Welcome

I have pictures of my time in Kenya posted on Picasaweb.  Here’s the address:

 http://picasaweb.google.com/kirkandrewharris/

Bwana Sifiwe!
 

Praise the Lord!  Hello again everyone!  I’m presently watching rain come down outside of my window as I write this update.  In spite of the fact that it is, indeed, the rainy season, I’m under the general impression that the seasons don’t really change in Kenya.  Sometimes it rains in the rainy season and the dry season is indeed dry and warm, but it isn’t at all the variety that I’m used to back home.  Oh well.  Although it may seem like my updates are getting more infrequent, I assure you that there is indeed method to my madness.  My last update came in the middle of April instead of at the end of March.  To get back on track with sending these at the end of every month, I waited until now to let all of you know how I was doing; I hope that all of you are well and you can forgive me for my literary absence.  Now I have the daunting task of trying to remember what I’ve done in the past six weeks.
 

Before I do so, however, I’d like to thank everyone who has been supporting me, both financially and in prayer.  Your generosity on each of these fronts humbles me and leaves me profoundly grateful.  The PC(USA) subsidizes the Young Adult Volunteer program, but does ask each volunteer to raise a portion of his or her own support.  Thanks to your contributions, all of my support for the year has been met.  Praise God!  If you would like to continue supporting the YAV program as a whole, please let me know and I will send you the support form.  Once again, thank you so much for supporting me as I seek to serve the Lord here in Kenya.  Please continue to lift me up in your prayers.
 

PROCMURA
 

My work here at PROCMURA continues to go quite well.  We recently finished designing our website; I’m excited to say that I helped edit the final text for the site.  The address is: http://www.procmura.org.  Also, following the completion of my Nigeria project and my return from Sierra Leone and Liberia, I’ve started a new project which may keep me busy for the rest of my time here.  Drawing on 2 Corinthians 5:17-6:2, which describes our calling as Christians to be agents of reconciliation, I’m analyzing the African church’s role as a peacemaker in social conflicts in light of three biblical metaphors: Christians as people in exile, Christians as God’s people, and Christians as pilgrims or sojourners.  I’m very excited about researching this topic as it allows me to combine biblical and theological reflection with political and social analysis, while writing about something that matters a great deal to me.
 

The subjects that I research and write about for PROCMURA are deeply interesting to me and I’ve begun to sense that God might be calling me to continue in the direction that I’m presently going.  Unfortunately, this calling is faint and indistinct, which makes discerning what step I take after I leave Kenya a difficult process.  As I do attempt to discern what’s next for me, I would enormously appreciate prayer, suggestions, job offers (hey, I might as well try), or, most of all, sarcastic remarks.
 

Basketball
 

Basketball is going well!  I’m pleased to announce that Parklands Baptist’s basketball team, “Parkie” is 2-0 in the Nairobi Church League sponsored by the sports ministry Athletes in Action.  I’m slightly less pleased to announce that I didn’t play a second in either one of those victories since our starters had colossal battles against both of our opponents, who are two of the best teams in the league.  Prior to the start of the season we had a tournament with many of the teams who will be in the league, where we went 1-2, crashing out in the semi-finals (yes, winning one game in overtime got us into the semis).  Needless to say, the tournament was a wake-up call for the guys and everyone has buckled down, improved their focus, and started to play team basketball.  As a former college athlete, it’s good to be on a team again, even if I do play a pretty minute role.  The most gratifying part of it is joining together with my Kenyan friends in pursuit of a tangible and common goal.  I especially appreciate our coach’s focus; he definitely sees the team as a ministry opportunity, with the long term goal of taking the team to tournaments around East Africa where they can be a witness for Christ.
 

Marathon
 

Unfortunately, my practice schedule has been somewhat curtailed as of late, since I’m training for a marathon.  The Safaricom Marathon is ranked as one of the ten hardest marathons in the world.  I’m not sure who does these rankings but I’ve read this in multiple places so it has to be true.  The race, which organizers began in 2000, takes place in the middle of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, and functions as a fundraiser for conservation efforts and community projects in local communities.  The race, which features half and full marathon distances, attracts about 650 runners every year, including some big names in Kenyan distance running.  Former Marathon World Record Holder Catherine Ndereba used the half marathon as a training run last year and finished first, crossing the line at 1:17:52.  I, on the other hand, am not an Olympian, nor am I doing the half marathon.  I’ve successfully duped myself into signing up for the full marathon.  Fortunately, it’s for a very good cause.  I’m joining two Stanford graduates-cum itinerant travel writers and 22 kids from Tumaini Children’s Home in Nyeri, Kenya, for the race.  The two writers visited Tumaini, fell in love with it, and decided to stay there and start a non-profit organization that would give these kids, many of whom have been orphaned by AIDS, the chance to train for and compete in a marathon.  The organization, called Hope Runs, supplies the children with running equipment and pays the entrance fees for their race.  When Claire and Lara, the organizers, found out that I ran Cross-Country in college, they invited me to join the team and run with the kids in the marathon.  For some reason, and I’m not sure why, I decided that would be a good idea.  After running for about 17 miles on Saturday, I’ve decided this was a poor choice.  Please pray for me as I will likely need divine intervention, or performance-enhancing drugs, to get through the race.
 

Football - Soccer
 

Also worth noting, before I get to my more substantive reflections, is the wonderful time I had attending an international football friendly between the Harambee Stars of Kenya and the Super Eagles of Nigeria.  The match, held at the Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani, was a lot of fun.  My friends Anne and Michelle organized the event for a group of boys from one of the nearby slums who take part in a small business project called Light and Power.  If there is one thing I’ve learned about Nigerians from my conversations with other Africans, it’s that they’re despicable swindlers and thugs.  While I certainly don’t know enough Nigerians to fairly evaluate this stereotype, I decided that it would be best to buy into it and cheer for the home team so I wasn’t mistaken for a pro-Nigerian gangster.  While I would have assumed that such a mistake would be a longshot, given my whiteness and general non-Nigerian mien, my devotion to my adopted country (I even have a resident visa and everything!) was called into question multiple times by Kenyans who asked me who I was “supporting.”
 

Despite outplaying the African giants for large portions of the match, an unfortunate error by the Stars’ defense allowed the visiting Super Eagles to slot home the match’s only goal late in the first half.  Although one of the Light and Power boys, Gabriel, ardently protested that the goal should be disallowed because the dirty Nigerian gangster-thief-swindler was offside, the referees didn’t concur with his assessment and after another 45 minutes of scoreless sound and fury, the match ended in a bittersweet defeat for the Stars.  The loss was bittersweet since most of the players and fans were simply glad to be playing an internationally sanctioned match; the KFF (Kenyan Football Federation) was banned by FIFA from international competition for several months.  That’s right.  They were banned.  In a sport where nationalistic fans routinely riot and set things (or opposing fans) on fire, Kenya was forbidden from playing international soccer.  That’s an achievement worth being proud of, but one that I think most Kenyans don’t truly appreciate.  Although they do take their football seriously, Kenyans, with indifference typical of a nation accustomed to hardship and scandal, shrugged off the prohibition and ignored the Kenyan game in favor of the English Premier League.  I don’t know all the details of the ruling, but it had something to do with teams in the domestic league refusing to be relegated and multiple groups claiming to run Kenyan football; it’s all very confusing and I think FIFA basically said “go away, you can come back when you get your act together and start behaving like a real country.”  Well, now Kenya is back!  And they just drew 0-0 in against Swaziland.  I’d say we have a little ways to go before we can start popping champagne corks in celebration of their World Cup victory.
 

Pentecost
 

“They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.  Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.  When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.” — Acts 2:3-6
 

Last Sunday (May 27) was the Day of Pentecost, the celebration of the day the Holy Spirit first descended on the apostles gathered in Jerusalem.  Appropriately enough, this past month and a half has been a Season of Pentecost for me.  The miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost indicates two truths about God and the Church.  First of all, the fact that the Holy Spirit, through the apostles, revealed the same message to every one of the nationalities gathered in Jerusalem is a sign of the universality of the Gospel.  Secondly, the fact that every member of this international Jewish community heard the Gospel in his or her own “mother tongue” highlights the cultural relevance of the message.  As I look at the global church, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, these two facts stand out to me.  The resilience and vibrancy of the Christian faith in the region testifies to the power of the Holy Spirit to work across and within cultures, allowing each of us to come to a unique and abiding knowledge of Jesus Christ.
 

It is undeniable, and extremely unfortunate, that the missionary waves of the 18^th and 19^th centuries surged on the back of the culturally destructive ideology of Western colonialism.  Missionary societies and governments’ appeals for Faith and Empire, respectively, drew on similar universal truth claims.  Just as the churches presented the Gospel as salvation for all of mankind, Western governments claimed to bring Civilization and Enlightenment to the dark corners of the earth.  In their own ways the Christianizing mission of the churches and the Civilizing mission of the Western powers both sought to enlighten the ‘wretched’ and ‘savage’ peoples they encountered or conquered.
 

