhere in northern Uganda maybe . . . Doesn’t Kenya have giraffes? That sounds interesting. I walked in mostly blind. It’s becoming something of a gift in my life. It wasn’t always this way, but I have come to seriously enjoy walking into a place, more or less completely unknowing, and waiting with great expectation to see what God will do.
This is why I call myself a Bohemian. (Well, that and the skirts I wear.)
I still don’t know all the reasons God took me to Kenya, but I can tell you what I saw there. I saw the Body of Christ. In Cristianna, Kelli, Matt Ruple, and Matt Patch - the four who currently make up AIM’s Kenya Initiative. They love each other. Very evidently, very obviously. They are a small picture of the Body of Christ, living on the side of a mountain overlooking the Rift Valley. They’ve been in Africa for something like a year now, and their hearts are with the people in an IDP camp that came into being four years ago due to violence caused by political elections. During my week with the team, we talked about our different giftings, what God has fitted us for, and someone said this:
The picture God gave me of the team is like a car. Kelli’s the interior, cause she welcomes people in and makes them feel comfortable. Cristianna’s the outside, cause she attracts people to Christ. Ruple is the engine, with the motivation and the strength to move forward, and Patch is the wheels with the creative ideas to tell us where to go.
I listened to this and thought, What a beautiful picture of the Body of Christ. Each one aware of who they were alone in Christ, and then choosing to come together and offer those strengths and weaknesses to mesh with the rest of the Body.
The Body of Christ is a breathtaking thing.
Oh, the possibilities! I thought, watching this team. What potential to go into the camp as the Bride of Christ, to pick up the children, to sit down with the moms, to walk with the dads, to work in the gardens and eat in the tents - to share Jesus out of a heart connected with the Head, hand in hand with your team, your family.
“They will know we are Christians by our love.” This is what I saw from the team in Kenya. I thank God for the team - for the leadership He’s put over them and for the people He’s reaching through them.
I encourage you to pray for them. They are very open to how God is moving - to what He wants to do this day, next month, next year. They are working in a hard place. From their town, we saw the lights of truckers driving through the valley at night, stopping for prostitutes on the side of the road. We ran into drunks in the middle of the day. The women like to gossip about everything, and most of the men don’t have steady work. We know kids who can’t go to school. Everyone we met needs the love (not the judgment or harshness or ill will) of the team to show them the face of Jesus.
And that’s what I saw in this team. Their hearts are broken and willing. They are waiting on God each day to tell them what to do. They’re also praying for more hands to help in the work. “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.” For a few days, I was even wondering if God didn’t want me to join them. But, of course, at that point, I hadn’t been to northern Uganda yet . . .
