Friends, God is doing something special in Nairobi. There aren’t words to describe the amount of kingdom progress that’s being made here- progress of exponential proportions.
After flying through the night, we spent our first day in Kenya getting acclimated and talking with the leaders of the Mathare Hope Center. These folks here already feel like family.
The poverty here is devastating. We’ll experience it first hand tomorrow when we walk from slum to slum making home visits. This is what we learned and briefly witnessed today:
- 30% of people in Nairobi are unemployed, with no way to support their families other than organized crime, illegal brewing of alcohol and random theft.
- Approximately 40% of people have HIV/AIDS. Most of them are dying a slow death, but haven’t even been tested yet. Prevention education is rare. Parents are passing on the disease to their children at birth.
- Kids play in garbage on the streets because it’s better than the shacks they live in. A number of children live on the streets, without education, a place to live or a future.
- Apart from Christ, people have no hope.
In the midst of some of the darkest things we’ve ever seen, the love of Christ is shining brightly. We have truly witnessed HOPE with hands and feet on. HOPE is walking around all over Bondeni, West Side’s adopted community.
Keep checking in with our blog…there’s much to tell. If we can communicate even 25% of the exhilaration we feel here, prepare to get fired up about what God’s doing on the other side of the world. We’re proud that West Side gets to be part of something of this magnitude.