Today we look back on imperial ideology with postmodern eyes and see that the logic of empire is fundamentally oppressive.  No civilization has a monopoly on Truth or enlightened behavior.  This fact doomed the grand narrative of European colonialism.  The imperial powers who clung to it could not sustain their grasp on the far-flung possessions they sought to control.  Yet, while the floodwaters have receded, carving out new nation-states in their wake, the Gospel persists in the former outposts of empire.  The Church simply refuses to fade from the scene long after the colonial ideology it traveled with has perished spectacularly.  Indeed, in many areas, Africa especially, church growth booms along with burgeoning populations, giving rise to suggestions that Africa is at the heart of a new “Christendom,[1]” supplanting Europe as the heart of the faith.
 

I currently happen to live in one of these outposts where the Gospel is thriving.  The Church in Kenya is big and diverse.  From large mainline churches like St. Andrew’s, established by Scottish missionaries over a century ago, to small storefront churches that blast loud music and fiery sermons into the street, the majority of Kenyans pack themselves into houses of worship on Sunday mornings to praise God.  In a land of at least forty-two separate tribal groups, the Lord’s ears are kept quite busy as Kenyans praise him every week in English, Kiswahili, and dozens of African mother tongues.  From the pulpit, pastors deliver rousing sermons on faith, prayer, and giving that draw on explicitly Kenyan stories, metaphors, and current events.  In this multicultural environment, it’s as if every Sunday is Pentecost.  In spite of the tremendously flawed introduction of Christianity aligned with the British Empire in this part of Africa, the Kenyan churches have appropriated the Christian message for themselves and made it relevant to their society.  Seen in this light, it would appear that the Gospel is infinitely translatable, a quality that allowed the faith to spread from the Near East, across the Mediterranean into Europe, and from there to leap south again, taking root and growing in African soil.
 

Yet at times I wonder if the tree of faith spreading its shade across the African savanna is the same as the one that coats the foothills of the Cascade Mountains I call home, or if either of them bears any resemblance to the mustard seed that sprouted from the rocky soil of first century Palestine.  Do the tongues of fire that set ablaze Kenyan hearts and souls descend from the same heaven that I long for?  For all of its apparent sincerity, sometimes I doubt if the religiosity running rampant in Kenyan society is as genuine or valid as the faith I hold.  Perhaps the brand of Christianity I’m encountering here is an entirely different species altogether, a new post-colonial religion bound in a Gideon book and wrapped in a preacher’s dark cloak and white collar.  In spite of these doubts, however, I can now reconcile the different manifestations of spirituality I witness with my own personal convictions.  While I do take umbrage with some of the trappings of Christianity present in Kenya, I can no longer doubt the validity of the African experience of Jesus Christ.
 

A recent conversation with one of my co-workers, Jane, serves to illustrate this point.  Since Jane lives north of town, she travels all the way across the city on Sundays to attend services at Faith Evangelistic Ministries, a church on the southern edge of Nairobi founded and run by a Kenyan lady preacher.  Jane and I grew up in radically dissimilar environments, literally on opposite sides of the world, and our home churches grow out of different soils.  Yet talking to Jane it became clear to me that we both share the same convictions, that Jesus Christ is Lord, that we are redeemed only by God’s grace in Christ, and that God’s love should be the starting point for Christian life and witness.  This is the rule rather than the exception; I’ve found that I know and worship the same God as my African friends and colleagues.  What I marvel at is the immensity of God, who allows each of us to experience his grace and mercy in different ways, through unique and organic cultural perspectives.  Yet through the same Spirit we pray alike in our own tongues, Mungu Baba Takatifu, Mwathani Ngai Mutheru, Holy Father God.
 

Of all the reasons to believe the Gospel, this supernatural wonder is one of the greatest.  The Holy Spirit, from the Day of Pentecost onward has done what no man-made ideology can accomplish.  He plants the Christian message in human hearts without coercion or confusion, that all peoples may know their maker from the vantage point of their own culture.  This is the miracle of Pentecost, that we hear the message of God, clearly and distinctly, each of us in our own languages.
 

The famine has become severe,
let us go tell Jesus!
He is the one who,
when He raises His hands,
gives even our enemies their share,
and our brothers bring head-pans
to carry the food away.
 

He is the One
who cooks His food in huge palm-oil pots.
Thousands of people have eaten,
yet the remnants fill twelve baskets.
If we leave His great gift, where else shall we go?[2]

     Greetings once again from Africa!  It has been quite some time since I last wrote, but I refuse to accept responsibility for that.  Instead I blame delayed flights, unexpected holidays, and power outages for my failure!  Okay, so maybe those excuses don’t hold water, but hopefully they make you curious enough to read about the last month and a half of my life.

     Before I get into that, I’d first of all like to thank everyone who is supporting me financially or in prayer.  If you have any questions at all do not hesitate to let me know by replying to this e-mail.  Also, if there is someone that you know who might be interested in supporting me here in Kenya, or if you know a church with an interest, please give them my e-mail address and put them in contact with me.  Most of all, however, I need your prayers, so please continue to lift me up to the Lord from time to time.  Thanks again and God bless you all.

 Nigeria

     The first half of my month was dominated by a scramble to complete my research project on the history of Christian – Muslim relations in Nigeria.  I did indeed finish the project on time; it’s rewarding now to feel like I’ve made a contribution to PROCMURA’s work that will hopefully help the organization broaden its knowledge base.  I can’t say that all of the research that I conducted was pleasant, however.  It’s deeply disheartening to read about the violence and discord that pervades Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.  My research involved cataloguing over 200 events pertinent to this relationship.  A quick scroll through the data indicates a general trend of intense competition characterized by an idealization of one’s own religion and a demonization of the other.  The result is bitter rhetoric revealing a climate of mistrust and sporadic acts of violence bordering on barbarism.  All in all, I find that reading about rioting and destruction is a depressing way to spend my day.  Most of all, it deeply saddens me that my fellow Christians could become embittered and angry to the point of beating their neighbours and burning down their house of worship.  This fact disturbs me in another way.  There is very little about me as a human being that distinguishes me from those who perpetrate acts of violence.  What would I do in the same circumstances faced by Christians and Muslims in situations where this violence has broken out?  If I’ve learned anything from my experience in Kenya, it is that I can’t possibly know the answer.  (You’ll have to forgive me for leaving this question open-ended; I acknowledge that it’s poor writing.)  Please pray for the nation of Nigeria as it prepares to hold elections in May.  The previous elections in 2003 were dogged by allegations of vote-rigging and more outbursts of violence, but were free from widespread fighting.  The situation this time around is equally difficult, if not more so.  The incumbent, a Chritian, is constitutionally prevented from running, although he attempted to get this document changed to allow him to do so.  He actively opposes the candidacy of his Vice President, a Muslim, who is tied up in court over the legality of his campaign.  In short, the situation is difficult and the country’s instability makes electoral disputes and violence likely.

 Sierra Leone

     Another country which is having a presidential election this year is Sierra Leone, which should hold its elections in July.  This is only the second set of elections since the civil war ended.  I had the privilege to be able to travel both Sierra Leone and its neighbour, Liberia, in the second half of March.  I went to the region with two of my PROCMURA colleagues, Rev. Angèle Wilson-Dogbe and Mr. Okok Obuoga Bernard.  Rev. Angèle, the PROCMURA Women’s Programme Coordinator, was in charge of workshops for Christian women on their coexistence with their Muslim neighbours.  Okok, who is the Literature and Communication Secretary / Youth Coordinator, and myself helped facilitate two workshops for Christian and Muslim youth on addressing HIV/AIDS from a faith perspective.  The workshops were quite successful, mostly thanks to the enthusiasm and competence of the participants, who seemed excited to be engaging this pressing social problem from a religious perspective.  These young people agreed that individuals of faith have a large role to play in addressing the disease.  Sierra Leone and Liberia are both incredibly tolerant countries, despite having only recently emerged from civil war.  In Sierra Leone especially, Christians and Muslims tend to regard one another as equals; Muslims attend Christian schools as a matter of routine and comfortably attend church on Sundays with their Christian counterparts.  All of this happens in a country where Muslims compose the majority of the population.  Even intermarriage between the two faiths is not entirely uncommon.  This attitude of tolerance is particularly startling in light of the ferocious conflict which occurred in the country’s recent past.  The alarming number of amputees who wander through the streets of Freetown attests to the rampant brutality of the fighting, which tore the country apart and filled another chapter of African tragedy.

