What I Wish Kenyans Knew About Us
Happy 3 months of living in Kenya to us. God is doing great things in our lives here, constantly drawing us closer to Him and teaching us many valuable lessons. We for sure aren't in America anymore. But Jesus is near to us, probably closer here than when we were there. As we've been adjusting and trying to merge with our culture I've come across some things that I wish every Kenyan I met knew so I thought I would share those things here.First and foremost, our purpose here is to serve God through caring for the orphans and widows, supporting local indigenous pastors and anything else He (God) calls us to do. Jeff and I have had a heart for orphans for a long time. I've kind of always known I would adopt even before I fully understood what adoption was. Of course once we were able to adopt it really opened our eyes to the huge need out there, therefore deepening our passion for orphans. I have always been drawn to babies and kids so my passion for orphans doesn't surprise me at all, but I am surprised that God has us here in Kenya living this life and serving Him in this way.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. James 1:27
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. John 14:18
Swahili isn't easy for this Momma. I'm trying, I promise. And one day I might actually be able to communicate more than just a basic greeting, but not yet. I wish so badly that I could just freely communicate with you in your language, but Swahili is so hard for me. Please be patient with me, I love living here and want to be considered "one of you" one day. I want to have you over to my home, share chai with you and learn all about you and your life and share my life and my family with you. Relationships are important to me. I don't just want to be the muzungu that lives in Kaya, I want to be your friend.
In order to move here we sold everything, including our home in America, besides a few personal items and books. Upon selling most of our belongings we donated the majority of our money to AFM to help get the orphanage built. We fully believe that God wants Mercy Children's Home built so we obeyed Him, sold it all and moved. We don't have thousands of shillings sitting in the bank. We aren't rich and we aren't fancy people, we never have been. To you, I know you see us and assume we have the money to meet your needs, but the truth is we don't. We are here to help support orphans, widows and pastors. I wish we could pay all of the school fees for your kids, as we know a proper education is important. I wish we could put shoes on every set of feet. Jiggers are bad here and cause a lot of pain and many missed school days. I wish we could make sure not one person goes hungry. Sadly we just can't meet these needs for everyone. We want to help you and we have helped some of you. We care about each and every one of you. But if we helped with every need we wanted to, then Mercy Children's Home just wouldn't be possible. We hate telling you hapana (no), we hate seeing needs that go unmet. Truthfully we hate not being able to fix things and meet needs for everyone here. We must focus first on the main reason we are here, to build and open Mercy Children's Home. Once we get the children's home built and operating I'm positive that we will start working on other ways to meet other needs here. One example being that we will be building 8 to 10 (or more) small apartments on the property to house widows in need. Another example is trying to figure out a way to get enough funds for a nearby school to be able to feed the kids lunch, because right now they can't do that.
You are NEVER just a photo opportunity. If it ever feels that way I'm sorry. When I first arrived in Kenya I took pictures often, but then I started feeling bad about it. See I never want you to feel like I'm here exploiting you. That's not my heart, not my heart at all. But I do need to take pictures so I can share them with our support system. I need to share them so I can help bring awareness to the needs that we have here. So that our friends can see the beautiful faces of those who they are praying for. I love you all and truly want what is best for you. My only motive is to bring attention to the needs here so that more and more people can be helped.
Lastly...eat with us...PLEASE (Godfrey, Pamella, Matrine, Evaline and Nickson, I'm looking at y'all)! I'm sure it is a cultural thing that we are served a meal and then left alone to eat, but we want to eat WITH you. We want to get to know you and for you to know us. We want to learn from you and about you. We aren't here for just a little while, Kenya is now our home too. We aren't going back to the United States to live, so please stop treating us as visitors and treat us just like you would anyone else. We aren't special, not even a little, we are just one family that God chose to send here. When you come to our home for a meal we will all sit down, pray together and then eat. We will sit down and learn about and from each other. I have SO much to learn about Kenya and the way things are done here.