 Liberia

      Liberia was similarly devastated by civil war and has emerged from the shadow violence even more recently than its north-western counterpart.  If Sierra Leone bears the scars of violence, Liberia possesses fresh wounds not yet healed.  Bullet holes still pockmark the capitol city of Monrovia and the downtown skyline is dominated by abandoned concrete shells which once served as perches for warring factions to snipe at one another.  Although outsiders once came from around Africa to work in the country, massive levels of unemployment now contribute to streets filled with frustrated and jobless youths seeking employment of any kind.  The Liberian dollar, which once exchanged at a one-to-one ratio with the US dollar, now trades at fifty-five to one.  In spite of all this, Monrovians seem to share a tentative conviction that the city is coming back.  This conviction seems to derive itself more out of weariness and raw hope rather than any tangible improvement in their daily lives, but at least, Liberians note, there is no more gunfire in the streets.  The workshops in Liberia were almost as successful as those in Sierra Leone and I was impressed to hear Christian and Muslim youth both talking about peace and the need for reconciliation while condemning violence.  One young man I spoke with witnessed gruesome murders of his family members during the civil war, and hid his father in a church steeple so that he would not be killed as well.  Given the kinds of atrocities which occurred during the conflict, his tale is not surprising.  What amazes me is his response; although he knows those who killed his family members he chooses not to hate them.  Instead he staunchly advocates forgiveness as a principle in the application of justice.  I walked away from this conversation, and so many others, impressed with a conviction that I have not suffered enough to hate.  If the people of Sierra Leone and Liberia can witness or experience the kind of brutality that they’ve encountered and choose not to hate, then I find it hard justifying space in my life for those emotions to grow within myself.  Yet I know that as a human being, hate comes naturally to me.  Love and respect are much more difficult to cultivate.  Wait, before I continue thinking deeply, let me tell you about the last two weeks… and why I have not written sooner.

 Home… or something like it

      My colleague Okok and I were scheduled to return from West Africa on March 30, but due to the fact that flying in and out of Sierra Leone and Liberia is still kind of tricky (I’m being purposefully vague since this is a long story), we had to hang out in Freetown for a few days more than we had planned before we could catch a flight back to Nairobi, which incidentally was diverted through Mombasa due to heavy fog.  After only two days at work, I found out that both Good Friday and Easter Monday are holidays in Kenya, even though Holy Week here is not as big of a deal here as it is in the American church.  Since I had the weekend off, however, I decided to take advantage of it by catching up with (new) old friends and making some (really) new ones.  It appears that the guys who I play basketball with at Parklands Baptist are starting to have “official” practices in anticipation of “official” games.  One of the former coaches for the Kenyan youth team is training us!  Thursday evening I attended my first Passover Seder.  Since there are very few Jewish people in Kenya, the event was almost entirely attended by American missionaries.  After attending St. Andrew’s for Good Friday service the following morning, I visited my host family for the first time in quite a while; it was great to talk with Kamamia again, and Migwe, my nephew, is getting really big!  That night I ended up going bowling and meeting some other young folks who are here doing similar missions/service work in Kenya.  On Saturday I saw Lauren and Kari (two of our volunteers) who were in Nairobi for a football (soccer) tournament with the girls’ team from the secondary school where they teach.  For Easter I went to St. Andrew’s again.    After church I headed over to Taryn’s (another volunteer in our program) and got the chance to visit with some of the same people with whom I’d gone bowling two nights prior.  Monday I travelled up to Nyeri with Stephen (another volunteer and a good friend of mine) and Edward Buri, the youth pastor at St. Andrew’s.  He showed us around the town and took us to see two more of our volunteers, Paul and Stephanie, who are helping at an orphanage in the area.  After a long and eventful weekend I’m now back at work putting together the report for our trip to West Africa.  Unfortunately, we lost electricity for an entire day, precluding me from being able to send off this update sooner.  Really this past weekend is a microcosm of my social life here in Nairobi (with a few notable exceptions).  So hopefully, this gives you an example of what I do in my spare time.  Now, as usual, here are some of my spiritual reflections from the past few weeks.

Becoming “Easter People”
 

            “… How tragically does hate prevail in our human relations!  How the spirit of revenge     prevails in the conscience of our human groups, taking into consideration what has been           done by past generations and passing the load of hatred and revenge to the coming    generation!” – Emilio Castro, former General Secretary of the World Council of   Churches (WCC)
 

     I stumbled over the above quote in an archived PROCMURA document while I was doing my research on Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.  I can’t help but notice how painfully accurate it is.  We seem unable to escape our own bitterness and we are too much a part of our own problems to blame them on external circumstances.  If Castro’s assessment of our situation is correct; if we actually do leave prejudice and revenge as the birthright for our children, then our plight is dire indeed.

     While I was in West Africa I took the chance to ruminate on a theme that has been on my mind for some time now.  The subject of identity is central to my reflections on “our human relations,” and is especially relevant when looking at the conflicts which abound in our contemporary world.  Identity is an extremely useful human tool; we use race, language, ethnicity, traditions, geography, and religion to compartmentalize our world and understand our role in it.  Each component of a group’s self-image is benign on its own, yet each is prone to manipulation for other purposes.  This phenomenon is often central to quarrels, wars, and conflicts within the human family.  Whether out of fear, arrogance, or material interests, components of a group’s identity become excuses for violence and mayhem.  Opposing sides twist religion, ethnicity, or other divisions into a club with which to smash their opposition.  In such a situation the protagonist denies the validity of the opposing faction’s existence, thereby shattering the image of God reflected in their being and tearing apart subtle social connections which normally tie one group to another. In so doing, the actors subvert all actions to the overarching goal of affirming one’s own identity.  Rwanda, Sudan, Northern Ireland, and Bosnia-Herzegovina all come to mind as wars in which the politics of identity plays a leading role in the violence.

     It is quite clear that the perversion of identity in all of these conflicts is morally abominable.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that my Christian faith ought to play a role in my response to such violence.  Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday holds a tremendous amount of significance for the subject.  Christ’s transformation from death to life mirrors the shift in attitude of the women who came to visit his tomb that morning.  Their grief was turned to joy and wonder as they found that Jesus had risen from the dead.  Likewise, just as Christ’s body moved from a state of decay to a state of glory, the disciples, upon seeing the risen Lord, moved from a state of fear to one of excitement (although outright boldness didn’t come until Pentecost).  Something profound happened to them on Easter; they became “Easter People” (to use a phrase the pastor did on Easter Sunday) as they were raised to life with Christ.  This is the fundamental meaning of Easter.  As Christians our identities, just like the body of Jesus, are transformed from death to life.  So too should our actions become transformed when we encounter Jesus in our lives.  We should no longer be capable of allowing others to manipulate our race, culture, or faith in such a way that embroils us in conflicts which rebuff the dignity that resides within the lives of our neighbours.  Through Christ’s risen body, we are capable of reconciling our own identity with that of those around us.  And that is my prayer this month (and a half), that, we would become identified with Jesus Christ, who sets us free from sin and gives us a new identity as children of the living God.

Peace,

- Kirk Harris

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set men free from the law of sin and death. […] The Spirit himself testifies that we are God’s children.  Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.” (Romans 8:1-2, 16-17)

     It’s been another busy month for me in Kenya (I’m almost certain that I’ve started a newsletter like this before; let’s face it, I’m just not that creative).  February started and ended with me falling down and getting dirty (this is not a metaphor), but I’ll get to that in a moment.  For now, I would like to thank those of you who have been praying for me.  You are both an encouragement and a blessing to me.  Also, I wanted to thank those of you who have supported me financially as well.  You are making my work here possible.

     Now for the highlights of the month:  February started off on the right foot; I was able to celebrate our country’s virtual national holiday and watch the Super Bowl at a friend’s house.  Despite the presence of a flamboyant New England Patriots fan from Denmark who continued to drone on about how the Colts didn’t even deserve to be in the Super Bowl, I enjoyed watching the game.  What I didn’t enjoy was the three hour nap that marked the extent of my sleep that night or the commute back across town in order to go to work in the morning.  Especially unpleasant was the nasty spill I took in the middle of downtown Nairobi as I stepped off of the bus; needless to say I attracted a lot of stares as I picked myself up off of the pavement.  The worst part of the whole situation was that I had JUST WASHED my pants (I have to do my laundry by hand).

     After that inauspicious beginning to my month, I set in on my work at PROCMURA.  I finally feel like I am up to speed and fully functioning in my role as the first ever PROCMURA intern.  During a meeting with my boss I was able to sit down and map out a plan for how the rest of my time here will be spent.  The plan we came up with is to finish the huge Nigeria research project that I’ve been plugging away on for several months by the end of March.  After that, I will begin, in coordination with Dr. Mbillah and our new Finance and Administration Officer, Joy, to design a new program for religious leaders on peacebuilding in conflict/post-conflict societies.  We will focus our activities on Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and Northern Nigeria.  I’m really excited about being a part of this new initiative.  Please pray for me and all of the PROCMURA staff as we write the grant for this project.  Also, I’d really appreciate your prayers as I try to write up the massive report for my Nigeria research project, which is occupying an enormous amount of my time.

     This month I realized that I was on the verge of going crazy (not really).  While I truly enjoy my life in Nairobi, the city itself can be a frustrating place to live (and I am already spared a great deal of the frustrations of Nairobi life).  My year in Africa is turning out to be the most urban living experience I’ve ever had, which is not something I expected when I came to Kenya.  Consequently, I occasionally feel the need to get out of the city for a weekend and breathe some clean air.  In the middle of February I took a trip up to the monastery in Limuru where our group stayed during orientation.  The monks were their usual hospitable, fun-loving selves, but unfortunately Brother Anselm was away from the monastery.  His brother had died, leaving behind a wife and several children, and Anselm travelled back to his rural home area for the funeral.  Please pray for him and his family right now.  Most of all please lift up the family of his brother, who are dealing with the death of their father and husband.

     Finally, (this is a short update, but February is a short month, isn’t it) I might as well mention my recent trip to Nyanza Province and the Maasai Mara.  One of the YAV retreats every year is supposed to be a “service and immersion” experience where we travel to a part of Kenya none of us have been to yet and help out with a community project.  In our case we visited the Migori area where we helped out at two different sites.  The first was a village that is partnering with a Baptist church in Florida to build a clinic, school, and orphanage.  I have to admit, I wasn’t crazy about how the program is being implemented, although I confess that I’m not aware of all the details surrounding how the project was set up.  The second site we visited was a primary school that our site coordinator knew of.  They had asked us to help them out by painting a classroom, which we enjoyed doing, although I regret that we didn’t do as professional of a job as I would have liked.  Following these two frustrating experiences we set off for a short stay at the Maasai Mara and meetings with Phyllis (our site coordinator) about the prospects of placing YAVs in our sites again next year.

     Let me preface this paragraph by saying that the Mara was wonderful.  Honestly, sincerely, truly, it is a beautiful place unlike and I doubt you’ve ever seen anything like it in your life, but I’d love it if you could prove me wrong.  We saw tons of elephants up close and for the first time in my life I saw a cheetah in the wild.  Getting to the Maasai Mara, however, was far more of an adventure than actually visiting it or seeing the animals.  Our drivers decided that they knew a “shortcut” that would help us get to the park faster.  This shortcut involved lots of mud and absolutely no pavement.  None.  The resulting debacle was a thirteen hour ordeal during which I had about four small biscuits, two bites of an apple, and a few sips of Coca-Cola for nourishment.  On the bright side, the drive was extremely scenic and I got an excellent workout pushing our vans out of the mud which coated the roadway and impeded our progress.  At one point during our tribulation, when I was already spattered with mud, I slipped, spun around backwards, and took a seat in ankle deep sludge that had temporarily sucked off one of my shoes.  Since I was only moderately more muck-ridden than my friends when we arrived, filthy and bedraggled, at our safari lodge, we received a good deal of stares from our hosts and I think we terrified the other guests.  Thus ended February.

     As usual, I’d like to leave you with some of my spiritual reflections from the month.  On a whim I decided this month to memorize a few verses of scripture.  The following passage is from 2 Cor. 5:17-6:2.

     Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.  We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.  God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.  For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.”  I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation. 

     When I began memorizing this passage I immediately noticed that Paul repeats himself.  As a result, the passage was hard to memorize verbatim, since I kept wondering if I had already said the part about the “message of reconciliation” or if it was supposed to be “ministry.”  At any rate, I think this repetition is important because it illustrates a fundamental fact regarding the concept of redemption.  Genesis chapter 3 gives us an excellent representation of the effects of sin, which are manifested in terms of broken relationships.  Interpersonal relationships are fractured, man’s relationship with nature is distorted, and most importantly, the relationship between humanity and God is severed.  This portion of 2 Corinthians deals with the restoration of these relationships through the intervention of Christ.  This is the “message of reconciliation” that Paul writes about.  It is both a message we are blessed with, and a ministry that we are called to begin immediately.

     The phrase, “now is the day of salvation,” that Paul uses at the end of the passage implies that the message of reconciliation is a tangible reality for our daily lives.  Just a cursory observation of Africa today reveals the shattered relationships that are the natural consequences of sin. Gender-based violence characterized by the practices of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), domestic violence, and marital infidelity by men who “just can’t help themselves,” mocks the intimacy which God intended for husband and wife.  The employment of boy children as soldiers and the sale of girl children in marriage for dowry evidence the frayed connections that can exist between generations of a family.  Droughts one year, floods the next, deforestation, and destruction of wildlife habitat all demonstrate a dramatic break between humanity and nature.  Finally, the story of Cain and Abel is relived over and over in the civil wars and communal violence that destroy lives, plunge countries into turmoil, and give Africa its reputation as a place of violence and destruction.  Yet none of this destruction is unique to Africa.  If we look hard enough, we can see an equally tragic state of affairs in our own communities as well.  Indeed, the whole world exhibits a pervasive need for reconciliation.  It is because of the destructive and broken relationships around us that the message of reconciliation represented by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is at all relevant or meaningful.  God has given us the awesome responsibility to be ambassadors of this message!  In spite of our fears about our own fragility, we are called to be agents of reconciliation in our workplaces, churches, and homes.

     Let me explain to you why these thoughts are relevant to my experience here in Kenya.  One of the key principles of our work here at PROCMURA is the need for positive Christian-Muslim dialogue and the promotion of peace and peaceful co-existence between Christians and Muslims.  The more I study this field, the more I see the need for reconciliation in this relationship.  This unsurprising discovery sparks a question within me about the role that God calls me towards in the larger ministry of reconciliation represented by the Gospel.  In other words, I am in the process of discovering/defining my vocation.  Through my experiences in Kenya, God has revealed to me areas where my talents and passions lie (and where they do not) as well as clarified and redefined some of my values.  So, as the Lord continues His work in me and I continue to discover my role in God’s ministry of reconciliation, my prayer for all of you is that you may be exactly the kind of ambassadors that Christ has called you to be, and that God’s appeal through you will be powerful, effective, and clear.

Peace,

-Kirk

Hello Everyone! 

     Greetings from sunny Nairobi!  It stands to reason that January is reputed to be the hottest month in Kenya; everything else here seems to be the opposite of what I was used to before I came to Kenya.  For those of you who are reading this and shivering as you try to hold off the midwinter chill, take heart!  While you are enjoying the sunshine in July I will be the one donning a cap and jacket in the evenings… at least that’s what they tell me.  Like many issues in Kenya, I have a feeling that temperature may be one on which the locals and I have different perceptions.  I have, however, a suspicion that I have a great deal to learn on this issue, just as there is much for me to learn about so many other subjects in Kenya.  Before I really start off this newsletter, I would just like to once again thank those of you who have been able to support me, both financially and through prayer.  As always, your help means more than you know.

Tsavo Retreat

     The month began with a visit to Tsavo National Park, which is located in between Nairobi and the Kenyan coast.  It’s a huge park, so if you ever want to visit it, fly to Nairobi and then start driving to Mombasa.  You can’t miss it.  Due to the extended rainy season, the park was greener and more abundant than it usually is.  This was good for the animals but not so good for the tourists, since the wildlife was obscured by green trees and grasses.  Consequentially, tourists outnumbered animals about seventy to one.  Fortunately for me, I had not come to Tsavo for the sake of seeing large animals, although the water buffaloes were a huge plus and the giraffe that walked right in front of our vehicle wasn’t too disappointing either.  The excursion was our semi-mid-year retreat with all eight of the Young Adult Volunteers in Kenya.  It had been about three months since we’d all been together, so there was plenty of catching up to do.

The World Social Forum

     I found that I also had a great deal of catching up to do when I returned to work in Nairobi.  It took a little bit of time to get back up to speed on the projects at PROCMURA which I had begun before the Christmas break.  These activities haven’t dominated my time as much as I would have expected, though, since the World Social Forum, from January 20-25^th was such a big highlight of my month.  The World Social Forum (WSF) is an annual assembly of social movements, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and advocacy groups who come from around the world for almost a week of seminars, discussions, and debates surrounding the theme, “Another world is possible.”  The gathering was originally conceived as an alternative to the World Economic Forum which takes place every January in Davos, Switzerland.  In contrast to this, the WSF views itself as movement led by representatives from the less economically-privileged countries of the “Global South.” While I enjoyed the experience of attending the event, I have to admit I wasn’t absolutely in love with the gathering.  There’s also a lot of insularity and self-righteousness that comes within the vein of activism on display at the WSF, but I managed to get over my distaste for that and enjoy the intellectual, ethnic, and geographic diversity that comes with the forum.  The forum attracts a fairly wide variety of people.  Some of them are outlandish intellectuals and scholars, (i.e. heterodox economists or disciples of Franz Fanon), some of them are socially-conscious people of faith (like myself or the clergy who I met, some of them are Africans who want to change their countries and improve their lives, and some of them are just people who like yelling and demonstrating.  While at the World Social Forum, I had the opportunity to interact with a number of interesting people in each of these categories, although in retrospect I really missed out on the yelling and demonstrating.  As a testimony to the diversity of the event, I even had the opportunity to use my French, Spanish, and Kiswahili all in the same day.  I should actually say that I had the opportunity to misuse each one of these languages, since my ability in all three ranges from mediocre to awful.  Fortunately for me, it was convenient to get by using English (which happens to be my mother tongue).  This is probably a comment on the power relations between my home country and the rest of the world, but it is not particularly relevant to the matter at hand.  The distinction between these groups was prominently displayed in a human rights and cultural diversity workshop when I looked over and saw an African man with long dreadlocks and a ratty beard sitting next to an old European nun; evidently, both of them were interested in the same subject.

Human Rights

     The workshop I’m referring to happened to be interesting to myself as well; it examined the quest for the quest for a universally-held and practiced standard of human rights.  One human rights lawyer with the Lutheran World Federation at the seminar declared that the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” is virtually uncontested as a matter of international law, but is controversial on political and cultural levels, as governments and societies dispute the implementation of the principles which the charter espouses.  The root of these conflicts and debates lies in the question of human dignity.  While no culture disputes the fundamental dignity of the human person, the variety of how this worth is expressed across cultures creates a dilemma for the world community regarding just how universal the values are which form the basis for our modern understanding of human rights.  A variety of speakers at the seminar gave examples of the issues which confront human rights advocates in the present day.  Explaining the connection between faith and rights, a delegate from Inter-Faith Action for Peace in Africa (IFAPA) noted that frequently, human rights principles become subverted when dictators use religion as a means to consolidate and justify their rule.  The human rights lawyer argued that it is necessary for human rights, which have been used as a political tool in the past, to become depoliticized in order to affirm their universality.  This seems to me to be a crucial issue since some critics argue that the human rights agenda has been driven by Western governments and NGOs who focus more on individual rights than on community rights, affirmed by indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, or economic rights, which are of utmost importance to both the rural and urban poor.

Faith-Based NGOs and Peace-Building

     This seminar on human rights was not the only discussion which dealt with the role of faith in promoting human well-being.  Caritas Internationalis, a worldwide Catholic relief and development organization with branches in multiple countries and regions, organized an excellent forum on the role of faith-based NGOs engaged in peace-building projects.  “In principle, all religions value peace,” announced a delegate from the International Movement of Catholic Students.  He pointed out that, sometimes, however, religion is used to justify war and violence.  In situations where religious beliefs are manipulated to fuel conflict, it is paramount there are opportunities for inter-religious dialogue which directly addresses the immediate causes of the dispute.  Another Caritas representative gave a positive of example of this kind of dialogue; she stated that in Chad, young Muslims and Christians are engaging one another for the first time because they both have a genuine desire to achieve peace and reconciliation in the face of a government which is trying to perpetuate a geographic and religious rift between “Muslim” northerners and “Christian” southerners in order to cling to power.  The importance of this inter-religious engagement was stressed by a representative from Caritas Kosovo who declared that although the roots of conflict in Kosovo are political rather than religious, “if there is no religious peace, then there will be no peace.”  In other words, the actions of people of faith are essential for the resolution of conflicts in religiously pluralist societies.  One representative outlined several principles for engagement on the part of faith-based organizations.  Dialogue must focus on practical issues over theological differences, generate increased possibilities for people of different faiths to interact, create grassroots channels of communications that affirm human life, and undertake joint actions in which adherents of multiple faiths are involved in both the planning and execution of a project.  Only in such a way will communities of faith manage to overcome the forces which seek to divide them and denigrate the sanctity of human life.  This lesson is of great value for PROCMURA as it pursues peaceful relations with the Muslim community on the continent of Africa.

Economists Out to Save the World

     On the final day of workshops at the World Social Forum, a group of economists who reject conventional assumptions about development hosted a seminar where they aired a few of their theories.  The organization, known as International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs), primarily discussed the concept of “jobless growth.”  Many developing countries across the world have experienced recent surges of economic growth without witnessing a corresponding increase in the number of jobs available to displaced workers.  In other words, the world has managed to produce a system that generates economic growth without creating “development” or reducing levels of poverty.  This effect has been exacerbated by a rising inequality between income and capital; as worker productivity rises, worker wages remain relatively static.  Another dilemma for developing countries is the dependence on foreign capital and international resource transfers.  All of the presenters advocated increased autonomy for developing countries in their macroeconomic policies which could allow these nations to focus more on job creation and the formation of domestic industries.  Consistent with this policy, the economists advocated for a consideration of social, ethical, and political concerns in the economic policies of both developed and developing nations.

Nyeri and Tumaini

     This is just a taste of what I experienced at the World Social Forum; I really enjoyed these seminars, and I learned a great deal from the events.  After being bombarded with information for about four or five days I decided to take a trip up north to visit Paul and Stephanie, a married couple from our YAV group who are volunteering in Nyeri.  This was a very refreshing, and quite radical, departure from my life in Nairobi.  Paul and Stephanie volunteer at a children’s home and teach at nearby schools.  They are both fantastic people with very big hearts and they have been blessed by being placed in an excellent organization.  Tumaini Children’s Home was founded by a former moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, who the entire community respects and refers to, almost reverently, as “Gukka,” or grandfather.  The home takes in children who are either orphans or come from families beset by such intense poverty that they are unable to care for their kids.  In addition to clothes, food, and a safe place to stay, the children’s school fees are paid and the education they receive expands the opportunities they have in life.  Tumaini is an incredibly worthy organization and I’d like to stress the importance of education for young people in the developing world.

     Personally, I really enjoyed my time in Nyeri.  In addition to spending time with Paul and Stephanie (always a treat), seeing Mt. Kenya (from a distance), and playing volleyball and soccer with the kids, I was able to join them for their Friday night worship service.  The first forty-five minutes to an hour are filled with simultaneous drumming, singing, and dancing.  It was incredible dancing; I’ve never seen anything like it before.  I can’t even really describe it; the closest approximation I can give you is that the entire room, crowded with kids from age six to high school students who might be older than I am, was pulsating.  It was like being inside the heart of a living organism.  No two individuals were doing the same dance, but the entire room seemed to be throbbing in unison as they sang traditional Kiswahili and Kikuyu praise music and actively worshipped God with their entire being.  I felt very privileged to be there.  In fact, I wish my culture had a way of celebrating God’s presence that was that dynamic and that physical.  Of course, if that was the case, then my culture wouldn’t be my culture.  While I acknowledge that there is a great deal I disagree with within my culture, I also respect and appreciate the cultural values which have shaped me into who I am.  None of this has anything to do with Nyeri, however, so I think I shall continue before I stray into “deep thoughts” territory a few sentences too early.

Music Worth Checking Out

     Before I leave you with my personal impressions from the month of January, I’d like to promote a few African musicians.  While at the World Social Forum, I had the chance to hear a band performing outside one of the booths that had been set up by an African NGO.  I loved the band and bought the CD they were selling.  It turns out I was listening to Eric Wainaina, who happens to be a fairly famous musician here in Kenya.  He fuses traditional Kenyan Benga rhythm with East African guitar melodies and modern, Western harmonies.  His often, socially conscious music is very smooth and laid back but there is almost always a traditional African rhythm driving each track forward.  I don’t know exactly how to explain his music, but you should all run out and try to find his newest album “Twende Twende.”  I’m a fan.  Wainaina isn’t the only African musician whose work I’m enjoying recently, however.  Just today I purchased Habib Koité and his band Bamada’s album, “Baro.”  Koité & Bamada are from Mali and they are very well known in world music circles.  There is due cause for their relative fame.  Koité is an excellent guitarist and his irregular guitar riffs and mellow voice form the basis for his band’s sound, which uses a number of different African string and percussion instruments, including the kamale n’goni and balafon. The overall effect is emotional and heartfelt.  The songs on the album reference several Malian ethnic groups and his love of the country, its cultures, and its people is obvious in his work.  In other words, buy this CD too.  Another group worth mentioning, although unfortunately I haven’t been able to find their music here, is Amadou&Miriam, a blind couple from Mali whose album “Dimanche à Bamako” is indescribably good.  If anyone would like to buy me that CD and ship it here, feel free because it’s really cool.  So, I hope that you appreciated that diversion.  To close, I’d like to leave you with some of my more in-depth reflections from the past month.

Musings

     This January has been a season of thanksgiving for me.  On multiple occasions I’ve been unable to fend off a deep sense of thankfulness for how blessed I am.  What I have discovered, however, and what I never would have thought, is that this sensation of gratitude isn’t always pleasant.  For me, it is a strange feeling, a mix of thankfulness, indebtedness, guilt, and happiness.

     The contradictory emotions which well up within me find expression in my experience on the basketball court.  Yes, I have been playing a great deal of basketball here in Nairobi, which is not an activity I would previously have associated with life in Kenya.  As a former student-athlete, this physical outlet has been a godsend, especially since living in my Nairobi neighbourhood isn’t particularly conducive to training for long-distance running, which is my personal favourite form of recreation.  At any rate, my experience with sports forces me to reflect on two of the countless ways in which God blesses me.

     First of all, I am very thankful that my economic and social situation enables me to indulge in athletics as a form of leisure.  In college, running cross-country and track and field was a passion that I was able to pursue at a very high level, one to which I could devote an enormous amount of time and effort, simply because I had no other responsibilities.  Yet this isn’t even a consideration for a family with five children and no sustainable source of income or for the young person working two jobs trying to cover expenses for their relatives back in the village. Those who are able to find work in this city of high unemployment struggle to bring home income to pay rent for their shack in the slums, buy food, and afford school fees for their children.  While Kenya is home to a disproportionate number of the greatest runners in the world, those who are able to succeed on the international level are in the extreme minority and frequently function as breadwinners for a large extended family.  Now, every time I go to play basketball I am very grateful for the opportunities that I have to engage in sport simply as a fun and interesting diversion from an equally pleasant daily life, but I am aware that this isn’t the nature of reality for most of the world’s people. My thankfulness for what I am able to do is mingled with the sadness in knowing that not everyone has the privilege of unlimited options.  There are some people for whom the quest to survive is simply an overwhelming struggle which does not allow them to devote time to variations or diversions.

     Most of all, however, I am grateful that my body is capable of the physical activity which I take for granted as a form of leisure.  For the woman in my neighbourhood with a club foot or for the men I see along Tom Mboya Street who lack fingers, toes, or eyesight, and spend their days begging for change, such exertion is not possible.  Their twisted or maimed bodies make a mockery of my attempt to entertain myself by engaging in ‘sport.’  “To run,” “to jump,” “to kick,” or even “to feel,” and “to see,” are verbs which do not correspond with the existence of a man with leprosy or woman with a birth defect.  The question which hurts too much to really ask myself is this: are the broken and decaying forms which I encounter on the roadside really dwellings of the Holy Spirit?  Are these people, too, made in the image of God, just as I am?  The frightening and not surprising answer is, of course, yes.  The implication of this fact is that my good health and relative fitness, when compared with the leprosy-ridden bodies of my brothers or birth anomalies of my sisters, assumes a semblance of injustice.  Strictly speaking, it is not fair that I can run, jump, dribble, shoot, or pass, and by so doing manifest God’s glory through the movements of my limbs and extremities, while equally precious souls are enmeshed in bodies which evidence the frailty of the human condition or the harshness of the world which we have created for one another.

     All of this leaves me thanking God for how he has made me, while simultaneously questioning why I should be afforded the ability and opportunity to use my body in such a way that defines me as an “athlete,” while others, because of disease, poverty, or simply circumstances of birth, lack that chance.  This question is simply an example that clarifies my status as a person of privilege.  In so many respects, I am graced with incredible gifts and opportunities and I am faced with the desire to bring those resources to bear in the service of God’s kingdom.  The motivation for this desire is found in Luke: “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” (Luke 12:48b).  While the Kingdom of God is an abstract idea, it is also flesh and blood; it is found in the souls and bodies of those who God has created.  Therefore, as the People of God, may we continue to go into the world with a spirit of thanksgiving and take advantage of the privileges we have:  to serve diligently, give generously, and love relentlessly.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

     It has been a long and eventful December for me in Kenya.  Consequently I have a lot to write about.  But before I get to that I just want to express my gratitude to everyone who has supported me as I serve here in Kenya.  Your prayers and financial gifts are making a great difference in my life and hopefully in the lives of those who I interact with here.  Thank you and God bless you.

     So, to start off with, let me summarize the last month of 2006 by saying that it was notable for how it broke from my routine.  Over the past several months working at PROCMURA I’ve established a rhythm for my daily life (I think I’ve written about this).  Just as I was settling in a groove, however, PROCMURA closed for the Christmas holiday.  This is pretty customary in Kenya.  Schools and offices close for at least a week around Christmas and the entire population of Nairobi either goes to Mombasa or travels upcountry to their rural homes.  As for PROCMURA, we closed on December 15^th and open again on January 4^th.  So, for the past couple of weeks, since I haven’t been working, I’ve been forced to find other ways to keep myself busy.

     My first noteworthy experience of December was the Christmas concert at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in downtown Nairobi.  I attended church the morning of the concert and everyone told me that the concert started at 5:00, but I should probably get there an hour early to make sure I got a good seat.  Although I have seen St. Andrew’s swell to overflowing on a normal Sunday morning, I was a little bit surprised that a Kenyan would tell me to show up early for anything.  Time just works differently here and punctuality isn’t emphasized nearly as much as it is in the US.  So, despite my scepticism, I met some of the other volunteers at St. Andrew’s where we found a good pew and plunked ourselves down to wait for the concert/church service to start.  Surprisingly we weren’t the first ones there.  Even more surprisingly, the sanctuary filled up fairly quickly, and by 5:00 it was packed.  What was not surprising at all was that the concert was very good; I really enjoyed hearing Handel’s “Messiah” sung with African accents.  In addition to listening to the choir, the whole congregation sang Christmas carols and we read scripture that went along with the passages sung by the choir.  All in all, it was a beautiful night made me excited for the Christmas season.

     Adding to this excitement was the camping trip I took with the youth group from St. Peter’s Anglican Church for their year-end retreat.  We stayed at Crayfish Camp on Lake Naivasha for three days; during that time I had the opportunity to interact with and befriend a number of exciting Kenyan young people.  What really impressed me is that these youth and young adults, who range in age from about seventeen to twenty-five, organized and managed the camp completely on their own.  Sometimes the poverty, corruption, and underdevelopment seen in Kenya make me question the country’s prospects for the future, but the youth from St. Peter’s dismiss many of my concerns.  By and large they are intelligent, motivated, responsible, and above all else, living in passionate pursuit of God.  Just talking to them, I get the sense that Kenya’s future is in good hands.  The question is whether or not there are enough young people like them to transform the attitudes, values, and circumstances of the nation as a whole.  Please pray that God would raise up the youth of the Kenyan church to serve and glorify Him by loving their neighbors while seeking reconciliation and justice in the face of division and suffering.

     The overall theme of the retreat in Naivasha was “Discovering God’s Purpose for Your Life,” and I appreciated all of the messages that the speakers presented.  In all honesty, it was nice to be ministered to and challenged on a subject that is really relevant right now to me personally.  I’ve been wondering a lot what God’s calling is for me specifically, especially in terms of my career.  At the moment, I don’t really have a career.  So, as I search for a profession (this is code for: as I look for a job that doesn’t involve asking people if they “want fries with that”) I am wrestling with balancing my talents, ambitions, and values to find out what direction God is leading me in.  Fortunately, this was exactly what one of the presenters spoke about.  So, now I have all of the answers for what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.  Actually, I don’t.  But I do have a renewed sense of peace and confidence that God has his hand on my life and will guide me in his paths.  Does that sound trite?  Too bad.  I believe it.

     After attending church on Christmas Eve day, I went to see my host family, who I hadn’t visited in a while.  For those who are wondering, they are doing very well.  To my knowledge everyone is healthy and happy.  I had a great conversation with my host brother about what it means to follow God and be a Christian when you just don’t feel at home in church.  I think we both are wrestling with that issue in our own ways.  After talking with Kamamia I went over to one of the volunteer’s houses for Christmas Eve dinner before returning to PROCMURA for the night.  On Christmas Day we went over to Phyllis’ house (this is my PC(USA) boss in Kenya) for a big American dinner.  We demolished the massive turkey filled with cornbread stuffing that she had prepared, as well as obliterated the sweet potato pudding, macaroni and cheese, and ribs.  Then we ate dessert.  Needless to say I enjoyed myself a great deal.

     In the midst of this opulent cuisine, it is easy for me to forget that the extravagant meal that I ate for Christmas dinner is the exception within the human community, rather than the rule.  Here in Kenya, and elsewhere around the world, the lifestyle that I take for granted in the United States is like a fairy tale, if it is even imaginable.  We don’t realize it, but the diversity and security of our food supply in the US makes the prospect of starvation or malnutrition unfathomable to many of us, despite the fact that these afflictions constantly threaten farmers, pastoralists, and street children the world over.  Floods, droughts, and overall poverty kill livestock and crops, create instability, and put “our daily bread” out of their reach.  Heifer International is an organization that seeks to end hunger and promote food security by promoting community sustainability and self-reliance.  When I studied in Central America I stayed with a family that had received a cow from Heifer.  For more information on this amazing organization, please visit www.heifer.org.

     I enjoyed ringing in 2007 in Kenya by visiting my Anglican friends from Washington, D.C. who live up the road.  We had a small New Year’s Eve party, complete with confetti and whatever those party favors are that make a weird buzzing noise when you blow in them.  So that’s how my first December in Kenya ended.  As usual, this newsletter will end with some of my spiritual/theological of the reflections at the moment.  Please bear with me, as this monthly recap will summarize some of my thoughts on Christmas, even though the holiday has passed.  I, however, continue to think that my musings are relevant.

     In my last newsletter, I marvelled at the great fragility and vulnerability of a human baby.  That Jesus submitted to being born in this form is absolutely astounding.  Something that one of the pastors at St. Andrew’s said during the Christmas concert caused me to marvel anew at this fact.  Edward Buri pointed out that the weak and frail baby who lay in the manger on Christmas night, gazed upon by his doting peasant parents and (absurdly) a bunch of shepherds, was actually the Lord of us all.  The child laying in the crèche was nothing less than the king of the universe.  As such, there was infinite power housed in Jesus’ newborn body on that first Christmas.  No matter how cute or sweet or fluffy we like to make the Christmas holiday, this fact should cause us to pause and remember the radical message that Christ’s advent represents.  Jesus summarized this message when he stood in the synagogue and declared: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).  Jesus has come to release us from physical and spiritual prisons, to transform our world and our lives.  As followers of Jesus, we are tasked with following Christ in this mission.  This process of transformation belongs to God and is accomplished solely through the power of his Holy Spirit, but we are nonetheless included in the plan.  In 2007 I hope that we, as a Church, would take advantage of the privilege we’ve been given to be part of the transforming of God’s world according to God’s Word.  Finally, my prayer is that God the Father will hold you fast in his hand in this New Year, that Jesus Christ, the Living Word, will dwell richly in your heart and give you peace, and that the Holy Spirit will guide you in all truth and righteousness.

     God Bless and Happy New Year!

Psalm 27:14 – “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”

I went to the Anglican Church at Kuhawa Sukari (it’s north of Nairobi, on the road to Thika) the other week and we had a devotion on what it means to ‘wait on the Lord.’ We came to the conclusion that it is a very active process. I’ve been thinking a lot about the struggle that it is to get into a position just to ‘wait.’ Right now I think I’m doing a lot of what I like to term “active waiting.” What, you’ve never heard of it before? That’s because I just made it up. Wait, you have heard it before? Maybe I’m not as original as I thought. Oh, well, either way, I’m waiting… and I have to confess that it can be incredibly difficult. Why? Well, I’ll get to that later. For now, let me start with the nuts and bolts of what I’ve been doing for the past month.

To those of you who have been supporting me, thank you all very much. Asanteni sana. The Lord has blessed me strongly through all of you. As 2006 draws to a close and 2007 looms nearer, I can’t wait to see what God has in store for all of us and I look forward to sharing it with all of you. Most of all, I need your prayers, so please continue to lift me up to the Lord from time to time.

Now, here is what’s happening in my life. I am continuing my work on PROCMURA’s “Questions Muslims Ask: Vol. 2” booklet (see my previous blog entry for more information). As I research and write the booklet, I’m learning more and more about Islam, Christianity, and their differences. My research on the history of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria also continues; I find myself with more information to sift through than I have time to sort out. The one great benefit to all of my work is that I get to look through information, synthesize it, and put together publications that other people will find useful. I like that. At least I like the idea of doing that. The frustrating part of all of this is that there are days when I spend eight hours in front of a computer screen, reading and taking notes, only to leave the office with the feeling that I haven’t accomplished very much. I am waiting for my projects to bear fruit, and that can be an agonizing process. There are some days when I wonder if any of my work even matters. At the same time, however, I recognize that what I’m doing is important; I had a great conversation with my boss about what I’m doing and I’ve begun to understand my role in PROCMURA. So, I know that I am where the Lord wants me to be, but that doesn’t mean I don’t drive myself crazy trying to gain some sense of satisfaction or feeling of accomplishment through what I do. This, however, is precisely where an understanding of grace is helpful. What I now realize is that every accomplishment is a gift from God. The whole point of Christianity is that we do not accomplish anything worthwhile or meaningful on our own; it is only through Christ that we are able to play a role in building the Kingdom of God. So, in a sense (and I’ve alluded to this before) this year is a chance for me to practice my waiting skills, to be patient, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and to discern how I can ultimately be a part of God’s Kingdom.

Waiting has not been all intellectual agony and emotional distress, however; some pretty fun things are happening while I wait. First of all, I’ve started playing basketball with some guys at Parklands Baptist Church, which is just up the street from me. From what I hear, it’s one of the best places to play in Nairobi. I’m pretty useless half the time, but it’s nice to run around and wear myself out. In addition, I’ve managed to make friends with some people who are also volunteering here in Kenya. My colleague Stephen (one of the other YAVs, who is, like me, learning to be a ‘waiter’) introduced me to three young adults from an Anglican church in the Washington, D.C. area who are here in Nairobi working with a few organizations that their church has relationships with as well as teaching in a local school. It is really nice getting together with them for dinner once a week or so, sharing in a meal and conversation about what we’ve all been up to.

Two weekends ago, I had a very rewarding experience. I got to help cook lunch for a Nobel laureate at my site coordinator’s house (this is my PC(USA) boss). Wangari Maathai won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership in The Greenbelt Movement (http://www.greenbeltmovement.org) which focuses on planting trees with women’s groups to conserve the environment and improve the livelihoods of people in the communities. She has helped export the Greenbelt Movement abroad, with initiatives springing up in over five other African countries. In addition to her environmental activism she has worked tirelessly on behalf of democracy and human rights in Kenya. In 2002 she was elected to parliament and was appointed Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources, and Wildlife by President Kibaki. Yes, I did rip all of that off of the Nobel website: (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2004/).

So, I have met some exciting people here in God’s waiting room. The Lord has been exceedingly good to me here and I am grateful for the blessings and trials he has poured out on me. As usual I leave you with some of my spiritual impressions at the moment.

As a worldwide church we are now in the season of advent, as we wait for Christmas to come, looking forward to the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior. The whole earth groans in expectation of the arrival of its creator-redeemer. As a human community we ache, whether we know it or not, to see the coming of Immanuel, “God with us.” Really the miracle of the incarnation is exactly that, God himself becoming flesh and “making his dwelling among us” (John 1:14). This is pretty amazing considering what fragile and vulnerable creatures we are. And Jesus came to us in one of humanity’s most fragile and vulnerable forms, a baby. This vulnerability is currently manifested throughout Africa, where babies are born into situations where malnutrition, malaria, and HIV/AIDS threaten to sentence a child to death from the moment he or she is born. Jesus, just like many African children today, was born into a harsh and unstable world, with an uneducated rural teenager tasked with caring for him. Jesus faced terror, conflict, and genocide as a baby, just as African children who are born in Somalia, Uganda, or Darfur do today. Jesus, like countless Congolese, Sudanese, and Liberian boys and girls, was a refugee as a young child (Matthew 2:13-18).

The beauty of the Christian faith is that we have a savior who understands our weakness and our vulnerability. Yet the tragedy of the Christian faith is that we rarely focus on those who live in Jesus’ position, at the margins. It is the broken, vulnerable, and marginalized for whom advent would seem to have the greatest resonance. Do those of us who are comfortable, well-fed, and safe really understand the joy of Christmas? Are we able to appreciate the sheer elation of encountering a Messiah who promises to redeem us from our weakened and broken state precisely by becoming weak and broken himself? Can we comprehend the crying out, the longing of humanity for the arrival of its redeemer? Personally, I think that in my physical and emotional security, I am at times unable to hear the voice of one calling “in the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3).

This passage from Isaiah was written to a nation in exile which possessed an acute desire for the restoration of their community, where there would be peace, justice, and security. Most of all they were a group of people who longed to see the day when God would break down all of the barriers which separated him from his creation. The desire of these ancient Jews is the same desire which people of Jesus’ day felt; it is the exact same sense of longing which permeates our world today. As human beings we desire wholeness in a broken and fractured world. We are in desperate need of healing. Our world today longs for the redemption that only Christ can bring. In this advent season, let us celebrate our Messiah’s arrival here on earth, and let us recognize the children who are even now being born as exiles and outcasts in the eyes of the world. The moral of the Christmas story is that God loves them like he loves his own son, who he sent to earth on their behalf.

My prayer for all of you as we approach Christmas is that you would know and experience the joy of Christmas and the promise of redemption. God bless you all this season as you celebrate the advent of, Immanuel, the “Word become flesh,” Jesus Christ.

O come, desire of nations, bind,
in one the hearts of all mankind.
Bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be Thyself our King of Peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel,
has come to thee,
O Israel!

Well, did you expect me to have a creative title for my blog?  I’m sorry, but I don’t.

     Two months and it feels like a day.  Two months and it feels like forever.  I’ve been in Kenya two months now, which is enough time for me to start feeling settled and enough time for me to start feeling rattled.  What does this mean?  Well, I will explain the fluidity of how I’ve been experiencing time a little bit later.  For now let me explain what I’ve been up to and extend my thanks to everyone who has supported me financially and in prayer.  You are blessing me more than you know.
 

     Although I’ve been in Kenya for two months now, I’ve only been at PROCMURA for a little over a month due to our extensive orientation in Kenya.  For those of you who do not know about the organization, PROCMURA is an African Christian organization whose title stands for the Programme for Christian – Muslim Relations in Africa.  It has two main goals; the first is to work with churches around throughout Sub-Saharan Africa promoting a responsible and faithful Christian witness to their Muslim neighbors.  This is type of witness is best understood by what it is not.  It does not mean antagonizing Muslims, threatening them, or attacking them with polemical arguments aimed at destroying Islam.  It also does not mean compromising the principles of the Christian faith or being a doormat to extremist Muslims who are intent on suppressing Christianity or harming Christians.  Rather, the approach involves peacefully engaging Muslims out of respect to their status as people made in the image of God (if this sounds vague then that is because I don’t know what this looks like yet, after all I’ve only been here a month).  PROCMURA’s second goal is in line with its first; the organization brings together Christians and Muslims in dialogue over practical issues of pressing importance to both communities.  In the past this has meant working alongside Muslims in building peace between communities which have been in conflict from Sudan to Sierra Leone.  As these peace-building projects continue, PROCMURA is also bringing together Christian and Muslim women and youth in separate forums to discuss how adherents of both faiths can join to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS in their societies.  Many of these workshops have been very successful and contributed a great deal to positive Christian-Muslim relationships throughout the continent.  It is an honor to be working with an organization that is at the forefront of this very important work.  God has richly blessed me with the opportunity to be here.
 

     I actually had the chance to attend one of these HIV/AIDS conferences with Christian and Muslim youth in Morogoro, Tanzania.  The workshop had its fair share of challenges, not least of which was that the proceedings were carried out entirely in Kiswahili since Tanzanians have a pretty rough time with English.  My Swahili is abominably poor and the fact that I couldn’t understand the proceedings or speak to any of the participants made my experience slightly frustrating.  I was able, however, to get a general breakdown of the events from my colleague, Okok, who was facilitating the discussion.  As it turned out, this particular conference, unlike previous ones in Ghana and Rwanda, for example, did not produce a great deal of fruit.  There were some unfortunate misunderstandings between the Muslim participants and the organizers of the conference (I shouldn’t really go into detail about this, sorry).  Despite these difficulties, the workshop was successful in one very important sense.  It uncovered a desire on the part of many of the youth to continue this type of interfaith dialogue.  On a smaller scale, I personally believe that it helped to soften the adversarial stance taken by members of both faith communities in Morogoro, but only time will tell if that is the case.  As a whole, the experience was a valuable one, both for me, as well as for the participants and PROCMURA itself.  I hope that God will continue to bless the organization as it seeks to leverage the social power of religious communities around the continent to combat the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
 

     The Tanzania conference has come at the end of an interesting first month here at PROCMURA. It has been unique, to say the least.  I have found myself both excited and frustrated about my work, sometimes at the same time.  As I swing between these two extremes, I’m starting to gain a greater understanding of my role here at PROCMURA.  As the organization’s first intern, there was not really an initial framework in place regarding what I would be doing.  So, at the beginning I read a few reports, wrote some articles, helped out with writing a grant, and sat on my hands on occasion as I tried my hardest to work my way into the operations of PROCMURA.  All of the work that I managed to do was meaningful and valuable (most importantly, I was able to learn a lot about the organization by doing it), but I operated on a day-to-day basis, without really feeling a sense of purpose.
 

     Slowly, however, things have begun to pick up for me here and I am involved in a number of fascinating projects.  First of all, I am editing a series of journal articles for something that PROCMURA calls its “occasional papers series,” mostly because they put out the journal, called “From the Cross to the Crescent,” on an occasional basis.  Hopefully it will start coming out on a more regular basis.  At any rate, the editing process has given me a newfound appreciation to my dedicated professors at Whitworth College who taught me how to write by scrutinizing my essays and shredding me over points of style, organization, and grammar.  Thank you Dr. LeRoy and Dr. Yoder.  My second major project involves sifting through some primary source material for the second volume of a booklet PROCUMRA is printing for churches in Africa, called “Questions Muslims Ask.”  Finally, my boss, Rev. Dr. Johnson Mbillah, the General Advisor of PROCMURA, has started me on a massive project that will catalog the history of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria from independence to the present.  The document will analyze how the nature of these relationships varies between the four major regions of the country: the West, East/South, North, and the Middle Belt.  Those of you that know me probably can guess how excited I am about this final project.  I can’t wait to really sink my teeth into it and start getting some results.
 

     Now back to the issue of the relativity of time.  My two months here have been full of new and exciting experiences.  In the past month alone I’ve traveled up to Gatundu to meet my friends who are teaching at Icaciri High School, been a guest at a “monking” (the ordination of some Benedictine novices as provisional brothers), visited Malindi (on the coast) with my host family, and traveled to Tanzania for an HIV/AIDS conference.  In that respect, it feels like time has passed as quickly as a #23 matatu on Wayaki Way (which is to say, fast).  In another respect, I am amazed at how quickly I’ve settled into a routine here.  Life seems relatively normal.  I have my daily routine, I know my way around town, I visit the same grocer down the road for my vegetables; I have even started to make friends with some people from an Anglican church that I’ve started going to, if you can believe that.  So in that sense, it feels like time has passed as slowly as a #23 matatu on Wayaki Way during rush hour (which is to say, like a glacier).  I don’t think I can really describe it too much better than that.  Although the kind of life that I’m living right now is pretty different in a number of regards from the life that I would be living in the United States, there are some essential similarities.  I go to work, I go grocery shopping, and I’m trying to make friends.
 

     Last weekend, our site coordinator, Phyllis, gathered all nine of us volunteers together at a Catholic retreat center called Resurrection Gardens outside Nairobi to reflect on our experiences and share with one another how we’ve been doing at our placements.  While there, I had some time to walk through the beautiful gardens, strewn with impressive artwork, and I had the chance to pray and reflect on my experience.  I was very moved by all of the plaques they had around the gardens with the Lord’s Prayer written out in over a hundred languages, as well as by the signs on the gate in front of the gardens which I noticed as I entered and exited.  They said, respectively, “Come in to pray,” and “Go out to serve.”  As I walked out of the gardens that day, God gave me a renewed sense of purpose for my time here in Kenya.  This year is an opportunity for me to “come in to pray,” in the sense that God has put me in a fairly isolated position where I am forced to listen carefully and to prayerfully discern his call for my life.  In another sense it is a chance to “Go out to serve.”  This may mean that I serve God through the work that I do in the office for PROCMURA or God might be calling me to serve Him in my relationships with my Kenyan friends and family.  In whatever capacity I serve I do so with the knowledge that His grace and mercy is what sustains me through each new day.  As for all of you, I pray that the Lord will richly bless all of your comings and goings in the month of November and that His grace would rest on you in all that you do.

Habari yako! Greetings! It has been exactly one month since my journey here in Kenya began. God has been so good to me and I am constantly amazed at the new ways He is blessing me. I want to thank those of you who have supported me either financially or in prayer. Without you, I could not be here and I am very grateful for your support. I have now completed my initial orientation and training period and I’ve begun work at the Central Office for the Programme on Christian Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA) located in Nairobi. But before I get ahead of myself, let me back up and start at the beginning. While I don’t dare to try and give a full summary of the past month’s events, the following are some of my impressions of my whirlwind introduction to life in East Africa.

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I have 11 days until I leave for Kenya for my year of service as a YAV and I sometimes feel completely overwhelmed with what I have to do to make sure that I’m ready to leave the country for an entire year. Most of all I struggle with the idea of my role as a “missionary.” Now that I’ve graduated from college, I am not the eager and confident young professional I thought I would be. Rather I find myself a little insecure, a little timid, and wholly dependent on God’s grace and mercy to get me through the year. However, if my past experience has any relevance, it is reliance on the grace and mercy of God which will carry me far further than my own talents or abilities will ever be able to. With that in mind, I continue to prepare myself to serve the Lord in Kenya.